Celtic Christianity And Nature

Anxiety about the natural world is high and with good reason.
Surprisingly, perhaps, the earliest days of Christianity in the
British Isles have something vital to teach us. In this episode
of The Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark
Vernon take a lead from a new book, The Naked Hermit: A Journey
Into the Heart of Celtic Britain, by Nick Mayhew-Smith. It makes
several arresting claims. For example, the early missionaries,
before the Synod of Whitby, engaged in a deep dialogue with the
indigenous druids and pagans of these islands to forge a new
engagement with the natural world under its Creator-God. They
realised that in dark caves, icy waters, mountaintops and sacred
groves, the divine could be found and that a lost paradise was
scarcely a touch away. So what has this Celtic vision of life in
all its fullness got to teach us today? Could Christianity regain
the sense that nature shares the yearning for God? Might this
ancient vision become a crucial resource for a time facing
environmental degradation and possible collapse?