Blue Eyed Ennis: St Brendan The Navigator

St Brendan The Navigator

It's a week of the feast of the Ascension and on Wednesday is the feast of one of my favourite saints, Saint BrendanThe Navigator, and so unsurprisingly a week where the theme of departures pervades many posts.

Dear God, may we take inspiration from the spirit of Saint Brendan
and the ancient monks as we navigate our way through this world of adventure,
to encounters strange and beautiful; with all its sea monsters,
playful dolphins and unexpected delights,
with the endless joys and sorrows to fashion our inquisitive
and restless pilgrims hearts.
May we learn to meet all the challenges given to us
and the companionship offered in encounters with discernment ,
faith, hope and love that we may find our way with your help
towards a safe and peaceful haven in your loving arms.

Above a short video of St Brendan with music and scenes from places in Ireland associated with St Brendan

Below a delightful animation of Brendan's life
related by children

St Brendan's Life story here

A couple of my previous posts with prayers of St Brendan:
Prayers From The Shore here and here

I used the prayer below at the start of Lent and it resonates now as The Ascension and Pentecost draw near.

Help me to journey beyond the familiar

and into the unknown.

Give me the faith to leave old ways

and break fresh ground with You.

Christ of the mysteries, I trust You

to be stronger than each storm within me.

I will trust in the darkness and know

that my times, even now, are in Your hand.

Tune my spirit to the music of heaven,

and somehow, make my obedience count for You.

The Prayer of St. Brendan

The Latin texts of Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis (The Voyage of St. Brendan the Abbot) dating back to at least 800 A.D. tell the story of Brendan’s (c. 489-583) seven year voyage across the Atlantic Ocean to a new land and his return.

Image source Google

Convinced that the legend was based in historical truth, in 1976 Tim Severin built a replica of Brendan’s currach.

Handcrafted using traditional tools, the 36-foot, two masted boat was built of Irish ash and oak, hand-lashed together with nearly two miles of leather thong, wrapped with 49 traditionally tanned ox hides, and sealed with wool grease.

Between May 1976 and June 1977, Severin and his crew sailed the Brendan 4,500 miles from Ireland to Peckford Island, Newfoundland, stopping at the Hebrides and Iceland en route.

He considered that his recreation of the voyage helped to identify the bases for many of the legendary elements of the story: the Island of Sheep, the “Paradise of Birds,” pillars of crystal, mountains that hurled rocks at voyagers, and the Promised Land. Severin’s account of the expedition, The Brendan Voyage, became an international best seller, translated into 16 languages.

Source

You can read more here about the route taken by Brendan and remarkably how myth fuses and fascinates with facts.

St Brendan is associated with a number of monastic sites close to the River Shannon and around the West Coast of Ireland.
He started monastic communities in Ardfert, and at Shanakeel or Baalynevinoorach, at the foot of Brandon Hill. This work took place over a period of almost 30 years. Brendan's many sea voyages brought him to Wales, Iona in Scotland as well as to France and other parts of mainland Europe.

Severin and his crew encountered similar dangers and experiences to those of Brendan.

Many times they encountered large numbers of curious and surprisingly friendly whales around their boat, but were never touched or in any way endangered by the great creatures.

Read more about this beautiful 14 cm wood cut of St Brendan and the sea monsters by Robert Gibbings here.

More than 100 medieval Latin manuscripts of this Voyage of Brendan still exist today with many pointers to the very real possibility that it was in fact Saint Brendan who discovered North America, some 900 years earlier than Columbus.

Below are two videos from a series of five of Tim Severin's Brendan Voyage. I couldn't locate the other three on You Tube but there is a DVD.

Part Two

Statue of St Brendan at Fenit Pier. Co. Kerry.

Read more here

PhotoGallery of St Brendan here

St Brendan by Michael Carroll

More Beautiful Celtic Art by Michael Carroll on St Brendan here

Mask of St Brendan here

"You are the veil that hides the paradise you seek."

- Saint Brendan

Cynthia Bourgeault uses an icon of St Brendan by artist Siri Beckman for their site The Contemplative Society.

Here she explains the meaning of their logo :

"St. Brendan belongs to that glorious period in the history of Ireland when the island in the first glow of its conversion to Christianity sent forth its earliest messengers of the Faith to the continent and to the regions of the sea.

Brendan's adventures that ensued were called the "Navigatio Brendani", the Voyage or Wandering of St. Brendan.

Stella Maris mosaic in Garmoyle Belfast, part of a large mosaic by artist Des Kinney, depicting the voyage of St Brendan the Navigator. A donation by Irish Life. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

According to legend, Brendan sailed in circles for seven years, until he learned that reaching the land promised to the Saints "... is reached not only in physical space, but simultaneously in inner space..." as the eye of the heart is opened to recognize the land. The promised land is at the convergence of inner and outer worlds.*

* from Chanting the Psalms, by Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault

Go HERE to read a blog posting by Cynthia describing the significance of St. Brendan to her personal spiritual journey where she says :

"Old men ought to be explorers,” T. S. Eliot wrote in his The Four Quartets

(I am assuming that “men” is in this case a gender-inclusive term).

He continues:

Here and there does not matter.
We must be still
And still moving, into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion…

Go here for a lovely prayer on St Brendan from Bonnie Thurstin

and this found poem Nocturne by Kathleen Raine fits well with Brendan's
" inner and outer voyage"

Music by Chopin

Night comes, an angel stands
Measuring out the time of stars,
Still are the winds, and still the hours.

It would be peace to lie
Still in the still hours at the angel's feet,
Upon a star hung in a starry sky,
But hearts another measure beat.

Each body, wingless as it lies,
Sends out its butterfly of night
With delicate wings, and jewelled eyes.

And some upon day's shores are cast,
And some in darkness lost
In waves beyond the world, where float
Somewhere the islands of the blest.

Source

No comments:

More from Seamus Heaney

“History says, Don't hope
On this side of the grave,
But then, once in a lifetime,
The longest-for tidal wave of justice can rise up
And hope and history rhyme.
So hope for a great sea change
On the far side of revenge
Believe in miracles....”

“The aim of poetry and the poet is finally to be of service, to ply the effort of the individual into the larger work of the community as a whole.” ―

“I can't think of a case where poems changed the world, but what they do is they change people's understanding of what's going on in the world.”

and five more......

On his inspiration: 'The completely solitary self: that's where poetry comes from, and it gets isolated by crisis”

On which animal he'd prefer to be: "I might enjoy being an albatross, being able to glide for days and daydream for hundreds of miles along the thermals. And then being able to hang like an affliction round some people's necks."

On fame: "The gift of writing is to be self-forgetful, to get a surge of inner life or inner supply or unexpected sense of empowerment, to be afloat, to be out of yourself. The prizes can’t help you at all.”

On becoming a poet: "My quest for precision and definition, while it may lead backward, is conducted in the living speech of a landscape and a language that I was born with. If you like, I began as a poet when my roots were crossed with my reading."

On authority "At home in Ireland, there's a habit of avoidance, an ironical attitude towards the authority figure. "

Easter Hope All Year Round

Celestial spirit that doth roll
The heart's sepulchral stone away,
Be this our resurrection day,
The singing Easter of the soul -
O gentle Master of the Wise,
Teach us to say: "I will arise." ~
Richard Le Gallienne

"The great gift of Easter is hope - Christian hope which makes us have that confidence in God, in his ultimate triumph, and in his goodness and love, which nothing can shake."
-- Basil C. Hume

Celtic Christianity may offer us a lifeline in the form of an approach to faith which is rooted in the imagination...[Celts] excelled at expressing their faith in symbols, metaphors and images, both visual and poetic.
They had the ability to invest the ordinary and commonplace with sacramental significance, to find glimpses of God’s glory throughout creation and to paint pictures in words, signs and music that acted as icons opening windows on heaven and pathways to eternity
Ian Bradley The Celtic Way

Favourite Quotes from Pope Francis

“Thanks to magnanimity, we can always look at the horizon from the position where we are. That means being able to do the little things of every day with a big heart open to God and to others. That means being able to appreciate the small things inside large horizons, those of the kingdom of God.

This offers parameters to assume a correct position for discernment, in order to hear the things of God from God’s ‘point of view.’ … However the risk in seeking and finding God in all things, then, is the willingness to explain too much, to say with human certainty and arrogance: ‘God is here.’ We will find only a god that fits our measure. The correct attitude is that of St. Augustine: seek God to find him, and find God to keep searching for God forever.”

-- Pope Francis

Carlo Caretto's Love Letter to His Church

How much I much criticise you my church and yet how much I love you !

You have made me suffer more than anyone and yet I owe you more than I owe anyone. I should like to see you destroyed and yet I need your presence.

You have given me much scandal and yet you alone have made me understand holiness. Never in the world have I seen anything more obscurantist, more compromised, more false, yet never have I touched anything more pure, more generous or more beautiful.

Countless times I have felt like slamming the door of my soul in your face – and yet, every night, I have prayed that I might die in your arms!

No, I cannot be free of you, for I am one with you, even if not completely you.
Then too – where should I go? To build another church?

But I cannot build another church without the same defects, for they are my own defects. And again, if I were to build another church, it would be my church, not Christ’s church. No, I am old enough. I know better!"

Did the Woman Say ?

Great Quotes

A blank piece of paper is God's way of telling us how hard it is to be God.

Sidney Sheldon

There are things you can’t reach. But
you can reach out to them, and all day long.
The wind, the bird flying away. The idea of God.
And it can keep you as busy as anything else, and happier.

Mary Oliver

“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person."

~Rumer Godden, A House with Four Rooms, 1989

“And

"
"You can get all A's and still flunk life."

"Lost in the mystery of finding myself alive."

Walker Percy

"The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom”

A tough life needs a tough language-and that's what poetry is. That's what literature offers- a language powerful enough to say how it is. It isn't a hiding place. It is a finding place.
Jeanette Winterson

There are two kinds of people: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, “All right, then, have it your way.”

- C.S. Lewis

The independent hearts of Celtic descendents everywhere still yearn for the solitary place, still rejoice in the goodness of creation, still see the Lord beside them as they walk, still see Him in the face of friend and stranger. The gospel light with its eastern fire still gleams. The truth still lingers in the heart.
Pat Robson – The Celtic Heart

People are itchy and lost and bored and quick to jump at any fix. Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help?

They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world."

-- James Hillman

Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government only when it deserves it.
--Mark Twain

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
--George Orwell

We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice: - we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself.

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
-- George Orwell

Never for the sake of peace and quiet deny your own experience or convictions.
--Dag Hammarskjöld

If you want to build a ship don't herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.
— Antoine de Saint-Exupery

For what are we, without hope in our hearts, that someday we'll drink from God's blessed waters?"
-Bruce Springsteen

"Sometimes grace works like waterwings when you feel you are sinking."
-Anne Lamott

"A prayer may be a wordless inner longing, a sudden outpouring of love, a yearning within the soul to be for a moment united within the infinite and the good, a humbleness that needs no abasement or speech to express it, a cry in the darkness for help when all seems lost, a song, a poem, a kind deed, a reaching for beauty, or the strong, quiet inner reaffirmation of faith. A prayer in fact can be anything that is created by God that turns to God."

Paul Gallico

"God does not die when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illuminated by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjold

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand the data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world.”

― Paul Hawken

The greatest religious challenge of our age is to hold together social action and spiritual disciplines. This is not just a theological necessity, dictated by the need to integrate all of life around the reality of the living God. It is a matter of sheer survival. The evils we confront are so massive, so inhuman, so impervious to appeals and dead to compassion, that those who struggle against them face the real possibility of being overwhelmed by them.”

~ Theologian Walter Wink

One day you will ask me which is more important? My life or yours?
I will say mine and you will walk away not knowing that you are my life.

~ Khalil Gibran

Blue Eyed Ennis

St Brendan The Navigator

No comments:

Disclaimer for Links

Disclaimer