"She came to Solas Bhride this year for a weeklong stay in its hermitage. 'I was searching for meaning and she gives so much meaning,' Ms. Pickard said. 'Right now, if you go down a certain road with religion, there’s a lot of pain caused by these people, but with Brigid, I think there’s a lot of kindness, and a lot of service and courage.' Two sisters, Georgina O Briain and Caragh Lawlor, sat in the calm of Solas Bhride’s central prayer space on Saint Brigid’s Day, quietly weaving rush crosses... 'Brigid was both Christian and pagan, a mix of the two, and while I’m not very religious, I am very spiritual, and she brings it together for me,' Ms. O Briain said.... Tellingly, Brigid’s Christian nuns maintained a pagan-style fire shrine on the grounds of her abbey, even after the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland in the 12th century, in which the English monarchy imposed strict Roman Catholic doctrine on the independent-minded Celtic church of Brigid, Patrick and Columba — Irelands’ trio of patron saints...."
I didn't know the legend: "Around the year 480... a freed slave named Brigid founded a convent under an oak in the east of Ireland. To feed her followers, she asked the King of Leinster, who ruled the area, for a grant of land. When the pagan king refused, she asked him to give her as much land as her cloak would cover. Thinking she was joking, he agreed. But when Brigid threw her cloak on the ground, it spread across 5,000 acres — creating the Curragh plains...."
Here's the Wikipedia article "Curragh." An excerpt:
There has been a permanent military presence in the curragh since 1856... Records of women, known as Wrens of the Curragh, who were paid for sex work by soldiers at the camp, go back to the 1840s. They lived in 'nests' half-hollowed out of banks and ditches, which were covered in furze bushes....
Nowadays, the pagan-curious ex-Episcopalians traveling to commune with St. Brigid might gaze longingly at an "offbeat" Airbnb "nest" — a half-hollowed-out bank covered in furze bushes.
Posts
40 comments:
People were literally starving in the 1840s. Don't judge.
"I was searching for meaning and she gives so much meaning,"
I was searching for perpetual motion, and a guy sold me this machine, he assured me that I could get it to work if I ever found the manual for it.
One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to show you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken. Then this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of this brand-new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not accept this bet, because as sure as you stand there, you're going to wind up with an ear full of cider. - Sky Masterson, Guys and Dolls.
'Brigid was both Christian and pagan, a mix of the two, and while I’m not very religious, I am very spiritual,
“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
― G.K. Chesterton
I had to, duck duck go, the Chesterton quote,
so here is a link to a long list of his spot on life observations.
One in honor of our host I'll paste here.
“The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.”
― G.K. Chesterton
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7014283.G_K_Chesterton
This story really exemplifies the adage that if God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.
“The traveler sees what he sees. The tourist sees what he has come to see.”
Let me rephrase that to reveal the true meaning: "The traveler is me. The tourist is you."
There has been for so long this sense among - how should I say it? - "raised" Christians, how about that? Among "raised" Christians who don't actively choose their faith, that Christianity is cold, restrictive, doctrinal as opposed to "spiritual." And also this sense that "spirituality" is in contrast to religion. It's unfortunate that some people don't explore more of what they were born into before throwing it over for shamanism or animism, believing that they'll find something deeper there.
I'm not saying you can't, or that people don't, sometimes. But Christianity isn't what this "raised Episcopalian" seems to think it is, and I misdoubt that her Search For Meaning is going to find something in Brigid's paganism that she wouldn't find in Brigid's Christianity, if she looked with open eyes.
'Brigid was both Christian and pagan, a mix of the two, and while I’m not very religious, I am very spiritual,
I don't think you can actually be both Christian and pagan. It might not seem fair to those who are "not very religious" but "very spiritual" but those are the rules of the game.
"'Brigid was both Christian and pagan, a mix of the two, and while I’m not very religious, I am very spiritual"
I don't think you can be both Christian and pagan. It may not seem fair to those who are "not very religious" but "very spiritual" but those are the rules of the game.
The Cult sounds like a good opportunity for a...cult.
Seriously, this is how people talk themselves into decades of exploitation and cooperative imprisonment.
who-knew said...
I don't think you can be both Christian and pagan.
... You shall have no other gods before Me.” Exodus 20:2-3
As non-licensed lawyer that free-lances for Satan; I'd like to point out: this is pretty clear. GOD has to come 1st, there's no specific ban on not worshiping others too, As Long As JHWH comes 1st (good thing for Catholics, what with all their adoring and praying that goes to Mary and all the other saints)
As long as you have taken Jesus as your Personal Savior, you can bend a LOT of rules
(just do NOT blaspheme the Holy Spirit; because there are certain things you can NOT undo)
A less mathematical and more religious/magical solution to the problem of Dido.
'(good thing for Catholics, what with all their adoring and praying that goes to Mary and all the other saints)'
Catholics pray to Mary, who is the Mother of God.
No Catholic believes that Mary is God.
If you knew anything about Catholicism, you'd know this simple tenet...
So instead of worshipping the creator of the universe, she worships her own thought processes.
My bullshit story is better than your bullshit story plus you are going to burn for eternity if you don't believe my bullshit story.
I'm excited to be teaching a seminary class on Celtic Theology this summer, and Brigid is a big part of it. The pop-theology version of those saints are a lot of new agey stuff, but the actual people were really much more strict and committed to the faith than we can even imagine in our dissolute era. They're really amazingly inspiring. There's a really good collection of the primary source material in the Classics of Western Christianity series.
"Brigid was both Christian and pagan"
She was very much all Christian. But her Christianity expressed in ways that wouldn't necessarily fit what we'd see as good Episcopalian church life, and people who don't know how to see Christianity outside of its rigid, established forms, have to use language to help them make sense of it.
She was absolutely, entirely, one hundred percent, not pagan however, and anyone who suggested that would get a slap in the head by her.
They were not tame Christians.
Paganism and Christianity can’t really blend, at least not if you are Christian and grow/mature in faith. Your joy in, respect for and desire to protect God’s creation will increase, but as a result of honoring its Creator, not in ascribing immanent spiritual attributes to the creation (and, thus, worshipping that creation.) To paraphrase Romans 1:20 - God’s eternal power and glory is made obvious to all through his creation. Christians can experience and see God in nature (because it reveals His attributes) but must understand that nature itself has no intrinsic spirituality. I think Paganism explicitly ascribes a (mono-theistic) God-absent spirituality to nature. So, the two are, ultimately, at odds.
Excellent off-beat assortment of posts today!
Not religious, but spiritual....
That always comes across as, I'm a really good person, trust me. But I just can not be inconvenienced.
My neighborhood church is St. Brigid's, of whom I knew nothing until I moved here. Judging by the statues, I always assumed she was Swedish or Norwegian. Knowing now that she's from Ireland and, according to this write-up, half pagan, I'm even more amused that she was chosen as patron saint of the church by the very Catholic Italians who built and consecrated it--given the rough relationship between Italian and Irish immigrants.
So this is part of a hot trend in Ireland, where they are pushing St Brigid as a feminist version of St Patrick. This year was the first (I think it was the first) where St Brigid's feast was given as a day off. (maybe it started last year but we were still locked down then) However, St Patrick's Day here is a big deal because it's really the only meaningful national day. It's funny that they settled on that day, when there were so many other secular dates in Irish history to choose from. But I think that winds into very tangled - still tangled -- feelings over the revolution, the Easter Rising, the six counties to the North, and wondering what it means to be Irish when you don't speak the language and you no longer feel Catholic.
My son goes to Maynooth University and reports many of his peers think of themselves as European, not Irish.
Tellingly, Brigid’s Christian nuns maintained a pagan-style fire shrine on the grounds of her abbey
No, this was not uncommon. Local Catholic practices were often syncretic with earlier pagan practices. My name-saint was one of the "priapic saints", and was associated with phallic-shaped shrines in northern France where barren women & young brides prayed for his intersession for fertility & easy childbirth.
Remember, we have the Norse myths & Beowulf because some bunch of Christian monks thought they were rip-roaring tales & wrote them down.
If you knew anything about Catholicism, you'd know this simple tenet...
i know you have icons, and that you worship at your icons..
but, fortunately, for you; you think that saints are behind GOD, not before
None of which changes the fact that you have icons..
HELL! you probably have tattoos and mix linen and wool (to say Nothing of meat and cheese)
Not religious, but spiritual....
Religious (i.e. behavioral protocol), including: morality in a universal frame of reference, its relativistic sibling "ethics", and its politically congruent (e.g. consensus by choice, Choice, or force) cousin "law"... and spirituality, a mindset. Faith or "trust", science, fantasy, and philosophy as a logical domain. An ideology to realize it in a secular plain.
Jamie said
I'm not saying you can't, or that people don't, sometimes. But Christianity isn't what this "raised Episcopalian" seems to think it is, and I misdoubt that her Search For Meaning is going to find something in Brigid's paganism that she wouldn't find in Brigid's Christianity, if she looked with open eyes.
Chesterton has a bit to say about Christianity.
“The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried.”
The stumbling block man has with Christianity is ego. In that, The personal reward derived from Christ, is in turning over personal will, for Gods will. But, we are so rich, across the planet, we are able to buy our way into happiness. We can't, we just lie to ourselves thinking we might. In short there is no personal risk for ignoring the light.
Howard said
you are going to burn for eternity if you don't believe my bullshit story.
You sound kind of angry trying to defend your own sure thing.
'HELL! you probably have tattoos and mix linen and wool (to say Nothing of meat and cheese)'
Pro tip: best to stay silent on subjects of which you know very little...
So St Brigid's modern cultists have perpetual fires burning in their furze bushes? Doesn't sound very spiritual to me. On the contrary, very earthy.
People who claim to be spiritual rather than religious simply mean that they believe in a God that always agrees with them. Their basic moral theology is "I'm a good person; I want to do X; therefore, X is morally good."
There is only One that we bow to: G*d
My ex-husband, who did find G*d- was not impressed w/Catholic the ritualistic traditions of the Mass. Kneeling, standing, sitting,standing- kneeling!! He didn’t see the logic.
I love it. I especially love Adoration- where the exposition of the One True G*d, manna come down from Heaven- is elevated above us all.
I’m sure it’s confusing- this past Sunday we welcomed about a dozen people who are becoming Catholic at Easter- they’ve been studying and they’ll receive the Sacraments at Easter. I always am touched by people who seek out the Church. It’s a courageous thing in this day and age. Just in terms of commitment, even.
I think Gilbar is ribbin’ ya.
Being Lent, Gilbar- no meat and cheese on Fridays;0)
My daughter chose Bridgid as her Confirmation Saint- she being a milkmaid, and all…
https://www.mydomesticchurch.com/2022/02/the-feast-of-st-brigid.html
"Spiritual" versus "religious" is something we've gotten used to recently, but the conflict between strict orthodoxy and looser, more "creative" heresies or syncretism has been around for a long time. Popular or folk religion has always been more open to heterodox or pagan influences.
Catholicism is neither patriarchal (i.e. masculinist) nor matriarchal (i.e. feminist). Equal in rights and complementary in Nature/nature. Reconcile, without diversity, with a pro-life orientation.
Episcopalians are low hanging fruit.
Leave it to the Irish to concoct secondhand legends. The story of Dido and the oxhide was more than a thousand years old when it was recast for Bidgid in the Middle Ages.
The Irish have a lot to say about themselves -- not much accomplishment, but much to say, nonetheless. It's no accident that the most demented pathological liar to ever occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is also stridently Irish.
"Spiritual" versus "religious" is something we've gotten used to recently...
Spirituality has numerous advantages over religion, chief among them is the absence of any mandate to reform one's behavior. Spirituality sanctifies any and all bullshit and immorality.
For the influence of Celtic paganism on the expression of Christianity in Europe I recommend the middle section of Anton Wessell's Europe: Was It Ever Really Christian? The first section is about Greek and Roman influences, the third section on Germanic influences. His thesis is that the strength of the church everywhere it has gone has been its ability to both resist encroachment from the prevailing culture and absorb it and transform it in about equal measure. The book is not flawless, especially concerning prehistory, but it's got very interesting information.
Late for the seminar, here.
I agree that 'spiritual but not religious' is most often a dodge, which is why I don't use it.
I'm neither, and loving it.
Post a Comment