Brendan the navigator in Mexico

On Saturday my daughter Kyra and i and 8 others from the Open door leave for Mexico to work along side one of our partner churches in Mexico City. We will be doing medical work and relational evangelism in a remote village called Ahuatitla where they have planted some house churches. The highs will be between 100-110 degrees!!!!!

My main man John Creasy sent out this prayer to our team of the Celtic wanderer, Saint Brendan the Navigator. Please pray it with us as we journey to and from and all around Mexico over the next week.

Shall I abandon, O King of Mysteries, the soft comforts of home? Shall I turn my back on my native land, and my face toward the sea?

Shall I put myself wholly at the mercy of God, without silver, without a horse, without fame and honor? Shall I throw myself wholly on the King of kings, without a sword and shield, without food and drink, without a bed to lie on?

Shall I say farewell to my beautiful land, placing myself under Christ's yoke? Shall I pour out my heart to him, confessing my manifold sins and begging forgiveness, tears streaming down my cheeks?

Shall I leave the prints of my knees on the sandy beach, a record of my final prayer in my native land? Shall I then suffer every kind of wound that the sea can inflict?

Shall I take my tiny coracle across the wide, sparkling ocean? O King of the Glorious Heaven, shall I go of my own choice upon the sea?

O Christ, will you help me on the wild waves?

thin place in East Liberty

Last night we went out to dinner with some good friends and on our way to the Abay, an Ethiopian restaurant, we stumbled upon what the Celts call a thin place where you are acutely aware of paradise or heaven having come to earth. The holiness of the moment causes you to stop, pause and praise God for his nearness. The experience is often revealed in the glory of God in creation (Psalm 19:1-6. Mindie Burgoyne says, "In simple terms a ‘thin place’ is a place where the veil between this world and the Other world is thin, the Other world is more near." Here is an attempt to capture my encounter with God in that thin place last night right Baum Blvd. in East Liberty.

Postmodern Celts???

In my class on Celtic Christianity Dr. Purves listed some characteristics of Celtic Christianity that he is discovering i his reading. I was struck how the mindset and worldview of the Celts lined up with many postmodern Christians. I have heard it said before that the premodern (the Celts) era is very similar to the postmodern era. Could these not also be characteristics of an incarnated church in a postmodern and post-Christendom, 21st century culture?

• Embodiedness, for the Celts life was whole; there was no split between body and spirit
• They had a strong sense of the immanence the nearness of God especially on earth
  
• The believed in and depended on the Power of God and the supernatural
  
• They were Penitential
• Incarnational
• They had a Sacramental world view
• They were Ascetics – they like it tough and with self denial
• Strongly affective, relational and communal
  
• Trinitarian
• Non-dualists
• Liminality – the distance between heaven and earth is very thin
• Missional
• They were Perepatic people or wonderers, journeyers; yet for whom home was important
• They were non-hierarchical and communitarian
• They were oral people, story tellers
  

Man I would love to hear your thoughts on this!

the Celts

From Celtic Christianity by Timothy Joyce:

"To follow the spiritual world view of the Celtic Christians is to embrace a way of life that is a real commitment to the belief that the Trinitarian God is alive in this world, that Christ remains incarnate in his church, that each Christian is called to active discipleship in building up the kingdom of God. Celtic Christianity opens up to us a viewpoint that cannot separate Sunday and the rest of the week, this world and the next, the spiritual and the secular, the individual and the community. It would have great difficulty understanding the privatization of religion that is now characteristic of Western culture and American life in in particular. To wish to learn from Celtic Christianity is to wish to sense the passionate presence fo God in all of life. It is to find God in the ordinary events of life, love, eating, working, playing...

In addition to logic and reason, poetry, song, art and beauty were the tools of knowledge... To follow the Celtic spiritual way we modern Christians will have to do a lot of 'soulwork' to develop our unused imagination, our neglected senses, to complement our rational minds.

The church of today is more similar to the church of the fifth century than to many other eras... Today culture largely ignores the real Christian tradition. In fact, at times, it is hostile and antagonistic to Christian claims. Western civilization is decaying as once the Roman empire did. A new type of Dark Age gathers around us. that was the scenario for the blossoming of the Celtic Church. Might it not be the way again today?"

Do you think Joyce is on to something?