Let me start this week first by apologizing.\u00a0 I am 20 hours late in getting this blog done.\u00a0 I am sorry.\u00a0 I know where I am sorry, which is that it decreases my chance to interact with you all, but perseverance is the word of the semester for me.<\/p>\n
I make choices each semester on which books I buy and which ones I\u2019m willing to borrow from the library, and for some reason, I chose to make this a library book.\u00a0 Unfortunately, it was only through an audiobook app, so my quotes are slightly different.\u00a0 Russell Moore\u2019s book Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America <\/em>was full of so many revelations and feelings that I resonated with, so I kept my audio library app open and kept hitting the bookmark tab. Perhaps I should\u2019ve bought this book?<\/p>\n One key concept and idea I gleaned from this book was the author\u2019s hypothesis on why young people were leaving the church.\u00a0 He seems to want to name the problem, perhaps to stop those of us from being cynics, but acknowledge a healthy level of skepticism.\u00a0 I struggle to keep myself in a healthy, skeptical space and not slip into cynicism, though I am sure I have been there a few times, especially in the last few years. \u201cWhen people accept futility and absurdity as normal, the culture becomes decadent. The term is not a slur; it\u2019s a technical label.\u00a0 The fact that so many, both those leaving and those staying, are giving up on the situation ever changing is a sign that we in American Christian life have started to accept futility and the absurd as normal.\u201d[1]<\/a> I often find myself in an apathetic space, especially when it comes to the evangelical church and politics.\u00a0 People I love, I\u2019m afraid to say, if I were honest, I feel as if they have slipped into the absurd.\u00a0 I try hard not to judge, and I almost don\u2019t want to know so I don\u2019t feel tempted to judge.\u00a0 Talk about avoidance.<\/p>\n I have felt tired for a long time of the hypocrisy of the church, and I just have not had the heart or desire to go back\u2026yet.\u00a0 I pray for what our author noted: a heart of tranquility. \u201cThe cross was the losing side of a culture war. It\u2019s not just that Jesus opposes both the way of Pan and caeser, but that he does so that is not frantic or furious; he has the tranquility that comes from the confidence that the church will be built and that nothing, not even the gates of hell could overturn that promise.\u201d[2]<\/a> This is how I have kept my faith after losing my religion. I believe in God and God\u2019s promises, and I have found my faith in the great cathedral of the Earth.<\/p>\n In 2022, I took a Celtic Christian pilgrimage to the sacred island of Iona, Scotland, with about 30 other people worldwide who read John Phillip Newell\u2019s books on Celtic Christianity.\u00a0 I found my faith.\u00a0 It\u2019s in the \u201cthin spaces\u201d such as this island, where the separation of heaven and earth is almost non-existent. \u201cLiving on this little holy island of Iona, in the Hebrides, which, as an Irish priest friend of mine once said, has about it \u2018something of the freshness of the first day of creation,\u2019 I as well situated to receive the richness of Celtic spirituality\u2019s way of seeing, but it has been mainly\u00a0 over the intervening years that I have reflected and worked on this book, asking the questions, \u2018how does a spirituality that is so creation-focused relate to life in the city and the way most of us live today?\u2019.\u201d [3]<\/a> \u201cIn Celtic wisdom, we remember the earth as sacred. Every tree and bush, every flower and creature, every hill and mountain is on fire with the Divine. The life within all life is holy. What we do to the body of the earth is what we do to God.\u201d [4]<\/a> I found God in connecting to nature, the love of nature, and the beauty of all creatures.\u00a0 This is where my faith lives. God speaks to me through walking, through fall colors, through my connection to myself, through my body.\u00a0 My faith is alive and well; my prayer is through movement, my eyes, and my breath!<\/p>\n Today is All Saints Day in traditional churches.\u00a0 It is a day of remembrance of those we\u2019ve lost and to honor this time when they are closer to us than any other day.\u00a0 In Celtic tradition, today is the Celtic New Year festival of Samhain. \u201cSamhain (Sow-en) means \u201csummer\u2019s end.\u201d [5]<\/a> \u201cThe Festival of Samhain marked the start of Winter when beasts were brought in from the hills to the nearby fields for winter slaughter or for overwintering in barns. Samhain was a liminal time in which the world of the living and the ancestral realms overlapped.\u201d[6]<\/a>\u00a0 I know many people may find this too close to Wiccan. There are ties, but it\u2019s a cultural festival that is the same as Dios de la Muerte, All Saints Day, and Halloween.\u00a0 This is a time to remember our ancestors and where we come from, to show gratitude for the harvest, and to rest and cozy into the Winter darkness.<\/p>\n Caitlin Matthews, The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning of the Year <\/em>gives us daily meditations reflecting nature, ourselves, and God.\u00a0 Today is day one of the meditations, and here is a reflection exercise for us all as we enter this year,<\/p>\n \u201cSpend part of this day assessing your place in life: look at the unfinished. Assess your current spiritual position, scrutinize your motives, clarify your commitments; recognize and discard inappropriate patterns that no longer serve you\u201d.[7]<\/a>\u00a0 This is my plan, and I will try to do this year-long meditation book again.\u00a0 It\u2019s been a while.<\/p>\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n [1]<\/a> Moore, Russell. Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America. <\/em>(USA, Penguin House, 2023)Chapter 1: 1:05:05<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Moore, Russell. Introduction: 37:39<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Newell, John Phillip. Listening to the Heartbeat of God: A Celtic Spirituality. <\/em>(New York, Paulist Press, 1997), pg ix.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Newell, John Phillip. Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul. <\/em>(New York, HarperCollins, 2021),Pg 149.<\/p>\n [5]<\/a>\u00a0 Matthews, Caitlin. The Celtic Spirit: Daily Meditations for the Turning of the Year. <\/em>(New York, HarperCollins, 1999), pg 4.<\/p>\n