Sleeping in thin places

“Aren’t you ever afraid of sleep?” my little sister asked once. “Anyone could break in and you wouldn’t know.”

She’s right. There’s a surrender in becoming insensible to the world around you. Sleep scares us because it’s a dress rehearsal for death. “Lazarus is sleeping,” Jesus tells his disciples. “Lazarus is dead.”

Death is the ultimate threshold that we cross, but the reality is that our everyday life is made up of thresholds: decisions, breakups, loss of friendship, illness, transitioning from being a child to an adult, and, of course, the end of every day. John O’Donohue, a contemporary Irish theologian, reminds us that the Celtic tradition held blessings to mark each transition. We live in a time of “ritual poverty”, he says. “While we seem to have progressed to become experts in so many things. . . we have unlearned the grace of presence and belonging.”

New popularity

Celtic Christianity came from a rural people who were on the move. The Celts lived in Galatia – modern Turkey – in Biblical times. The Greeks and Romans called them “Keltoi” – strangers, hidden ones. All of Britain and Ireland was culturally Celtic before the Anglo-Saxons invaded. They had no city centres to accommodate the politics of the Roman church. Bishops reported back to the Catholic church but on the ground, bishops had less authority than abbots.

St. Patrick came to Ireland in 432 and established a monastic model of evangelization. Ireland, which never came under the Roman Empire, nurtured Celtic spirituality. When Rome withdrew from Britain the Anglo-Saxons invaded in 450 and almost eradicated Christianity. But it survived on the fringes, in the fortified highlands and in Ireland, which turned into a missionary hub. Columba left Ireland in 560 for Iona. From Iona, another monk, Aidan went to Lidisfarne to 635 and from there missionaries went out to France, Italy and beyond.

Perhaps it makes sense that, as Western culture moves to decentralize authority and religion, Celtic Christianity is gaining in popularity. The Northumbria community makes another guess on its website: the Celtic saints “had a strong sense of place and knew the importance of the Land, of roots and identity. They spoke of thin places, holy ground. Many of the problem spots in our world are all about land, roots, identity, holy places. In a world of pending ecological disasters . . . little wonder Celtic spirituality appeals.”

Thanks to Anglican theologians like N.T. Wright, Protestants are reminded that one day, the entire earth will be a thin place where God’s space and man’s space overlap. We have new language to understand the deep longing in Celtic prayers. Sleep may be a taste of death. But waking is just as much a taste of resurrection – not only for us but for the places we inhabit.

Deep rest

In the cement belly of downtown Chicago I first encountered an anti-rest Christianity. “If you want to succeed,” one of my professors told the class, “you won’t sleep.” Ministry was cast as an incessant stream of activity. “If you think this is hard,” professors would say, “wait till you get to the real world.” A classmate invited me to join her in an underground liturgy. In our technically non-denominational but truthfully Baptist school, she whispered that she was once Catholic. We met at night and every morning to pray Celtic prayers from the Northumbrian community and, over time, those words shaped a theology of sleep for me.

Complines – the prayers monks would say each night before sleep – are a preparation of the heart to surrender into the hands of God, trusting his protection. There’s a specific compline for each night of the week. In the Northumbrian community, Monday is Aidan’s prayer: “Into Your hands I commit my spirit; I give it to You with all the love of my heart.”

One of my most beloved complines is Ebba’s, on Thursday. The prayer is taken from a blessing over the dead: “Sleep, O sleep in the calm of each calm. Sleep, O sleep in the guidance of all guidance. Sleep, O sleep in the love of all loves.”

Community

St. Patrick’s “Breastplate prayer” has regained popularity, incorporated into songs by Irish songwriters Keith and Kristyn Getty (minus the parts that pray against witchcraft). It begins: “I arise today, through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity, through belief in the Threeness, through confession of the Oneness of the Creator of creation.”

It’s foreign for many Protestant Christians today, this concept that the ultimate strength we have in our faith is a confession of the Three-in-One God. But in such a divisive time, it’s a theology that is regaining traction. An early Northumbrian writing reads, “God is Father, Son and Spirit. Therefore God is Three in One. Therefore God is Community. If we are made in the image of God, Then we will find our fulfilment in Community.”

Every night that we shared a room, my little sister and I would mark the cross over each other and say the words that end every Northumbrian compline: “the peace of all peace is yours tonight, in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.” What better way to face your mortality then in the presence of a community of love?