Esther de Waal
WEAVINGS, June 1987
"Celtic spirituality was a practice in which ordinary people in their daily lives took the tasks that lay to hand but treated them sacramentally, as pointing to a greater reality which lay beyond them.
…As we watch these people and listen to them, it is tempting to put the blame for our own lack of everyday piety on a society in which time has been conquered and technology determines the way we run our lives. But the loss ultimately lies within ourselves. Ironically, when travel and the media have blown all horizons wide open, our own inner horizons seem to have become narrower and our vision contracted. How can we find again the seeing eye and the feeling touch?
Essentially this is a spirituality which asks of us a return to greater awareness…What the Celtic understanding brings us is the chance to break down the barrier between the active and the contemplative life and instead to make the busy, boring, relentless daily life tasks the basis for continuous praying and for finding the presence of God…
Perhaps the first step is that we really should want to unearth God in our midst…Yet, if we can rediscover this vision, then we too may be able to transform what lies to hand, let the mundane become the edge of glory, and find the extraordinary in the ordinary."
