All in all: Mary Wickham rsm

History waited the long centuries,
the present re-enacts annually the truth
that plays constantly in every atom:
the world longs,
the human heart yearns,
for what it already carries,
the promise that is already kept,
for the presence, the meaning and the blessing
of Emmanuel: God-with-us.
Advent has us waiting,
Christmas leads us to welcome:
to embrace, to invite, to shelter, and recognise
the Christ amongst, around and within.

In our anthropocentrism we are slow to understand that the whole of created matter in its way welcomes as well. The early Celtic Christians of the western isles of Scotland and of Ireland had an intuitive understanding of this. One of the great collections of ancient native oral prayers written down as they were entrusted to him by people who still prayed them in the 19th century by Alexander Carmichael, was drawn together as the Carmina Gadelica- Songs of the Gaels. It gives us insights into the spirit of these early Christians, so self-reliant, so imbued with the blessing of each moment, so attuned to the sacramentality of all. These were the people whose isolation ensured their faith had to be claimed and nurtured, often without the regular attendance of a priest. These were the people who developed the notion of the anamcara, the soul friend, companion to the rituals of birth and death...

Messages to: Mary Wickham rsm