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A review by ehays84
The Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery of the Religious Imagination by Esther De Waal
5.0
Wow, I really enjoyed this book. I have been pursuing a keen interest in Celtic Christianity for about a year now, and this book was a great encouragement along that path. The author does an excellent job first with making the great history of Celtic prayers available to a lay person like me--I don't believe she translates them herself, but she pores through lots of old works and has picked out wonderful prayers which she quotes liberally. These prayers will be incorporated into my own life. The thing I most love about these prayers is the way they are molded into the daily fabric of your life, so that prayer becomes almost a way of being not so much an action (pray without ceasing says Thessalonians).
Second, she does a really good job of navigating between the extreme tendencies to which one could easy fall prey to when it comes to Celtic spirituality. For example, it is easy to fall in love with the Celtic connection with the earth and nature but to forget (which de Waal does not allow) that nature can often be cruel, especially when you are a solitary monk or nun living in a cave by yourself for years a time in a cold and wet climate. Another example would be the tendency toward overly romanticizing these Celtic prayers that are so beautifully made Christian from the pagan past but to forget (again which de Waal does not allow) that these prayers could become mostly just superstitious almost incantations that one would say without really know what one is saying.
Overall, this book is helpful to me in my quest to live a more liturgical life, which I feel helps me keep a steady grip on the world which often feels like it is blowing by me very quickly. The liturgical life, however, must be tempered with the sort of deep devotion and spontaneity which modern American evangelical spirituality has right, lest it lead toward the sort of thing which we all see in our lapsed C and E Catholic friends: they can sit through an amazing service with ancient liturgies that speak of the exalted qualities of our Triune God and not be impacted by it in the least (forgive me Catholics for picking on you, any branch of Christianity has those folks--I have been to plenty of Episcopal churches where this is the case for example). I want to be a person who really means what I say in the liturgies and who others can quickly see that the liturgies do have a real meaning in my life.
Second, she does a really good job of navigating between the extreme tendencies to which one could easy fall prey to when it comes to Celtic spirituality. For example, it is easy to fall in love with the Celtic connection with the earth and nature but to forget (which de Waal does not allow) that nature can often be cruel, especially when you are a solitary monk or nun living in a cave by yourself for years a time in a cold and wet climate. Another example would be the tendency toward overly romanticizing these Celtic prayers that are so beautifully made Christian from the pagan past but to forget (again which de Waal does not allow) that these prayers could become mostly just superstitious almost incantations that one would say without really know what one is saying.
Overall, this book is helpful to me in my quest to live a more liturgical life, which I feel helps me keep a steady grip on the world which often feels like it is blowing by me very quickly. The liturgical life, however, must be tempered with the sort of deep devotion and spontaneity which modern American evangelical spirituality has right, lest it lead toward the sort of thing which we all see in our lapsed C and E Catholic friends: they can sit through an amazing service with ancient liturgies that speak of the exalted qualities of our Triune God and not be impacted by it in the least (forgive me Catholics for picking on you, any branch of Christianity has those folks--I have been to plenty of Episcopal churches where this is the case for example). I want to be a person who really means what I say in the liturgies and who others can quickly see that the liturgies do have a real meaning in my life.