Book Review: The Ancient Way: Discoveries on the Path of Celtic Christianity
My friend River wrote The Ancient Way: Discoveries On the Path of Celtic Christianity, but even if I didn’t know the author, I would have fallen in love with the book. But we are friends, albeit long-distance ones who these days keep up on Instagram. Still, I’ve always admired her writing. She’s written fiction and non-fiction, such as Confessions of a Christian Mystic, and I even got to blurb one of her books once. The thing I like best about River’s body of work is the deep vein of spirituality that runs through it. Spiritually, she is what I aspire to be but most often fall short trying.
The Ancient Way is a story about a pilgrimage. Through a variety of means—books, chance comments, other synchronicities, River decided that she must, absolutely must, visit the island of Iona. She wanted to go there to explore Iona Abbey and Celtic Christianity, which had taken hold of her imagination through the writing of John O’Donohue. First, she decides she will go to Ireland, find him and marry him. But upon learning that he is dead, she realizes that Iona will be a more practical destination: “I was searching for what Celtic Christians and others call a ‘thin place,’ a link between two different worlds. And I believed ‘Iona’ was its name.”
Iona turns out to be anything but practical to get to. In the way of so many quests, obstacles galore rear their heads as River and her friend attempt to make their pilgrimage. And the actual visit to Iona is relatively brief. As with so many pilgrimages, the journey is the destination. To me, the time spent on Iona was the least important part of the book.
What I gleaned from this book was an incantation to faith and belief through all obstacles. One finds this through an unwavering devotion to God—but not in a creepy, icky, conformist way. Near the start of the book, River writes about what she hopes to find on Iona.
“…I imagined I might even discover the secret of how to integrate the very presence of God into my life, to be enriched with power, passion, and purpose. It felt as if, though this connection, I would even be able to tap into the same source that gave us galaxies. To carry that light within me and keep it shining. To abide in that time that is outside the realm of humanity but easily within the grasp of God.”
Did I mention I loved this book? I loved this book and writing like that is part of the reason. In a life season when I’m starting and ditching books impatiently and repeatedly, I looked forward to reading The Ancient Way every night. The writing is fantastic, and who doesn’t love a good adventure story? I loved passages like the one just cited, or this, from the end:
“What I found was an ancient faith that led me back again to Christ as its heartbeat and its center. I learned from all of it. It was the absolute integration of life and all things, all seasons, all beings; of the Creator and the created.
“What I discovered was that the Celtic way was indeed every step a prayer. Not a prayer of need or desperation but a step and a prayer of exultation, of living, of walking out life with an awareness that all is holy.”
A prayer of exultation. An awareness that all is holy. Are these not exactly what we need right now? I believe so.
More:
Here’s a great conversation I found between John O’Donohue and Krista Tippett:
Here are River’s books with links to both Bookshop (support independent bookstores!) when available and Amazon. (These are affiliate links. If you buy through them, I get a small royalty.)
Praying for Strangers: An Adventure of the Human SpiritAmazonBookshop. https://bookshop.org/a/10494/9781506460451
Confessions of a Christian MysticAmazonBookshophttps://bookshop.org/a/10494/9781546035688
Saints in LimboAmazon