Seamus Heaney would have turned 85 last month. I was fortunate to enjoy many interactions with him over the years. He was confused when I described him as a rowboat. He explained that it meant looking back while moving forward. After thinking for a moment, he smiled and nodded in agreement.
Then he surprised me by telling me that he lived like a monk in many ways. In his work as a poet, he describes himself as a “religious contemplative who bows at his desk like a monk bowing his head, and pivots on his own understanding in an attempt to bear some of the weight of the world.” “I knew that I had no ability whatsoever.” There are heroic virtues and redemptive effects, but they are constrained by obedience to the rules of repetition of effort and posture. ”
One monk in particular was fascinated by him, as evidenced in his famous poem “Saint Kevin and the Blackbird.” The poem is based on the time St. Kevin is said to have been kneeling with his arms outstretched in the shape of a cross at Glendalough, a monastery not far from where Heaney himself once lived in Co Wicklow. There is. He described this place to me as “to this day one of the most wooded and watered resorts in all this country.”
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As Kevin knelt in prayer, a blackbird, mistaking his outstretched hand for some sort of roost, jumped down, laid an egg in it, and began building a nest as if it were a tree branch. And out of his great compassion and faith in loving the lives of all meek and tall creatures, Kevin stood motionless for hours, days, nights, and weeks until the eggs hatched and the chicks took flight. I held out my hand until it grew.
Heaney explained to me that it is “a subversive, an intersection of natural processes and glimpsed ideals, one that is at once a signpost and a reminder, yet true to reality.” He did. He said that in that moment, Kevin “connected to the network of eternal life.”
Early Irish Christian literature is full of words that celebrate the fact that God and nature are inextricably intertwined. For example, “Brendan’s Voyage” tells the story of Saint Brendan’s adventures in search of the promised land of the saints, and contains a strong message of environmental education: the need to care for the earth and the sea.
Heaney valued the traditional Christian doctrine of a transcendent God, a God who watches over us from afar. Celtic monks particularly emphasized God’s immanence, His closeness to us, and His involvement with nature and the earth, the vital presence of the world that breathes life into all living things. Did. Mr. Heaney was intrigued by the fact that in Celtic times it was believed that the source of all wells was his one great well deep within the center of the earth. These were sacred places protected by female guardian spirits. In this tradition, the rainbow was understood as a love letter from God. He appreciated the idea that the earth is the footstool of God’s presence.
The unique V-shaped flight pattern of geese would have also appealed to the Celts. Each would have flown in the slipstream of the bird in front of them.
Celtic Christians adhered to a tradition of natural sanctity that subsumed pre-Christian Irish traditions. The Irish contemporary Pelagius of St. Patrick’s Church argued that nature is incorruptible, and later Duns Scotus Eriugena argued that just as God is present in all things, so too is the living body of Christ in the world. It is argued that it exists inside. One of the distinctive elements of the Celtic tradition is that the goose was the symbol of the Holy Spirit, whereas throughout the Christian tradition the dove was the symbol of the Holy Spirit. His unique V-shaped flight pattern of geese was also appealing to the Celts. Each would have flown in the wake of the bird in front. They swap positions mid-flight, taking turns as leader and support. Heaney saw this as a powerful metaphor for a supportive, nurturing, and egalitarian community. While much of modern society talks about the importance of the individual, the Celts were drawn to symbols of sustainable community, such as geese flying home.
As the environmental crisis accelerates, I think of Heaney often. In his poem about Saint Kevin, he points to an ecological spirituality that is fiercely kind to the earth. It is as if he is speaking with the voice of the earth and, in Yeats’s words, calling on us all to tread gently on the earth, for we are treading on the dream of the earth.
john scully Lectures in Theology at Trinity College, Dublin
