Tracy Balzer - Thin Places: An Evangelical Journey Into Celtic Christianity

A wise person once said that the deepest need of the human heart is to love and be loved in return. As Christians, we believe that kind of love originates in the heart of God. He made the very first man and woman with the capacity to both love him and receive his love for them. Today we resonate with this reciprocal love, recognizing that it is what we need to live fully, deeply, sacrificially.

However, we no longer walk with God in Eden, enjoying easy conversation in the cool of the day. The distractions and preoccupations available to us in a fallen world draw us away from that kind of holy intimacy. We know intellectually that God is near, believing the promises of Scripture to be true: I am with you always, Jesus said (Matthew 28:20). But the experience of it sometimes eludes us.

This book is written in hopes that its readers will find new ways of fostering intimacy with Godnew ways that are not at all new, for they were practiced by Christians living in a distant time and a distant land.

In the year 563 A.D., 13 monks climbed in a small boat and sailed away from what is now Northern Ireland. They were in search of the ministry to which God had called them. Their leather boat landed on the shores of a tiny island in the western Hebrides of Scotland. This was Iona. Here they would found a new monastic community that would become one of the most influential centers of mission and learning of that time.

Today Iona stands as a symbolic testimony to the faith and work of these early Christian Celts. The ancient monastic dwellings no longer stand, but in their place is a magnificently restored Benedictine Abbey, formerly occupied by the members of a Benedictine monastery until the early 1200s when Viking raiders brutally forced its closure. The Iona Community, an ecumenical group of Christians, now provides daily worship services for residents and visitors to the island. Through the combination of breathtaking scenery, historic Christian sites, and a regular pattern of worship, Iona becomes a holy place.

I have had the pleasure of visiting Iona a number of times, and am writing even now from there where my husband, Cary, and I have spent the week together. It is not, however, a journey of convenience. We flew from the United States to Glasgow, Scotland; took a train across the picturesque Western Highlands to the seaside town of Oban; boarded a ferry to the island of Mull where we then rode a bus across the island; and boarded a final small ferry that deposited us on Iona's white shores.

Iona is an insignificant dot on the map, an island only three and a half miles long by one mile wide. There are no grand attractions here, no shopping malls or theaters. Only the island's residentsright around 100 peopleare allowed cars. Its population of sheep easily outnumbers the residents. Iona's landscape is rather stark with very few trees, and is surrounded by aquamarine water. Why do people from all over the world go to such effort to visit this remote place? Why do I?

Our journey through Celtic Christianity will provide the answer. The chapters that follow will begin with entries from my Iona journal, offering a personal glimpse into this sacred home of Celtic Christian history. They will help provide a context as we explore some of these helpful Celtic practices and attitudes. I hope that readers will gain a vicarious sense of the significance of this place for those faithful Christians who inhabited the island so long agobut even more so for us today. Visitors to Iona today are still captivated by the light, the colours of the rocks and stones, the wildness of the Atlantic waves and winds, the remoteness and perhaps most of all by a sense of the Spirit of God who has moved and inspired many generations of Christian people. I can personally attest to the truth of this statement.

Following each Iona journal entry will be an introduction to these Celtic spiritual disciplinestheir historical expression, as supported by various experts, and the practical ways these disciplines can be appropriated into our lives. Because they were clearly a people of poetic and regular prayer, each chapter will close with a distinctly Celtic blessing or invocation. Finally, each chapter of this book will include a Scripture passage intended to be used for meditation.

I pray you will be richly blessed as you embark on this journey, watching and learning from our ancient spiritual mothers and fathers in the British Isles. May you experience the nearness of God in new and transforming ways.

Deep peace of the Son of Peace,
Tracy Balzer
Isle of Iona, Scotland
April 2006

One night when I was a very little girl, my grandmother tucked me into bed, helped me say my prayers, and I became aware of God. Not just the truth about God, but the reality of God, the living presence of God. Grandma's Roman Catholic faith had taught her many formal recited prayers. But this prayer was the same rote prayer that lots of other kids my age were probably praying that night:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep,
If I should die before I wake,
I pray the Lord my soul to take.