ON MY ASS IN THE GRASS

A funny thing happend on my way out the church door. I found that hallway wasn't a straight line and I seem to have spiraled right back into the sanctuary. And , like William Wilberforce sitting on the wet grass in Amazing Grace contemplating spider webs, I'm trying to figure out if I found God or if God found me. And, like Mr. Wilberforce, I find the whole situation.......inconvenient for the lack of a better word. I keep telling God to go away and like the relative who knows that home is the one place where they have to let you in.......God keeps saying "let me in" and the knocking on the door is getting louder.

So, here I am..... again. With Thomas Merton at my elbow, Carmichael's Carmina Gadelica teetering on top of the book pile, a volume of advent readings that pairs Bonhoffer and Dorothy Day among others, a reading list that keeps getting longer, taller........and there do seem to be some appalling gaps in my education. One philosophy book in my library goes straight from Plato to Francis Bacon. That's over a thousand year gap. Roman writers get barely a nod and the church fathers early and late get no mention at all.

We're talking a thousand years of cutural amnesia here. Thanks to the Viking raids there are more Irish manuscripts in Europe than there are in Ireland. The Irish planted monastaries from Iona, Lindesfarne and Skellig Michael to Bobbio in Italy. Bobbio just happens to be north of Assissi and Saint Francis wasn't the first holy man to have and audience with fur and feathers in place of wool and linen. And he wasn't the last. So maybe I can have my cake of Celtic Spiritualy with the icing after all.

Excuse me, I guess I'd better go answer the door. Maybe my visitor can explain how three sister goddesses all named Brigid ended up as an Irish saint with a talent for giving away darn near anything to anyone who asked.