A Lenten Fast to Live By, Lent study 2024, week 5
In her lovely book Days of Grace, written for those who live with chronic illness, the Rev. Mary Earle writes about the practice of certain Celtic saints to embark on a particular kind of pilgrimage.
“Rather than following a set route, heading toward an announced destination such as Rome or Jerusalem, the Celtic saints followed a different pattern After prayer and self-dedication, they got into a small boat called a coracle. This coracle was made by bending strips of wood into a bowl shape, and then sealing leather over the wood with tar. A coracle (or curragh) looks like a big bowl. There are no oars.
Think about that: a boat that looks like a bowl. With no oars.
In Celtic practice, you got in the boat, and entrusted yourself to “the currents of love,” which meant the currents of the sea or the river. You got into the boat and you let go. You got into the boat and you physically cast yourself on the mercy and love of God.
The coracle would spin and drift on the currents until at last it was brought to shore. And the tradition says that the place of arrival is ‘the place of my resurrection.’ The place of arrival is that place that Love has brought us to” (pgs 12-13).
Christine Valters Paintner, who is also greatly influenced by Celtic spirituality, speaks of the same kind of pilgrimage when she invites us to lay down our overly-planned lives to offer ourselves to God’s plans for us. Planning can be an act of trying to control life, says Paintner. “It can get in the way of tending to how things actually want to unfold and ripen” (pg 177-8).
Instead, Paintner invites us into the stillness and silence of what the desert mothers and fathers knew as hesychia, which has to do with our interior stillness. It is a relinquishing of our plans to an acceptance of whatever God has next for our lives.
When our minds are filled with plans and details and agendas, says Paintner, it can become quite noisy and get in the way of how God is actually speaking into our lives. “Life is often calling us to bigger things than our planning minds want,” says Paintner, and we miss bigger visions than we had thought of.
This week we are invited to release our tight holds on our own plans for the direction of our lives, and to allow ourselves to drift in a metaphorical coracle to see where God’s plan will take us.
For reflection:
The author states that “silence makes our actions meaningful, not the other way around” (p. 180). Do you agree or disagree? Why?
The suggestion that we avoid making concrete plans or even setting goals for our lives is very countercultural, and may even seem radical. Do you find yourself resistant to letting go of your plans, agenda, and expectations for your life? Is there something keeping you from holding your plans more loosely?
Practices
Dedicate a day or part of a day to spontaneous actions. Let go of detailed plans, and allow the day to unfold naturally, embracing the unknown. What do you learn?
The Wisdom Years 