Recently, Steve spoke with John Philip Newell, a Celtic teacher and author. Born in Canada, he and his wife now live in Scotland. He has written over fifteen books, including his most recent: The Great Search (2024). He has been described as having “the heart of a Celtic bard and the mind of a Celtic scholar.”
I think usually we seek spirituality in a very inner way, very personal one-on-one. What is the balance between seeking spirituality individually or having community somehow to do that together?
I think it is really important to expand it beyond an individual’s discipline or practice. And part of this, of course, relates to the profound interrelatedness of life.
But this emphasis on interrelatedness, of course, is coming to us now through every great discipline of thought inviting us to know our interconnectedness with earth. Inviting us to know that what we do to a part, we do to the whole, that the wellbeing of the part can only happen in relation to serving the wellbeing of the whole.
Because you speak much of the earth in this search, it, it seems pretty logical and obvious that if I pollute the earth around me, I may reap physical bad effects. But you take that further into a spiritual connection. And I wonder if you talk about how the earth itself is connected to our spirituality.
I think it is a sort of primal awareness, and we find great native traditions have known this profoundly before being dominated or conquered by Western culture. So that, I think it is a matter of relearning or awakening again to what our soul knows and that is, that we are better when we’re in a true relationship with Earth.
I’m curious if you could share a moment or two where you felt that connection, whether a situation or a thought you were having, a place you were, whatever might have facilitated that.
There are particular places that have been significant for me. For many years I’ve described the Isle of Iona in the Western Isles as the home of my heart, or the place where I experience a very deep connection with the spiritual. Within myself, within others, within Earth.
I much more immediately am aware of the spiritual, at the heart of all things. And very importantly, not to clinging to a place like Iona or not to feel that I can only access the spiritual there, but rather receive the grace of Iona and the grace of such experiences to make me attentive to the presence of the sacred wherever I am and whatever encounter I’m involved in.
I really appreciated in your book The Great Search, that you draw from so many sources of wisdom, and you’ve structured it according to three questions. The first one is what are we seeking? Then, why are we searching? And how are we to search? What are we seeking? Is it the same thing for all of us?
I think that there is a growing yearning to be in true relationship with Earth. So, what we are searching for is very much looking for true relationships and a true sense of interrelationship with Earth. And that sort of vision of the sacred in all things is a characteristic of the great search today. By the great search, I am in part referring to the yearnings that are deep within many who have become disenchanted with their own religious traditions.
So, in the case of Christianity, I would say millions of our brothers and sisters who began life within the four walls of our religious inheritance are no longer there. So, we need to ask why. And I think it’s important to ask what are we yearning for?
Paying attention to things like the desire to experience sacred or divine presence, not just in religious moments, but in every moment of our lives and in, in every encounter. These are yearnings that are very close to the heart of many of us who have left the four walls of our religious traditions. And that’s not to say that these yearnings are not also in many who remain within the four walls and are trying to be faithful to their inheritance.
Your third question, how are we to search? I think that is, of course, very human, very universal, that there’s something more. Talk to me about ways we can search that will be efficacious.
Part of the great search for wisdom and the great yearning for wisdom is to re-access what, in Hebrew scripture, is spoken of as the wisdom that was born within us in our mother’s womb. So, it is not about accessing an exterior wisdom. It’s learning to access this wisdom of soul, the desires. It is about waking up to a type of wisdom of soul that is deep within us. It’s not about invoking a separate wisdom. It’s about delving deep into a way of knowing, a way of seeing that was fashioned in us, in our mother’s womb.
That sounds almost like being led to something and then recognizing it.
Yes, that’s right. I had a lovely experience years ago around the time that I had written one of my first books, which is called Listening for the Heartbeat of God. It’s derived from a very cherished image in the Celtic world, that John the Beloved who is described in scripture as having leaned against Jesus at the Last Supper, that he therefore heard the heartbeat of God. It became a symbol of the practice of listening for the beat of the sacred deep within ourselves, listening for the beat of the sacred within one another and within the body of earth.
So those were some of the themes that I was exploring in the book and particularly looking at the way in which the Celtic tradition knows that when we look into the face of a newborn child we’re looking into the face of God freshly born among us. So, I was giving a talk on some of these themes in Virginia. A woman, I think in her eighties came very purposefully up the central aisle of the church with a copy of Listening for the Heartbeat of God in her hand. And she was walking up the aisle so purposefully that the naughty boy in me thought she’s gonna hit me over the head with that book. But I was quite wrong. When she got up to me and she said, “I want to show you what I wrote in this book after reading it.” And she opened the cover and inside she had written, I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. I often wish I had asked her for that copy.
Because she has said so simply, so succinctly what our experience is when we hear wisdom that has been neglected. We may never have been taught it. We may never have heard it, but when we do finally hear it, our deep response is, ah I knew it. And paying attention to that deep knowing is an important part of the way forward.
And I think one of the things I explore a bit in the book is these different faculties of knowing in us because often we’ve thought that the mind and the realm of reason is the only. Faculty for accessing wisdom and truth. But the realm of intuition and instinct, the realm of the imagination; these are all faculties of knowing. And it’s important to be alive to those ways of knowing those ways of perceiving.
I like that you include with all of our searching, you said, as Jesus said, seek and you will find. So, there is hope in this search that we can connect with what we yearn for or what we may already know. I wonder if I could ask, what is divine presence to you? And I’m guessing that’s something different than it was 20, 30 years ago.
That’s a great question. I draw from different teachers in this book, and they come from different centuries, different parts of the world, different religious traditions. There’s something that also unites these prophetic voices from many different centuries, from many religious traditions. In their wonderfully varied ways, they are all saying God is love. And those who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. That particular wording, of course, comes through our Christian scripture. But we find something very similar in all the great spiritual traditions.
So, I would say that divine presence is characterized first and foremost by a presence of love. I’m not just meaning romantic love. I’m certainly including that. But I’m talking about the love that we know as brothers and sisters, the love that we can experience with other life forms.
The love that manifests itself in terms of movements for justice and movements for real change, in society, but also in our relationship with Earth. Divine presence for me is most characterized by love. And of course, sometimes that sort of divine presence of love is experienced primarily as a challenging presence or a demanding presence.
Like a call to respond or to act?
Yeah, that’s right. I think that a presence of love does not tolerate the ego centricity whether at an individual level or whether that be at a national level or a species level. I think a presence of love is calling us to be and to care for one another’s wellbeing. And this is a principle again that we find in all the great spiritual traditions, the golden rule of do to others as you would wish them to do to you. That again comes under the sort of umbrella of divine presence being presence of love.
In my own tradition, you’re making me think of the list of the fruits of the spirit of peace, joy, and love. But in that particular verse, I’d never connected that with the call to thus act differently. That can move us to act in the interest of the earth itself, our home or our brothers and sisters. That’s beautifully stated. John Philip Newell, what a pleasure to speak with you. Is there something I should ask you that I don’t know to ask?
I suppose one of the things I would want to say about this new book is that it is talking about the big story that we’re living in a moment of immense transition as all systems of authority and religious belief are collapsing. What are we searching for, what are we yearning for? And that’s important to me, and that’s primarily what the book is about. I also always am looking for an integration between the big story and the little story. And by the little story, I mean my own story and my own journey. I speak about this a bit in the book. It was one of the important things I want people to know about the book. It’s not a book about me, but I want my readers to know that I’m experiencing this search and in my own life.
This transcript has been edited for clarity and length. Listen to the full interview at https://www.byuradio.org/episode_288.
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Steven Kapp Perry, host of the In Good Faith podcast, talks with believers of all walks of faith. This podcast aims to highlight the personal experiences of believers, collecting stories of hope and inspiration.
Art from the Book of Durrow (c. 700).
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