The Music of the Spheres

A Celtic Curriculum, Week Nine

Welcome to a bunch of new friends of the Blue Room! (I wrote an introductory post a few months ago here. So glad you’re with us.)

And welcome to week nine of our Celtic Curriculum. The Curriculum has been a summer project for supporting subscribers, but this week it’s open to everyone as our regular Friday reflection! However, I’ve got a special bonus coming on Monday, which I’ll say more about below. Learn about subscription levels here. Members and friends of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Herndon are eligible for complimentary gift subscriptions; just ask. 

Today, we explore the practice of experiencing LANDSCAPE AS THEOPHANY.

About the Practice

We talked in week five about getting out in nature. How is this week’s practice different from that? I wrote that week about nature as a source of nourishment and personal edification—a chance to get in touch with our creatureliness. This week, the focus is on the holy… or on God however you understand God. 

The language of “landscape as theophany” comes from Christine Valters Paintner’s book The Soul’s Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred. She writes: 

Just as God can speak through the words of the scriptures, so can we hear the voice of the divine in the elements, the creatures, and the land. Therefore the landscape can become a place of theophany, or divine manifestation. The shoreline is a living threshold; the mountain lifts us toward the heavens. (Theophany literally means “appearance of God.”)

She quotes the book Celtic Spirituality (Davies and O’Loughlin, eds.). “Early Celtic religion appears to have been in the main local, with a particular focus on place. Early Gaulish religion was cultic, centering on specific sacred sites such as woodland glades, lakes, springs, or mountains.” 

And she concludes, “To experience the landscape as a theophany is to take seriously the way the divine can be revealed through nature and through created things. It means we can join in with all of the elements and creatures in singing God’s praise.” 

Personal Reflection

I did not grow up with a very deeply-established appreciation of place. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s some latent Texas/pioneer spirit, which led both my father’s and mother’s families to leave the states of their birth to “make their fortune” elsewhere. Maybe it was spending so much of my formative years in pleasant but generic suburbs. Don’t get me wrong; few things say “home” to me quite like an expansive Texas sky, despite leaving the Lone Star State some 25 years ago. But I wouldn’t say I’ve deeply invested in the landscapes where I’ve lived.

Weirdly, it was covid that shifted a lot of that for me. I’d been a free-range, itinerant pastor/speaker for several years, but 2019 was my busiest year of travel by far. I entered 2020 with an intention to get on fewer planes… not realizing, of course, that in a matter of months, nobody would be traveling for quite a long time. Lockdown shifted my priorities a lot, leading me to crave the deepening of local roots, to find what I’m looking for in my own backyard, to quote Dorothy Gale. And if covid awakened me to my “place-ness,” my dive into Celtic spirituality during sabbatical strengthened that awareness. For those of us whose ancestors hail from places like Scotland and Ireland, Celtic spirituality is in a sense our indigenous culture.¹

One of the many “path pictures” taken by Robert along the John Muir Way in Scotland last summer.

Those of us who read and study scripture know we can experience it in many different ways: for enjoyment; for guidance; as a narrative “container” for our own stories; as a mystery to be lived (as opposed to a riddle to be solved); as a source of awe and delight. The same can be true for creation. Sometimes, there’s a lesson for us. Sometimes, we can simply bask in the “music of the spheres,” to quote the old hymn. Here are just a few places I’ve experienced landscape as theophany recently:

• My container garden has been parched this summer. As I water my plants, I can almost see the leaves hydrate and perk up before my eyes. Despite the drought and my absent-mindedness, I see green tomatoes nestled in the tangle of vines, and my carrots, while slender and sometimes gnarled, are tasty. I’m reminded of the One who provides in loving but sometimes haphazard ways.

• Maine has been so rainy this summer that the lake where the family cottage is located has had no beach this summer. The waterline laps onto the path, and the stone fire circle where we usually roast marshmallows is completely submerged. And yet the waves are as refreshing as ever, and loons still paddle and dive and call to one another. Even amid changes, there is reliability.

• The hill (actually gigantic boulder) we climb whenever we’re there used to take our children the better part of an hour, what with the stopping for distractions and complaints of “I’m tired…” Now it’s an easy 15 minute tromp up the path for our almost-grown kids, with a short rock scramble at the end. Even on the top, a few scrub trees sprout stubbornly from the stone, because life is determined that way.

Make the Practice Yours

• Back in week five we were invited to spend time in nature, whether in the garden, on the back deck, or on a hike or nature walk. This week, let’s build on that practice by taking it a step further. Allow my brief observations above to inspire your own. What do you observe right around you? And what is that “sacred text” saying to you?

• Christine Valters Paintner considers the four traditional elements and invites us to receive the gifts in each:
  The element of wind/air invites us to breathe in more fully.
  Fire reminds us of what we’re passionate about and where our sparks need kindling.
  Water calls us to follow the flow and not to force things.
  Earth grounds us and reminds us that we are of the earth and will someday return to it.

  Is there a particular element you’re feeling drawn to? Or that you’re experiencing in abundance?

  (Note: I share the above with trepidation and care. This summer we’ve seen the destructive potential of many of these elements, most recently in the devastating fires in Lahaina. We must not trivialize the power of these forces by overly-spiritualizing them or reducing them to mere symbols. Myself, I’m feeling led to tread carefully but purposefully into this exploration—not avoiding the reality of our hurting planet, but letting that grief wash over me, and considering how I might live more lightly on the earth.)

Bonus Resource!

Back in the late aughts, I wrote a monthly column for Presbyterians Today magazine for a number of years. My favorite series was called Landscapes of Faith, in which I looked at various geographical settings in scripture to see what each landscape had to say about our own spiritual journeys. This week’s practice prompted me to look up those articles, and I’m going to make them available to supporting subscribers this coming Monday. For each landscape, there’s an article and then a list of activities for individual or group use. Great for group or individual study! The topics are:   

• Garden 

• Valley 

• Vineyard

• Sea

• Tower

• Wilderness

• Mountaintop

• Road 

• Beach

• City 

Learn more about subscription levels here. Members and friends of Trinity Presbyterian Church in Herndon are eligible for complimentary gift subscriptions; just ask. 

Closing Meditation

Look at the animals roaming the forest: God's spirit dwells within them. Look at the birds flying across the sky: God's spirit dwells within them. Look at the tiny insects crawling in the grass: God's spirit dwells within them. Look at the fish in the river and sea: God's spirit dwells within them. There is no creature on earth in whom God is absent. . . . When God pronounced that creation was good, it was not only that God’s hand had fashioned every creature; it was that God’s breath had brought every creature to life. Look too at the great trees of the forest; look even at your crops. God's spirit is present within all plants as well. The presence of God's spirit in all living things is what makes them beautiful; and if we look with God's eyes, nothing on the earth is ugly. 

-Pelagius, Letter to an Elderly Friend

Discuss

What ideas or questions does today’s article spark in you? Share with a comment!

1. Sharon Blackie writes, “There’s an understandable caution about using the word ‘indigenous’ here in the West. But I’ve spoken to a number of tradition-bearers from indigenous peoples who believe it’s critically important for us to go and find our own indigenous selves, to reclaim our own indigenous traditions. And in the countries that we think of as ‘Celtic’ – especially here in Ireland – we find, when we delve deeply into the old literature and stories, many profound similarities between the worldview of our not-so-very-remote ancestors and that of indigenous cultures today. So, for example, Irish mythology tells us very clearly that we must live in ways that respect the land. Many of our folk tales are about negotiating with the wild. We see a reverence for the natural world, an acknowledgement that trees and animals have special kinds of wisdom which we do not, but which we can access … there’s a treasure trove of inspiration there, and it’s high time we reclaimed it.”