Celtic wisdom was deeply aware that Nature had a mind and spirit of its own. Mountains have great souls full of memory. A mountain watches over a landscape and lures its mind towards the horizon. Streams and rivers never rest; they are relentless nomads who claim neither shape nor place. Stones and fields inhabit a Zen-like stillness and seem immune to all desire. Nature is always wrapped in seamless prayer. Unlike us, Nature does not seem to suffer the separation or distance that thought brings. Nature never seems cut off from her own presence. She lives all the time in the embrace of her own unity. Perhaps, unknown to us, she sympathizes with our relentless dislocation and distraction. She certainly knows how to calm our turbulent minds when we trust ourselves into the silence and stillness of her embrace. Amongst Nature we come to remember the wisdom of our own inner nature. Nature has not pushed itself out into exile. She remains there, always home in the same place. Nature stays in the womb of the Divine, of one pulse-beat with the Divine Heart. This is why there is a great healing in the wild. When you go out into Nature, you bring your clay body back to its native realm. A day in the mountains or by the ocean helps your body unclench. You recover your deeper rhythm. The tight agendas, tasks, and worries fall away and you begin to realize the magnitude and magic of being here. In a wild place you are actually
In prayer, we come nearest to making a real clearance in the thicket of thought. Prayer takes thought to a place of stillness. Prayer slows the flow of the mind until we can begin to see with a new tranquillity. In this kind of thought, we become conscious of our divine belonging. We begin to sense the serenity of this clearing. We learn that regardless of the fragmentation and turbulence in so many regions of our lives, there is a place in the soul where the voices and prodding of the world never reach. It is almost like the image of the tree. The branches can sway and quiver in the wind, the bark can drum to the frenzy of rain, and yet all the while at the centre of the tree, there pertains the stillness of its anchorage. In prayer, thought returns to its origin in the infinite. Attuned to its origin, thought reaches below its own netting. In this way prayer liberates thought from the small rooms where fear and need confine it. Despite all the negative talk about God, the Divine still remains the one space where thought can become free. There we will be liberated from the repetitive echoes of our own smallness and blindness. Prayer sets our feet at large in the pastures of promise. When you pray, the submerged eternal melody in the clay of your heart rises from the silence to infuse with blessing your life and your friendships in the seen and in the unseen world. Blessed be God who made us limited and gave us such longing! This is where prayer can heal thought. Prayer can make us aware of the clusters of presence that make up our secret companionship. Prayer is the path to the secret belonging at the heart of our other lives.
Prayer is the voice of longing; it reaches outwards and inwards to unearth our ancient belonging. Prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging. Longing is always at its most intense in the experience of vulnerability. There is a frightening vulnerability in being a human. Culture and society are utterly adept at masking this. Humans behave generally as if the world belongs to them. They exercise their roles with such seriousness. Life is guided by rules of action and power. Some people gain a certain control over our lives. We are very conscious of them and careful that they receive the necessary attention and affirmation. Sometimes you would find yourself at civilized gatherings of those worthy ones; the conversation and behaviour observe such a careful pattern of mannered unreality that you have to work at stifling the surrealistic inner voice that wants to declare some wild absurdity to stop the games and offer some respect to the concealed vulnerability. When it is present in its raw form, in poverty or pain, we prefer to look the other way. The sight of extreme and unsheltered vulnerability makes us afraid that our good fortune too could turn. It also makes us feel guilty; we do so little for the abandoned and forgotten. Underneath all our poise and attempted control of life, there is a gnawing sense of vulnerability.
