Reviews for Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery of the Religious Imagination

The average rating for Celtic Way of Prayer: The Recovery of the Religious Imagination based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-09-16 00:00:00 S Bunch Wow, I really enjoyed this book. I have been pursuing a keen interest in Celtic Christianity for about a year now, and this book was a great encouragement along that path. The author does an excellent job first with making the great history of Celtic prayers available to a lay person like me--I don't believe she translates them herself, but she pores through lots of old works and has picked out wonderful prayers which she quotes liberally. These prayers will be incorporated into my own life. The thing I most love about these prayers is the way they are molded into the daily fabric of your life, so that prayer becomes almost a way of being not so much an action (pray without ceasing says Thessalonians). Second, she does a really good job of navigating between the extreme tendencies to which one could easy fall prey to when it comes to Celtic spirituality. For example, it is easy to fall in love with the Celtic connection with the earth and nature but to forget (which de Waal does not allow) that nature can often be cruel, especially when you are a solitary monk or nun living in a cave by yourself for years a time in a cold and wet climate. Another example would be the tendency toward overly romanticizing these Celtic prayers that are so beautifully made Christian from the pagan past but to forget (again which de Waal does not allow) that these prayers could become mostly just superstitious almost incantations that one would say without really know what one is saying. Overall, this book is helpful to me in my quest to live a more liturgical life, which I feel helps me keep a steady grip on the world which often feels like it is blowing by me very quickly. The liturgical life, however, must be tempered with the sort of deep devotion and spontaneity which modern American evangelical spirituality has right, lest it lead toward the sort of thing which we all see in our lapsed C and E Catholic friends: they can sit through an amazing service with ancient liturgies that speak of the exalted qualities of our Triune God and not be impacted by it in the least (forgive me Catholics for picking on you, any branch of Christianity has those folks--I have been to plenty of Episcopal churches where this is the case for example). I want to be a person who really means what I say in the liturgies and who others can quickly see that the liturgies do have a real meaning in my life.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-10-02 00:00:00 William J. Mead A lovely exploration of the Celtic tradition of prayer. Part anthology, part meditation, this is a lovely introduction for those curious about Celtic spirituality. I use the Northumbria Community's Celtic Daily Prayer anthology, and was pleased to come across many of the sources. The Celtic Way of Prayer enriches my experience of using Celtic Daily Prayer. De Waal grew up in what sounds like a high church, heavily liturgical tradition, and felt a sense of freedom and continuity when she discovered and began practicing Celtic spirituality. I grew up in a proudly low church, even anti-liturgical tradition, and felt that same freedom and continuity when I learned the creeds and started following the liturgical year, and now choosing a very liturgical/high church community to join. De Waal specifically mentions the creeds as something that made Christianity more intellectual than personal to her, as she grew up memorizing them. It was the opposite for me, because they were fresh. Similarly, Celtic spirituality is also fresh to me, but has some of that intimacy that I know from evangelicalism. The best word I can find to describe Celtic spirituality is "infused," and that's not because I read a chapter every morning while drinking a cup of tea. The Celtic worldview sees nature, community, and the human soul as infused with the divine. It's a bit mystic, a bit woo-woo for this evangelical, but absolutely entrancing all the same. "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it," after all. Celtic Christianity is decidedly different from Rome-flavored Christianity (Protestantism, too!), because the Celts made Christianity their own, maintaining and redeeming aspects of their pre-Christian culture, building a different sense of Christianity altogether, though just as wonderful as Roman Christianity. I'd highly recommend this book to those who are curious about Celtic spirituality, or want some good resources to dig into it. I knocked off a star because the format leaves me unsure of how to use the book in the long run. The prayers are not titled, and I don't cotton to the idea of flipping through the text to find the right prayer at the right time. Of course, I'll be reading this again, but it's not quite a full anthology nor an explanatory text. Supplementary materials, like anthologies of Celtic prayers, are essential for those looking to incorporate practices into their spiritual lives.