By Michael Begg
This essay considers how an understanding of the Celtic Christian spiritual tradition can help us find our way again when our life has been turned upside down.
In particular it shows how people of all faiths and none have found that the experience of a Celtic pilgrimage has created a shift in their lives that has enabled them to let go burdens and grapple with painful experiences. As a result of ‘being in' rather than ‘looking at' the holy sites of Christian and pre Christian Ireland they have found it possible to focus on their life journey in a way that has helped them to face up to their demons, befriend their darkness, let go of past wrongs and move on with their lives. Some have found the courage to abandon cherished beliefs by refusing to walk on certain well-trodden paths and with great courage to begin again to find new sources of energy and spiritual refreshment.
The theme of this essay arises from the author's experience of personal trauma and how a rediscovery of his Celtic spiritual heritage contributed to his recovery. This led to the birth of a six-day retreat programme called “Celtic Journeys and Pilgrim Walks” (CJPW) which has helped pilgrims of many faiths to focus on their own journey and has led to significant changes in their lives. The myths and legends of the Celtic saints and the places associated with them have been a starting point for those searching for something that they have failed to find in their traditional religion. What is more they have surprised themselves as they found the courage to confront deeply rooted psychological issues and have begun the journey of recovery.
The following pages will explore the proposition that ‘Celtic pilgrimage' can be a therapeutic experience.
The first Christians were called ‘the people of the way'. Many religions talk of a ‘way'. The way from slavery to freedom is central to the story of Judaism. For Muslims the journey to Mecca is one of the five pillars of Wisdom. The Celts would have had little problem with the notion of meeting God in the ‘way' (Silf 2001).
C G Jung said that there are two ways to lose your soul. One of these is to worship a God outside you. The ultimate dualism is to think of God as being ‘out there' (Fox 1983 p89). By denying such a dualistic approach to life, the Celts developed a spirituality that far from denying, ignoring or fatalistically accepting its negative and painful aspects, embraced all experience as the raw material of the spiritual journey. Celtic Christians, like their pagan predecessors, viewed each encounter with people, nature and the elements as potential signposts on their journey. Sometimes the journey was more important than the destination. An early prayer reminds the pilgrim that he will not find God at the end of the journey if he does not know the divine presence on the way:
Pilgrim, take care your journey's not in vain,
A hazard without profit, without gain;
The King you seek you'll find in Rome , it's true,
But only if he travels on the way with you. (Carney 1984.)
According to Bishop Gladwin today's pilgrims are “trying to negotiate contemporary culture which is more like learning to read a map and helping travellers to find the direction”… Different conditions may require choosing diverse routes ahead…. the attractiveness of Celtic spirituality may be that it helps people “ find the space for reading the map of their own lives”. “The Celtic sense of movement, of a spirituality in tune with the basic forces of a living, wonderful and mysterious universe of minimum structure appeals to growing numbers of people as they journey in their own spiritual development. (Gladwin 1998 p 205)
Gill and Everett echo this theme: “The Celtic tradition is speaking afresh to the hearts and minds and souls of many today as they struggle for meaning and a sense of purpose in their lives. … In the Celtic legends there is always a sense of adventure into the unknown, with the attendant strands of growth and development. Alongside this is the strong consciousness of the sanctity of the Land and of particular sites of power” (Gill & Everett 1997 p7-8)
The religious ethos of St Paul 's audience in Athens (Acts 17) was quite close to that of the Celt who, in Professor Macqaurrie's words was, “a God-intoxicated man whose life was embraced on all sides by the divine being.” Macquarrie 1972 (as cited in Ó Duinn 2000 p9) There was no hint that God was confined to a temple made by human hands. The Celts found that a natural grove or clearing was the appropriate site for worship. They would have understood the prophet Isaiah's image of the mountains and the hills bursting into song, and the trees of the field clapping their hands. (Isaiah chapter 54.)
The Celts expected to find evidence of the divine presence each step of their way. “No one who does not come to grips with the nearness of the Spirit world will ever understand Celtic Christianity”. (Mackay 1996 p10) T he gods and goddesses “inhabited the hills, the mounds, the megalithic tombs, the forts, lakes, rivers, and woods. The entire world was enveloped in a sort of nature faith. People were always in contact with the other world. It was invisibly around one at all times and could suddenly manifest itself at any moment.” (Ó Ríordain 1996 p43-47) .
Sean Ó Duinn points out “ that it is significant that what remains of Celtic Christian ritual today tends to be outdoor, as at holy wells and mountain pilgrimages”. (Ó Duinn 2000 p 11)
The Celts had already stamped their culture in Ireland before Patrick arrived emphasizes that while Celtic and Christian cultures are ‘poles apart' they do have some things in common. (Ó Ríordain 1996).
Their spirituality reflected what the Welsh call ‘hud'- a sense of wonder and awe at the divine residing in everything. (Sellner1983 p 21). They did not worship the world of nature but found God in nature. This perspective had an effect on how landscape is viewed. “Landscape is not matter nor merely nature, rather it enjoys a luminosity…Landscape has a secret and silent memory, a narrative of presence where nothing is ever lost or forgotten." (O'Donahue1985 p124)
“The reverence associated with fertility goddesses and healing centres was carried over into the Christian tradition of pilgrimages.” (Mc Donagh 1990 p169) They and other natural phenomena were invested with magical or spiritual power and remain to this day as ‘Thin Places' - where the mystery of the divine presence is so close that the divide between the physical and the spiritual appears to dissolve. They draw pilgrims from around the world.
St Patrick, as recorded by John Ó Ríordain, answers the curious daughters of King Laoghaire, explaining the new religion in language showing how relatively easily Christian and Celtic beliefs blended:
“Our God is the God of all things,
The God of heaven and earth,
the God of the sea and the streams,
the God of the sun, moon and stars,
the God of the great high mountains and the deep glens, …
In this way, the old pagan religion has not been destroyed. Mackay (1989 ) noted that a new religion can never succeed unless it succeeds in embodying the best of the culture to which it comes as observed by Ó Duinn “The ancient religion, far from being obliterated, has in fact blossomed into its fullness… it reaches its full development in the Incarnation. Nothing has been lost along the way. God is still as near as ever… If one is to understand Celtic religion and spirituality and the folk-prayers arising from it, it is necessary to appreciate that continuity of thought. (O'Riórdáin 1966 p46)
Poetry, like that of St Fursa, (7 th century) illustrates this:
“The arms of God be around my shoulders,
the touch of the Holy Spirit upon my head,
the sign of Christ's cross upon my forehead,
the sound of the Holy Spirit in my ears,
the fragrance of the Holy Spirit in my nostrils,
the vision of heaven's company in my eyes, ….( Ó Ríordáin 1996 p47)
According to O'Donnoghue, “Christ comes not to show up or illuminate the deformity of a fallen world but to release a beautiful and holy world from bondage.” (Mackay p 60)
When Patrick defied the High King and lit his Easter fire on the hill of Slane, he set the stage for Christianising other ‘pagan' sites, many of which are still the pilgrims' goal.
The healing wells became even more significant when linked with the waters of baptism. The ancient fire temple in Kildare was Christianised at St Brigid's monastery. The early missionaries recognized that these thin places were holy because of what people experienced there and so they became places of pilgrimage and places of healing. The idea of leaving friends and family to go on pilgrimage became common. O'Dwyer (1981) noted that pilgrimage for the most part was within Ireland . Abraham had left Ur without knowing where he was going, waiting for a city with permanent foundations. (Hebrews chapter 11) His example inspired the Irish tradition of peregrinato pro Dia amore (Wandering for the love of God) from the 6th century onwards.
Modern pilgrims are drawn to Celtic sites, often at critical times such as when we take time to stop, or something stops us in our tracks. We think about the journey we have taken so far and the direction our life is taking. We recognise that we are spiritual beings on a human path. We may not know exactly what we are seeking. There is a hunger and thirst for something more. It may be that an event in our lives forces us to a new, dark place - loss of a job, moving house or country, severe illness, bereavement, a personal failure. Jung (1933 p35) noted that, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious… For our own sake we have to explore the darkness or we cannot proceed with our lives. The task of midlife is not to look into the light, but to bring light into the darkness.” So it is often in midlife that we make ourselves ready and available for something new to happen and to discover the truth of the Chinese proverb, “when the pupil is ready the teacher will come.”
The opening words of The Inferno from Dante's Divine Comedy aptly set the scene:
Midway on our life's journey
I found myself, In dark woods
, the right road lost
To tell about those woods is hard.
- so tangled and rough
Elizabeth Lesser, in the aftermath of the terror attack on New York and Washington wrote:
“ All stories of change and transformation---are myths in the making. If you look at your own life through a mythic lens, you will find stories as profound as the most oft-told parables and fairy tales. …... What links these stories to each other, and to yours and mine, is that they are all stories of people who are, as William James coined it, "Twice-born." Twice-born people, unlike the more innocent "once-born," descend into Dante's dark woods, learning the dark ways of descent, discovering hidden parts of themselves-- powerful parts …and do not ascend …until the hard lessons have been learned, until the golden treasure has been found, until the wise and mature self is born.” (Lesser 2002).
One pilgrim compared the timing of her pilgrimage to that of the onset of labour. She wrote:
“You will know when it is time
to bring to birth the new creation.
The signs will be all around you,
urging, insisting : now is the time.
…. It takes labour, hard, hard work,
to bring forth something new.”
Natural birth can be a traumatic time for the unsuspecting baby in the womb. For a mature adult the concept of spiritual re birth clearly has overtones of death as well as traumatic birth. It is a brave person who submits to the scary process of becoming ‘twice born'. That is precisely what the pilgrim does.
Religious language can be one of the best ways of avoiding the inner journey. For the pilgrim, the language of poetry, music, imagination, symbol and a sense of wonder and awe is more appropriate. “The personal lyrics and passages from the lives of the saints show that the hermit and the poet were very much alive to the beauty of nature, which was for them but a stepping stone to the beauty of God.” (O'Dwyer p.191.)
The road is made by walking
“Wanderer, your footsteps are the road, and nothing more;
wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking.”
Machado, Antonio, 1875-1939
If pilgrimage was just about discussion and study then it would be possible to go back, but once we have begun the inner journey, the geography of our lives changes and we know there is no going back. We are being transformed. There are paths we can no longer tread. There are wells where we can no longer drink. There is a language we can no longer use with integrity. We set off in a cloud of unknowing to discover that indeed, “The road is made by walking”.
Pilgrims are drawn to thin places. These are not confined to geographical locations but such places can help. Thin places can help us in the transition zones of our lives. “ They are the times of birth and death, of someone leaving home or someone returning, of dire illness or moving from one place to another. They are the events of marriage and divorce, of mid-life crisis, of tragedy as well as great joy. They are the times when we move from the person we were to the person we will be, whether through normal development or by surviving an earth-shaking event. Not only do we change at those times, and not always by choice, we often catch a glimpse of something eternal. We may feel in the presence of great depth and truth, or have a vision of something beyond ourselves.” (Schlachter 2000)
Schlachter has caught the essence of the experience of many pilgrims who find that the combination of a place that is safe and accepting, with the experience of being in and ‘meditating' in thin places, has provided a physical, psychological and spiritual environment where they can face up to truths about themselves. They are ready for some new insight where they can make profound decisions that alter the course of their lives for good.
Winston (2003) has shown that it is at such times, when we are relaxed and can shut out the background noise of our lives, that we have a greater awareness of our ‘aha' moments of insight. He cites Newton relaxing in an orchard, Galileo sitting quietly in a church, Mozart playing billiards, and Neils Bohr at a horse race. All these people, in a relaxed state of mind, had ideas (the theory of gravity, the marking of time, timeless music and the structure of the atom) that have changed the world. He suggests that there are times when for creative insight, “Thinking is one of the worst things you can do.”(p244-251) Thin places provide the space and environment for such ‘aha' moments.
In a church, still heavy with the sickly smell of death and among the bones of over five thousand women and children, I realized that though I had traveled many adventure filled miles and had been challenged by poverty, hunger, natural disaster, famine and war, there was one journey not completed - the journey inwards. The places, the people, and their stories that I encountered in Rwanda seemed to wipe out my past. My heart emptied. There was a sense of God having died and the faith that had inspired me for so long was shredded. The caretaker at the site echoed my thoughts, “ I died three years ago. I am not the man I was. There are no words,” he said. There were to be no adequate words, no language, for what was to unfold.
Returning to Ireland I found I could no longer avoid the painful, inner journey. I had already put the finishing touches to the grave of the God ‘out there'. I began to travel another path, discovering the God who is so present in all things that the idea of intervention seemed ridiculous.
I sought places where others had found help to focus on their inner journey, stone circles, standing stones, pilgrim paths, high crosses and places which, for centuries, have been associated with healing and which had become places of pilgrimage.
One evening, I found an old, creaking iron gate that opened to the semblance of a path ‘choked' with wild flowers, grasses, and nettles. An ugly quarry on one side contrasted with the grassy hillside bathed in the evening sunlight. Then, surrounded by nettles and a few wild flowers, there it was - St Brigid's well. From the edge, the still water offered a perfect reflection. A stone wobbled with my weight and my reflection, like my life, was shattered and my fragmented image rippled to the edge. I was in bits, dismembered, broken. When I was still the water calmed. I could see myself again. I did not do or think anything. I simply was.
It was the turning point in a long healing process. It was the thinnest of thin places” It was here that ‘my waters' broke and labour began. I was becoming one of the “Twice born.”
Diffidently at first, I brought others to the well. As I told my story, others responded with their own. In sharing intimate and traumatic details the visits to the well became spontaneous ‘group therapy' sessions. So began a new feature of my counselling practice. With individuals and groups, a fresh path has been worn to the ancient well.
By St Brigid's well there is a stone altar. I wondered at the wonder and
awfulness of creation - death in its horror and new life with its promise as
the dis membered body of Christ is re
membered in the Eucharist.
I recalled a visit to Laos , where, after a frightening road accident the
villagers showed their concern by preparing a ‘ritual' meal, dominated by
two beautiful and unusual flower arrangements on which hung cotton strands. The
chief and elders laid their hands on the table and one by one took a cotton
thread from the arrangement and, looking into my eyes, tied the strands around
my wrists. They said something very directly to me. My colleague and I thought
it was a bit like Holy Communion. Without knowing what was said, we knew we
were on ‘holy ground', in a thin place. Weeks later, in the security of my
home, I discovered that this ‘Ba si' ceremony reunites your 32 guardian
spirits with your 32 vital organs before or after a journey, an accident or
time of illness. It was as if the villagers wanted to be sure that we were
together, `re -membered`, after our shattering experiences.
At the well the re- membering began. The dark, dark fertile and disturbed soil of my trauma helped to germinate the seeds of a new life. ‘ CJPW' was coming to birth.
Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist and those who claim no allegiance, have testified to the healing nature of the experience at the well and of re- membering Jesus in the Eucharist and being re membered. The Eucharist became, in St Brendan's words, “a concentrate of God's presence in all things”. (O'Malley 2002 P 207) As such it has become an inclusive, healing ‘ritual'.
Pilgrims of all faiths and none have begun to see themselves more clearly as they circle an ancient well, stand in a stone circle or pause in ancient ruins. The sites provide a place and a space for them to focus on aspects of their own spiritual journey. Their stories tell of healing and growth. (Note the dates that follow refer to the year of the contributor's pilgrimage and the capital letters refer to pilgrims who wish to be anonymous)
Of his visit, a bereaved Buddhist pilgrim wrote, “ Thank you for re membering me.” A (2001)
A professed atheist remarked that her visit had been a time of healing. “ It was such a holy time .” B(2000)
For thirty years C had kept the horrors of the Vietnam War to himself. At the well, he remembered how a monk had ceremoniously tied a string around his wrist after P confessed that he had killed the monk's brother in a fire-fight. He realized that if the monk could forgive him, he could begin to forgive himself. He found courage to open his heart to his wife and others. Three years later he wrote, “ Since our visit I have been "re- membering" my war experiences which I had so carefully stuffed. We now belong to a PTSD group and we are seeing a counselor.”C 2002
T found asylum from civil war in Africa . Near the well, he saw a beautiful ‘fountain' gushing from a broken, rusty pipe. It became a sign for him as he reflected on the brokenness of his own life and how healing would only come if he stopped looking outside himself and instead, faced and accepted what had happened. Like many others he found encouragement in these words:
“Ring the bells that still can ring,
Forget your perfect offering
There's a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in” (Cohen 1992)
He said, “Now I can celebrate the positive and good things in my life without denying the cracks - the wounds that I and my family have known .” D (2002)
A recently widowed man found the exposed stones of St. Kevin's way, in the Wicklow Gap, a threshold experience as reflected in a poem submitted by a pilgrim in 2003 . He wrote, “Since my pilgrimage, my life has taken a major turn. The thin-place poem about pilgrimage which you read that very special misty, windy day in August, I gave to a bereaved friend ... and she understood immediately.... and answered with tears.”E (2001 & 2003).
TRASNA
In the mountain gap.
Behind them stretched the roadway they had travelled .
Ahead, mist hid the track.
Unspoken the question hovered:
Why go on? Is life not short enough?
Why seek to pierce its mystery?
Why venture further on strange paths, risking all'
Surely that is a gamble for fools - or lovers.
Why not return quietly to the known road?
Why be a pilgrim still?
A voice they knew called to them, saying:
This is Trasna, the crossing place.
Choose! Go back if you must,
You will find your way easily by yesterday's fires,
there may be life in the embers yet.
If that is not your deep desire,
Stand still. Lay down your load.
Take your life firmly in your two hands,
(Gently... you are trusted with something precious)
While you search your heart's yearnings:
What am I seeking? What is my quest?
When your star rises deep within,
Trust yourself to its leading.
You will have the light for first steps.
This is Trasna, the crossing place.
Choose!
This is Trasna, the crossing place
Come !
Raphal Cortsidine
“ As a priest I have become convinced that we will not change … until we begin to see the physical world again as sacred space. The Celtic Christians believed that God was to be found in the rocks, trees, sun and wind, as well as in the bread and wine of the Eucharist and the h uman heart .” F (2003)
“ Last summer I was rocked by the beauty and the sense of the presence of God in Creation.
I felt close to those Celtic Christians who sought Christ at the edge of their world. Only a few feet from the cliff's edge, I felt the overwhelming otherness of the world before me.
Here was a place that transcended human presence and yet evoked a profound sense of connection.” G (2003)
“ I feel like I have always been searching for something, even though most of the time I could not have told you what it is I have been seeking. I am still unsure how to define what exactly I am about, or what I want. However, I am staring into a dismembered reflection waiting for the calm of purpose to unite me with my true reflection. Thank you.” H ( 2003)
“ A thin place can sometimes be an invisible place at the time. Sometimes it can only be appreciated after the event, perhaps quite a long time after. When I look back, I see a thin place, where the world of the physical almost merges with the world of the spiritual. It had been the fellowship of fellow seekers after thin places that had itself made a thin place.” J(2003)
“Thin places, where ones illusions melt away…awaken and welcome, intimately so, an invitation to be closer to ourselves and therefore heighten our awareness. They helped me come closer to the sacred sites within, for without that inner reality emerging, the outer sacredness couldn't be seen or appreciated .” K (2002)
“I found the CJPW experience very profound – I felt very much in touch with areas of my internal life that I had not realised. In fact I found the experience quite fragmenting – it was only a resilience of spirit that enabled me to return to a place that I could manage.” L (2004) (Written three years after the 2001retreat )
None of those people, of all faiths and none, have felt excluded in a Celtic retreat. They were on a quest and as such were open to new ways of making sense of their lives.
The stories indicate that on a six-day visit to Ireland , people appear to move faster and further in their life than clients who are in therapy for many months. It might be argued that superstition and a naïve approach to religion lie behind the experience. Or perhaps it is a temporary phenomenon, or a shallow emotional reaction. Testimony from those who have written months and years after the experience would say otherwise. It is not because the issues confronted are “simple”. Suicide, clerical sexual abuse, stress and trauma from war, marriage problems, death of a child, career decisions, problems around sexuality, disillusionment with formal religion, longstanding tension between colleagues and friends, can hardly be called simple.
Priests and clergy, longstanding church stalwarts, lay people disillusioned by their experience of religion and others traumatised by sexual abuse, war and terrorism are among those who were on the fringe of their religion and have found it possible to name and face their ‘demons'. In a safe, novel and aesthetically pleasing physical environment, they have touched the depths of their being, not by focusing on some Celtic saint or some healing well, but by focusing on their own lives, on their own, inner journey. The focus is on what they bring to the site.
Gendlin tells us that our bodies know the direction of healing for our lives and that if we take time to listen to our body through focusing, it will give us the steps in the right direction (Gendlin 1981). Focusing in a sacred or thin place, usually out doors, being still, and being aware of how we feel in our body in ways that cannot be expressed through our minds and without trying to explain everything, has helped many to begin the process of addressing long buried and painful issues. The landscape of their lives did not change in a few days, but they changed. They were focusing intuitively. They attribute the change to themselves. They had become therapist to their own inner self. Gendlin says of this approach, “The felt sense is the client within us. Our usual conscious self is the therapist, often a crudely directive one who gets in the way all the time.” (Gendlin1984)
The ‘thin place' setting helps people to be present with themselves, just as a therapist has to be genuinely present with their client in a more conventional setting.
Bohart (1993) argued that ‘experiencing' is the basis of change…The ultimate change process is one wherein clients actively explore their worlds, both in thought and behaviour and try out new ways of being”. He cites Goldfried and Grawe, “Therapy is a place where clients can actively experience their problems live, experience mastery over them and reflect upon new perspectives in the context of a helpful relationship. Real change appears to involve shifts in understanding at the bodily level. These are bodily felt shifts in understanding.”
Because the retreats focus on outdoor experiences, the possibilities for “bodily shifts in understanding” appear to be enhanced. Furthermore the company of fellow travellers creates a temporary but vital role by helping to create a therapeutic environment.
C & J had both experienced clerical sexual abuse. They had not identified this as the central issue in their lives until taking part in a simple ritual by the lower lake at Glendalough, where the legend tells of how St. Kevin befriended the lake's monster. He took it with him when he moved to a more isolated cliff dwelling. The story and the setting have inspired many pilgrims to name, to have a ‘felt sense' of and ‘hold' their monster. (Rogers 2003) This ‘sensing' has been the prerequisite for a simple lakeside ritual that has marked the beginning of the process of letting go its power over them. Holding, in their cupped hands, water from the lake, they discover that no matter how tightly they hold their hands, eventually it drips back to the lake.
They realise they cannot forgive, or let things go, until they hold and feel them. I agree wholeheartedly with Enright that forgiveness is a choice that can restore well-being to the forgiver. He defines forgiveness as, "giving up the resentment to which you are entitled.” ( Enright 2002) Many pilgrims discover that forgiveness becomes the healthiest option. It is seen as a gift to oneself. They begin to let go of what hinders them. With great courage they have begun to find new beginnings and seek new sources of energy.
Meditating, focusing, or praying in a ‘thin' place out doors, in the company of a trusted group of fellow ‘pilgrims', has helped to create the space for people to contemplate forgiveness as the beginning of what may be a long and painful process. But it is like the pain of kindly surgery and the scars, which are inevitable, can be seen as the sign of healing.
Reviewing four years of accompanying ‘pilgrims' on six days of their life's journey as they visited the thin places prompts the question, “What elements of the CJPW have enabled visitors to view their time as a therapeutic experience? I suggest the following: There is no ‘lecturing' or ‘preaching'. The people are in ‘holiday' mood. They are curious and open to change. They are relaxed and have left behind their normal stressful routine. The maximum number in a group is seven. They have time for themselves. Above all they are encouraged to find meaning for themselves in the thin places.
The role of the therapist/retreat leader in the above scenario is important but not intrusive. Most of his contribution is made before the pilgrims arrive. The selection of sites, the research into the myths and legends and a keen commitment to the process of allowing the landscape, the wells and other sites to ‘tell their own story' is vital. One pilgrim put it into words. “ It is what I bring to the well that determines what I receive .” M(2001)
The pilgrims mirror what (Shea 1999) described as moving from a belief in a Superego God with its faulty imaging of reality, which is a feature of the “adolescing self”, to the discovery of an “adult God”, a God within.
Furthermore the telling of ‘story' has opened the door for others to talk and in some cases helped them to find their own language and metaphors to express the unspeakable. This they have done spontaneously with poetry, music, dance, art, silence and simple ritual.
Even a dried up or polluted well has provided powerful images to mirror their experience. One pilgrim, with a loud cry from deep within exclaimed, “Oh, the well is dry!” when a Holy well failed to give signs of refreshment. The experience mirrored her emptiness through an estrangement and helped a process which, three years later, led to reconciliation. Another well, choked with debris, has moved some to begin decluttering their own lives to make way for something new.
A Hindu doctor waded into the ice cold waters of the lake in Glendalough in March exclaiming, “This is such a holy place I could stay here for ever,” before returning to her work with child labourers in India. A widow of the civil war in Nicaragua stopped in awe at the same place on another occasion, produced a tape from her bag and danced joyfully, barefoot, on the wintry shore. They bring to mind Moses removing his shoes before the burning bush because he was on holy ground and Jacob who awoke in a desolate place with the words, “Surely God is in this place and I didn't know it.”
A common theme is that people cease looking outside themselves for insight or guidance. They appear to catch the “Celtic Vision” with its “powerful sense of the unity of the whole created order … not least the unity within each individual.” (de Waal 1993 p.19) They ‘come to themselves' to be ‘ re- membered '.
The process that motivates clients to seek therapy is similar to that which calls someone to be a pilgrim. Deep down they know that something within is stirring and pushing them into new territory. Once the “birth” process has begun, they intuitively know that there is no going back. One compared the experience of emerging from the burial chamber at Newgrange to a baby struggling to be born. Another described the abandonment of her old ways of living as such a release that she “felt like a newborn, very vulnerable”.
You have to know how to cut the cord
and how to let go of what has been;
for what will be will be different
and it will take some time to adjust
You have to know how to wait
for things to settle -after the dream is born,
and how to handle the consequences –
clean up the mess and then move on. ( A pilgrim's words)
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