The World as Theophancy
A Celtic Vision for Chrisitan Ecology
William R. L. Haley
October 1, 1997
The Western world is afflicted by the disease of compartmentalization in which the realm of God and the realm of the everyday real are too often separated. The premedieval Celts suffered from no such dichotomy. For them, every atom was infused with the presence of God. Each drop of rain, each blade of grass, each grain of wheat, each chip of stone, everything from the minute to the grand was theophany. The Celtic Christian felt the presence of God intensely, and was a "God-intoxicated person whose life was embraced on all sides by the Divine Being." Ian Bradley, in his book, The Celtic Way, goes on to say that "the whole stress of Celtic Christianity was the immanence of God." How different from today's Christian faith where our stress on God's transcendence often leads us to forget his very real presence around us in each moment and every detail! St. Patrick's Breastplate gives us a glimpse of this awareness of God [see page 22].
This understanding wrought from attention to the Lord's very present presence springs to us, as it did to the Celts, from the pages of Scripture, from the poets ("You know when I sit down and rise up," Psalm 139:1ff) to the prophets ("Do not fear, for I am with you," Isaiah 41:10) to Paul ("From him and through him and to him are all things," Romans 11:36). We learn from the prayers of the Celts that each aspect of life—from the mundane events of waking up, kindling a fire, washing the dishes, going to work, walking home, and going to bed to the glories of birth, marriage, and death—was an occasion to recognize the company of God.
"The Celtic way of seeing the world is infused with the sense of the all-pervading presence of God, that this is God's world, a world to be claimed, affirmed, ...
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