One Foot in Eden: A Celtic View of the Stages of Life

I'm still reading Children Matter but I got side-tracked again when we were traveling this weekend. I picked up a couple of small books on Celtic Christianity. One is called One Foot in Eden: A Celtic View of the Stages of Life by J. Philip Newell (c. 100 pages) There are some interesting thoughts about children in these pages.

"...The early British Church was not prepared to say that a newborn child was at heart sinful. Its conviction was rather that of the Genesis account, accentuating the goodness of all that has been created. Similarly it shared the vision of St. John who in the prologue to his Gospel writes of all things as having come into being through the Word. We, including our bodies and the whole of creation are seen in essence as utterances of God..." (One Foot in Eden p. 16)

"...In the innocence of a child we see most clearly the beauty of the image in which we have been made." ( p. 22) These are out of context. He qualifies his thinking acknowledging sin and evil but he continually addresses how we see. Do I look at an infant and see a small life created in the image of God or do I see fallen man and sin? Both have basis in the scriptures. What does God see? The Celtic focus was on our being made in the image of God not on our inherent sinfulness yet they didn't deny the realities of sin and evil. Their focus was on the words of Genesis - God called all that He created "good". How we see and focus affect our attitudes, understandings, and actions. What was Jesus perspective as God walking among men? How did He teach us to see?

In chapter 2, Newell asks if childlike innocence is meant to be left behind when we pass through adulthood if God says, "of such is the kingdom of heaven..."

In chapter 3, he speaks of "adolescence and awakening" - not just to hormonal changes but other hopes, urges, expectations and yearnings as well - like a violent explosion or maybe like childbirth. Redefining adolescence when kids become teenagers as "awakening" - if we thought about all the ways that they're awakening from childhood into adulthood, their quest for depth, truth, purpose, identity, intimate relationships, and independence perhaps that re-definition would change the way we love them and lead them and guide them.

Chapter 4 -Early Adulthood and Passion - (not just sexual passion) Early adulthood is laced with passion of all kinds.

Chapter 5 - Middle Years and Commitment - the power of love.

Chapter 6 - Old Age and Wisdom - wisdom "a way of seeing or understanding that grows out of experience." (page 71) "According to the wisdom tradition, wisdom was born with us in the womb. . .created as we are in the image of the One who is Wisdom. The grace of wisdom stirs within us at the different stages of life." (page 71-71) "Wise men and women see beyond the busyness of our age and more deeply than the idolizing of appearances and possessions. They see these things as vanishing like a shadow..." (page 77-78)

Chapter 7 - Death as Return - He says, "Death is like a womb that opens into the other dimension, expansive and unbounded. While it is strange and frightening it is also, as the Irish Carmelite priest Noel O' Donoghue says, the journey towards a 'freshness of dawn'. He continues, "If all that is seen, as the writer to the Hebrews says has come forth from what cannot be seen, then death is the return of all that is visible into the invisible realm of God." (page 83)

No more quotes. I don't want to give it away. It's a very short book but a rich and interesting read. It will send you back to scripture and cause you to ask questions about how you see.