As we celebrate Easter day, what meaning does resurrection have for our lives? Dr Cath Connelly, author and co-director of the Living Well Centre for Christian Spirituality* reflects on how the Celtic saints, and in particular St Gobnait, inspired us to have the faith and courage to launch out into the unknown to find our “place of resurrection”: a place where our spirit is most alive, and where our “deepest gladness meets with the world’s greatest hunger”.
The idea of finding one’s place of resurrection comes from Abraham and his decision to leave his homeland and secure surroundings to head off for “a place that I will show you” (Gen 12:1).
This story had an enormous impact on the Celtic imagination. It became the inspiration for an untold number of Celtic saints – both men and women - to head out into the unknown, in trust that God had a plan for one’s life and that a journey in faith would uncover that plan.
One of the core archetypal images of the early Christian Irish community was that of a (usually male) monk casting himself off into the oceans with nothing but a wattle and cow-skin coracle to protect him, until he landed on an unknown landmark from which the monk would wander the countryside seeking his place of resurrection. St Brendan and St Columba were both such perigrini.
“We see [Irish monks] moving into hermitages deep in the forest, heading off in their coracles or currachs, or walking across the countryside in faith and expectation. Many monks found their way to Europe, establishing communities of faith throughout the continent. The inspiration of Abraham’s journey led Irish monks to recognise the divine call within themselves to leave the security of home and to travel to where the Spirit would lead them.”[1]
For the Celtic wayfarer, “the ‘place of resurrection’ was sensed as a space of deep awareness of the harmony and wholeness of all things, as well as, quite literally, a place in which to settle, physically and spiritually, to await the fullness of life and experience, and to prepare for death as the gateway to new life, the end of the old cycle and the beginning of a new.”[2]
The connection between the eternal world and the physical is nearly unidentifiable in a place of resurrection, for they are knitted together in an inextricable pattern where neither can be separated from the other. The place of resurrection then is the combination of both this world and the world beyond the veil.
I think the core of the understanding of our place of resurrection is around finding that stance that keeps our eyes sparkling in the service we do and are for others. In our transient twenty-first century, where the place of resurrection is not necessarily located in space, it is as much an interior place as a physical place. It may be described as a living out of that place where our work is a joy rather than an obligation. It is both a place of service and of at-one-ness. It is here that our deepest gladness meets with the world’s greatest hunger[3].
Perhaps it can best be said that the place of resurrection is the pinnacle – “that place where one’s spirit is totally whole, at home, with no longing or yearning to be anywhere else. A place of resurrection is not only the place where one’s spirit will resurrect from its lifeless body upon death, but also the place where that spirit is most alive inside the living body. And I believe that a place of resurrection is the spiritual home where one is most completely alive and able to create, to discern, to prophesy … to be wise.”[4]
Legend states that while St Gobnait, a Celtic saint of the 6th century, was at prayer, an angel appeared to her and told her that her destiny was not to remain on Inisheer, the smallest of the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland. Rather, she was instructed to go on a journey to seek her true place of resurrection. “Go until you find nine white deer grazing” the angel told her. “It is there that you will find your place of resurrection.”
Gobnait heard. She left her Island sanctuary and wandered about the southern coastal counties of Ireland – Waterford, Cork and Kerry – searching for the meaning of the angel’s message.
Her travels took her to Clondrohid in what is now County Cork. There she was astonished to come across three white deer, all grazing in a clearing near where she stood. Surely three is enough! After all, three white deer is pretty impressive!
But is it okay to settle for a “near enough” relationship with God? Is it okay to read the mystics and study theology and attend retreats, undertake on-line courses and listen to podcasts and surround the house with Celtic objects, and never quite get around to stepping into the big “yes” of the one-to-one relationship that God desires?
Can we be so distracted by the signposts, by the joy of finding three white deer, that we forget the message of the angel that calls us to continue our unfolding pathway, until we are led to our actual place of resurrection?
Do we trust enough in the revelation of angels, of the insights of prayer, of the desires we have to be at one with God, to continue to see if there really will be nine white deer all grazing together?
It wasn’t until Gobnait came to Ballyvourney to a small rise overlooking the River Sullane that she saw the nine white deer all together, grazing … just as the angel from Inisheer had prophesied. A promise fulfilled.
My yearning to find God invites me to step outside my comfort zone, and go further than my middle age, middle class and middle of the road Christian life. I yearn to recognise the Christ who is revealed as rock in rock, as tree in tree and as human in you and me. I yearn to grasp hold of that infinite love, glimpses of which have left me desiring to be transformed.
How often have we asked for direction in life but not had the courage to step out to claim the answer? St Gobnait gives me the courage to trust in our own dreams as revelations of that which will liberate, showing us at the same time that we do not have to settle for less than the complete fulfillment of our dreams.
Gobnait crosses the river and settles on the very place where those nine white deer were the revelation of the divine.
There is a time to speak out about what has been revealed. There is also a time just to be quiet and let the experience of oneness with God permeate all our being. Meditation teaches us the truth of St John of the Cross’s belief that silence is God’s first language, and that “however softly we speak, God is so close to us that God can hear us; nor do we need wings to go in search of God, but merely to seek solitude and contemplate the Divine within ourselves, without being surprised to find such a good Guest there”.
And there are other times when we just get on with the everyday work of doing our bit of being love in this world.
Gobnait did all three. She established a monastery for women where they tended to the needs of the poor, prayed, sang, meditated, and worked in the fields. And Gobnait kept bees. Indeed, Gobnait is known as the patron saint of bees and bee keepers.
Beehives only survive if the colony works together. Each member of the hive has her or his distinct role and fulfils this role with great dedication. This is a beautiful metaphor for the idyllic community that Gobnait is said to have fostered. It is said that the members of the community “herded sheep and cows, made butter and bread, and kept a hive of bees … it was a self-supporting settlement, including a limited amount of metal and bronze workmanship among its craft output. Vegetables and wild berries added to their daily fare, and their main meal they shared each evening.”[5]
The invitation for us in the twenty-first century is to look at the harmonious lifestyle of this sixth century community and ask serious questions about sustainability, ecology, food-miles, ethical farming techniques, wise use of limited resources and issues around a lifestyle based on radical simplicity. To ask questions about how, as people of faith, we live into our vital role in bringing about both a new/ancient way of being in harmony with Earth and all that relies on her for our survival.
For fifteen hundred years, people have lived and loved on the site which is now known as Gobnait’s place of resurrection. To this day Gobnait is celebrated as a healer, faith-seeker and pursuer of justice. I haven’t yet been to Ballyvourney to spend time with Gobnait, but people speak of the tranquility of the place, of their prayerful wandering around her shrine, dipping their hands into her sacred well as they bless themselves with this life-giving water from Mother earth, as they wander further to the tree beside her well to tie a clootie, a bit of fabric, onto the tree, infusing that clootie with their prayers and hopes and yearnings for God to reveal the voice of an angel into their particular journey.
Whilst my own practice is to simply lick my hand and hold it against the tree, thus leaving part of my DNA to mingle with the saint’s own presence, it is beautiful to consider these ribbons left by previous pilgrims and wonder at the continuity of practice that remains throughout the centuries.
May angels constantly interrupt your meditations; may bees bring sweet honey to your visions. May you find the courage to submit to your yearnings for oneness as you step out to find your place of resurrection. And may you remember the insight from Celtic mythology that ultimately your soul will depart your body shaped as a bee to know forever the best of all sweet things.
*Dr Connelly is also a retreat leader, pilgrimage leader and professional Celtic harpist. Her book, Handbook of Hope: Emerging Stories Beyond a Disintegrating World, is available for through cathy@cathy.com.au
*Find out more about The Living Well Centre for Christian Spirituality at: http://www.livingwellcentre.org.au/about-us/
*See Christine Valters Paintner’s poem St Gobnait and the Place of Her Resurrection, here: https://abbeyofthearts.com/blog/2019/03/24/st-gobnait-and-the-place-of-her-resurrection-new-poem-video-a-love-note-from-your-online-abbess/
[1] Dara Molloy, The Globalisation of God: Celtic Christianity’s Nemesis (InisMor: Aisling Arann, 2009), 163.
[2] Margaret Silf, Sacred Spaces: Stations on a Celtic Way (Oxford: Lion, 2001), 93.
[3]Frederick Buechner Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC (New York: HarperCollins, 1973), 118, 119.
[4] Burgoyne, St. Gobnait,https://thinplacestour.com/st-gobnait-patron-ballyvourney-county-cork/.
[5] Meehan & Oliver, Praying, 75.