[The following is from a talk given by the author at a forum on Celtic Christian Ecology & Holiness. It is therefore, presented from the Christian perspective, but what is said regarding Celtic spirituality, ecology and holiness needs to be heard and applied by all of us, professing Christian or not.]

"Our God is the God of Heaven and Earth, of sea and river, of sun and moon and stars, of the lofty mountain and the lowly valley."

These words of St. Patrick are the essence of Celtic spirituality. A spirituality in which ecology is intrinsically linked with human living and divine blessing. A green spirituality that teaches us that if we are to be fully human – to fully experience what it means to be created in the image of God – we must realize and glory in our spiritual connection with all of God's creation. The epic poem of early Christian Ireland, Saltair na Rann ("Psalter of the Verses") opens with the majestic psalm of creation where we see God as the Sovereign of creation; the master-craftsman actively and personally functioning in creation as its maker. "Understand, if you want to know the Creator, the created," we are told by St. Columbanus. Nature is to be celebrated as a teacher, given to humankind by God to show forth the holy immanent nature of the numinous.

Celtic spirituality is incarnational. John Scotus Eriugena (810-877), the greatest thinker that the Celtic Church produced, gives to us in his De Naturae Divisione, a green theology that emphasizes the immanence of God in nature. Eriguena writes that God is in all things and is the true essence of all things. This, to use Eriugena’s favorite word, is theophany – God with us – not pantheism. Creation, according to Eriugena, echoing earlier Celtic Christians, is not external to God; for with God, the very act of creation makes God immanently present in the creation. We might say that in creating, God ensouls his immanent presence in his creation. As confusing as this may be for modern man to grasp, Celtic spirituality never makes the created thing into the Creator. Creation never becomes God. What such theology does mean, however, is that In Celtic Christian spirituality, there is no difference between the natural and spiritual, or as we put it today, between the secular and the sacred. In truth, it would be more proper to say that Celtic spirituality neither secular or sacred exist. All that really exist is holiness with its inherent blessing: Therefore, all that exist is holy and blessed. Creation and the divine are intrinsically interwoven in holiness and blessing like a Celtic knot. Life in its totality is nothing less than a spiritual experience, a sacrament— the ever-present immanence of the Creator-God. A spirituality that intertwines holiness and blessing, the Creator and the created, can be nothing less than dynamic, connected with the totality of creation, and thoroughly infused with divine power It is because of this inter-connectedness that the Celts ever-sought to live in a relationship of harmony – of reconciliation – with the universe. The early Celtic Christians understood that this world, and the things of this world, were created by God with a divine pattern. In this pattern, all of creation had their place, and needed to function in that place to remain in harmony. Our place, according to Celtic spirituality, is that of the Genesis mandate: To manage as stewards – care-givers – the creation in which God has lovingly placed us. (Read full piece)