being a quick jot about the niceties of a day spent in the woods, Muir taps into something essential about humanity’s makeup. It is not surprising, nor is it anything new to suggest that time spent in nature contains massive benefits in lowering our stress levels and improving one’s over all health. Listening to wind running through the trees and feeling it brush past your skin or watching the effects of light playing through a canopy of aspen leaves while inhaling oxygen free of exhaust is something that we all long for - both young and old. But even more - as the ancient Hebrew poet(s) who wrote the creation accounts of Genesis understood - we share a connection with the basic elements that form all of creation. OUR STORY, ANTECEDENT TO THE fall, relates God fashioning humanity from the substance of creation itself before
that time spent in nature somehow brings us home? What exactly is “home”? What does it suggest pertaining to where we come from and where we are ultimately going? What is Muir getting at, and how does it run parallel to the assertions of early Celtic Christianity? TO THIS WE TURN TO HISTORY. THE Celtic mission movement, started by St. Patrick, began on the isolated isle of Ireland on the outskirts of the crumbling Roman Empire in the early 5th century, far removed and sheltered from the chaos and violence spreading across the continent of western Europe. Against the pleas of his friends and family, Patrick pursued what he believed was his calling and returned to the people who had once kidnapped and enslaved him, setting to work imparting a New Story throughout the rough and barbaric Gaelic,
“OUR STORY, ANTECEDENT TO THE FALL, RELATES GOD FASHIONING HUMANITY FROM THE SUBSTANCE OF CREATION ITSELF BEFORE GENERATING LIFE WITHIN THE NEWLY FORMED VESSEL BY BREATHING INTO ITS NOSTRILS. THAT THE IMAGERY USED HERE IS EARTHY IS JUST A BIT OF AN UNDERSTATEMENT, AND IT STARTS A CONVERSATION ABOUT HOW NATURE HAS SOMETHING TO TEACH US BOTH ABOUT GOD AND ABOUT OURSELVES." generating life within the newly formed vessel by breathing into its nostrils. That the imagery used here is earthy is just a bit of an understatement, and it starts a conversation about how nature has something to teach us both about God and about ourselves. But still, how does this suggest as Muir does,
pagan countryside. The story, however, wasn’t just new for the Irish, though. It was new - or perhaps renewed - for the collapsing Roman world as well. HISTORIAN THOMAS CAHILL WRITES, “Patrick’s gift to the Irish was his
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