A Week of Wonders

This has been a week of wondering for me. Wondering why we can be so competitive and snarky with each other, wondering why untimely death and suffering are front and center in so many of our days, wondering how to navigate between desire and demonstrated best practices, wondering . . . you name it. I’m sure you have wonders of your own.

And really, sometimes wonders are truly wonderful. Like the five goslings peering out from their mother’s feathers in City Park after the last snow. The Swainson’s hawk diving in front of my car with wings spreading beyond my windshield. Golden Elder blossoms bursting out along the fence and a new family of bunnies under the shrubs by the garage. Then too there are both/and wonders like a navy sunset promising a night thunderstorm. Knowing that the coyotes in the meadow will eat tonight courtesy of the bunnies, and watching my good friend deepen in wisdom and sympathy as her body and her dreams are failing her.

What does Celtic spirituality have to teach me about these quandaries? How did people in centuries past deal with loss and mystery and joy and passion and anger and keep their spiritual equilibrium? Or did they? I really don’t know. But they have left some footprints on the path and I am trying to follow them. Not the path of idealism toward a future heaven but the path of reality. The path of accepting what is present right now and simplifying my demands and desires.

Those early Celtic Christians were people like me with aches and pains, sleepless nights, dreams unrealized, and fears unrealized too. They rejoiced with each new birth, each good crop, each safe journey, and they sang and wailed through their griefs and loves and losses. Maybe it’s still true that the path of equilibrium is better traveled through song than numbers or graphs, and that the most memorable journeys may be to the depths of one’s own soul and not the farthest points on the globe.

I wonder. If the God of life and death and light and darkness is already deep in my heart, if God is not an impossible dream but the very breath of each moment, why do I make everything so hard? Why not just rest in the present. Care to join me on this journey?

Eileen J Terry

Eileen Terry is a member of Celtic Way's Board of Directors. Read more about her here.