Skellig Michael up close

About a month ago I blogged about Skellig Michael. After I saw this documentary, I knew I wanted to share it with you. It's in two parts. Part One is here. And Part Two is here.

This is absolutely as close as you can get without being there. I love that they didn't overrun the video with loud music or too much narration. You can hear the birds (tons of them) and the sound of the sea. Fantastic! For someone like me who's too chicken to climb like the man in the video, seeing it through someone else's eyes is just fine. I'd love to hear what you think.

The Life of the Early Celtic Christians

©Cindy Thomson

It is important to look to the past with clear eyes not clouded with the romantic outlook so prevalent in modern society’s love affair with all things Celtic.

The early Celtic Christians had a harsh life, even those who did not choose it as the Skellig monks had. The world they lived in was wrought with wild animals, dangerous bogs that could swallow a traveler with one misstep, warfare and raids that could prove to be economically devastating if not deadly.

When these people spoke and wrote about hope and joy in their spiritual world, I listen. They do not exaggerate. They did not have time for idealistic nonsense. They faced hardships I might never know in my life, and they embraced a relationship with God that was not dependent on the institutional church, a concept that at first look might seem extraordinary to us today.

Edmund Burke, an 18th century Irishman, once said, “People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.”

What is remarkable about these early Celtic Christians, besides their devotion and self-sacrifice, is the way they lived out their faith, shared it with others, saw God in creation and in other people. Thomas Cahill, author of How the Irish Saved Civilization, and others like him, told the world that it was the Irish who spread their faith without bloodshed. They were so successful that that fact alone deems them worthy of study.

Like Burke said, we can learn how to move forward by first looking back. The lessons await, footsteps left by ancient Celts in manuscripts and in oral tales. How exactly did these people reach to the spiritual core of their own being in a way that so greatly affected others? That's a question I seek to answer, or at least explore, every time I write about them.

Skellig Michael

photo creative commons by chb1848

In ages past a monk sat on a lonely stone precipice with a view of the turbulent northern waters of the Atlantic Ocean. The mainland, though only a mere eight miles away, was at most times unreachable due to poor weather conditions, and so he is isolated. He pulls his cowl tight around his head against the beating wind. Puffins and seabirds are his only companions, although he does not live on the island alone. His brothers are below him eking out a few vegetables from the bits of soil they created by hauling mounds of seaweed up the rocky slope.

Physical labor awaits him later; it is now his task to pray. The monks do not speak or socialize. Companionship is not the reason they came to this place. They work and they pray. They subsist on whatever God provides. They sacrifice their bodies to the harsh conditions, living in stone beehive huts that keep nature’s fury at bay just enough so that they might survive.

This scene was repeated by many generations of Celtic monks who came to Skellig Michael, a rocky island off the western coast of Ireland, between the 6th and 12th centuries.

photo via creative commons by Thomas Dimson

Today their stone huts still survive, as do the six hundred rock steps leading up from the landing point. The monks who lived there cloistered themselves voluntarily as a green martyrdom, meaning they sacrificed everything to embark on a journey that would lead them closer to the God they knew, the Creator of heaven and earth. They followed the example of the monks in ancient Egypt and Syria who chose the desert for their ascetic lifestyle. Ireland had no desert, but truly no place was lonelier than Skellig Michael, a place where one must truly put himself in God’s care.