Newell, J. Philip. _Celtic Prayers from Iona_ (New York: Paulist
Press, 1997). 94 pp. ISBN 0-8091-0488-1. $10.95
Reviewed by Julia Bolton Holloway, juliana@tin.it, Professor
Emerita, University of Colorado, Boulder

Originally published in Great Britain as _Each Day and Each Night_,
1994, this is not so much a scholarly study of Celtic Prayer as it
is a monastic Book of Hours for the ecumenical associates of the
Iona Community. It is based on the work of two pioneers. Alexander
Carmichael had collected the prayers of the people sung in Gaelic
into the _Carmina Gadelica_ in 1900. These are today again
available in print and are also on the Internet in both Gaelic and
in English translation:
http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaidhlig/corpus/Carmina. George MacLeod,
from his ministry in the slums of Glasgow, brought labourers to the
isle of Iona and together they rebuilt its ancient abbey. Philip
Newell in turn, when Iona Abbey's cowarden with his wife Ali, wove
from the work of both men this cycle of prayer.

The book is handsomely bound in green with gold lettering, and hand
calligraphed by Louise Donaldson, who only receives credit for her
work on the dustjacket. The book needed better editing. The
introductory and concluding essays repeat themselves unnecessarily
in their differently sized types. The prayers generally fail to
convey the riches of Alexander Carmichael's collection, except
those on pages 61 and 81. In a Book of Hours instructions apart
from prayers are traditionally in a different type or colour. Here
they are uniform and one finds oneself too often reading in a
spirit of prayer a following line that is actually an instruction,
which interrupts the contemplation rather than enhancing it. A
Lectionary is provided at the end of the book, enabling its reader
to use this Book of Hours also for the Lectio Divina.

Let me give a taste of the book.

Friday morning begins with Psalm 139.7, then this prayer from the
_Carmina Gadelica_:

I awake this morning
In the presence of the holy angels of God.
May heaven open wide before me
Above me and around me
That I may see the Christ of my love
And his sunlit company
In all the things of earth this day.

Saturday evening's Closing Prayer is this:

I lie down this night with God
And God will lie down with me.
I lie down this night with Christ
And Christ will lie down with me.
I lie down this night with the Spirit
And the Spirit will lie down with me.
The Three of my love will be lying down with me.
I shall not lie down with sin
Nor shall sin or sin's shadow lie down with me.
I lie down this night with God
And God will lie down with me.

What is in the book: The Iona Community's awareness of the need for
justice, J. Philip Newell speaking eloquently about the near loss
of these treasured poems and prayers, first with the religious
persecution of the Celtic traditions by both the Catholic and
Protestant officialdom, describing children beaten for singing
these prayers and the musical instruments which accompanied them
destroyed, then speaking of the devastation caused by the Highland
Clearance, where the wealthy had the poor crofters removed from the
land, causing them to emigrate to Canada, Australia, Glasgow and
lose their native culture. Alexander Carmichael collected their
oral tradition just before its near total loss. J. Philip Newell
speaks movingly of the ways in which these prayers combine Creator
and Creation, binding God into the centre of our daily work.
What is not in the book: The Scoti, the Scottish Highlanders and
Islanders speaking Gaelic, originally were from Ireland. Ireland,
along with Celtic Britain, had been Christianised very early,
before Italy. The Irish legends of St Patrick speak of his family
as having fled from Jerusalem at its sack by the Emperors Titus and
Vespasian, A.D. 70, and coming to Britain. They add that it is
fitting that the Apostle to the Irish be likewise a Jew as were all
the Apostles. St Patrick's Breastplate or Lorica, `I bind unto
myself this day the strong name of the Trinity', is a
Judaeo-Christianised form of the Phylactery Prayer, the Prayer of
the Good Name. Celtic Christianity, as can be seen in reading the
prayers in the _Carmina Gadelica_ and any Jewish prayer book, drink
deeply from the same source, calling upon the four Archangels,
Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael, placing one's spirit in the hands
of God at sleep and death, but the _Carmina_ adds to these the
Trinity, as well as the Unity, and Mary and Bride as well. They are
all about binding on the Name of God. When St Hilda's recalcitrant
student monk from Whitby, Bishop Wilfrid, went trudging off to Rome
to make the Anglo-Saxons subservient to the Pope, he drove
underground a vibrant and living form of Christianity with strong
roots in its Jewish past and rich contacts with Coptic
Christianity. While I see Celtic and Coptic Christianity as having
been part of an Internet that played around the peripheries of the
monolithic Roman and Greek Empire in rich, creative, freeing ways,
J. Philip Newell sees less the internationalism of this
Christianity as he does that of a lost national culture. Our
perspectives are different. But we agree on seeing the Christianity
of Rome as distorted by its centering in the capital of the Empire.
The other forms of Christianty, Greek, Coptic, Celtic, retain more
of their Jewish roots, than does the Roman form. Interestingly,
this is the year commemorating Pope Gregory's sending of Bishop
Augustine to Canterbury to Christianize the Anglo Saxons, while in
the north Celtic Iona was already founded, its purpose likewise
being to Christianize Britain, though from Ireland rather than from
Rome. The resulting tension is still being tragically fought out in
the streets of Belfast between the now Roman Catholic Irish and the
now Protestant Scotch-Irish brought back there by Cromwell from the
Highlands and Islands. It is a struggle about injustice and the
loss of identity, the loss of culture. Perhaps that could be
regained through learning the _Carmina_'s greeting of every foe and
stranger as Christ. Perhaps the answer is for Canterbury and Rome
to go to school to Hilda's Whitby, Colomba's Iona and Cyril's
Jerusalem.

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