The common cold. It sounds so simple. Somebody tells you she has a cold. "Oh," you say, "bummer," and go on with whatever you were talking about. For the other person, though, the party of the second part, the one with the cold, the cold is everything. It fills her emotional, intellectual and proprioceptive universes -- these fields still awaiting unification by some metaphysical Einstein -- until nothing else exists. The "common cold" is to the human condition what nihilism is to the history of European philosophy. That is to say, colds suck.
Now I'm the one with the cold. I tried to post something here last night. But I couldn't think. I went through four boxes of Kleenex trying to think. It didn't help. It also didn't help that what I was trying to think about is a little complicated, even for someone without a cold. I was trying to think about why every time I turn around lately there's something "Celtic" in my field of view. Celtic books, Celtic music, Celtic chicken recipes. When did this happen? Why? I do this thing I call "reading bookstores" -- the definition of which I'll spare you for the moment -- and when some meme shows up this big, this seismically significant, all my alarms go off at once. Cold or no cold.
I pride myself on this sensitivity to cultural change. Thus, it is humbling -- and not in the good way -- to learn that these Celtic revivals have been happening sporadically for about fifteen hundred years. So much for getting the scoop. I learned this by searching HighBeam for a book by Ian Bradley titled Celtic Christianity: Making Myths and Chasing Dreams.
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking I just sneaked in that plug for HighBeam Research because... well, you know, I'm a paid shill for the company. Actually, that's true...
...but that not the real reason. The real reason is that Amazon lists only one copy of the book (used) for a whopping $190.35, and the page gives no other information. Zero, zip, nada. The following review was therefore much more helpful, if a bit ego-deflating with respect to that brilliant scoop I missed by roughly an eon...
A quick glance over the shelves of any music shop or bookstore -- religious or general -- gives ample evidence of the popular love affair with things Celtic, a fascination that shows few signs of subsiding. This enthusiasm for Celtic lore is not a unique phenomenon, says Ian Bradley, the Senior Lecturer in Practical Theology at the University of St. Andrews. Rather, it is only the most recent incarnation of a fascination that has resurfaced repeatedly over the last millennium and a half.
from:
Celtic Christianity: Making Myths and Chasing Dreams
by Garry J. Crites, Duke University
source: Church History, 1 June 2001
via: 
HighBeam Research
Copyright © 2001 American Society of Church History
Before finding that, I'd been asking myself for some time what was up with this recent wave of Celtic revivalism. Late last night, coughing and wheezing, I ran the following Google searches just for you. Because I knew you couldn't wait for the next installment here. Yeah, well, anyway, the results surprised even me...
|
number of hits
|
word
|
| 13,200,000 |
Celtic |
| 7,330,000 |
Nordic |
| 5,650,000 |
Baltic |
| 1,620,000 |
Slavic |
| 1,030,000 |
Germanic |
These stats are especially interesting in that "Celtic" is the only adjective of the five that does not refer to a living community. Unless, that is, you believe that the New Age wingheads who throw this term around are direct descendants of Druid priests and Phantasmagoric Phaeries. Another clip from the above-referenced book...
The current revival, as previous ones, has a decidedly popular strain as well. Bradley notes that the lure of Celtic spirituality has claimed diverse and often conflicting groups -- among them evangelicals, charismatics, feminists, New Age advocates, and environmentalists. While Bradley himself has urged people to "follow the Celtic way" in previous works and while he acknowledges the influence that Celtic tradition has had on the contemporary church, especially in liturgy and in the establishment of communities modeled after early Celtic monasteries, in the present volume he laments that the current popular fascination with things Celtic has led to a "process of dumbing down and trivialisation as the current revival becomes ever more commercially exploited."
To be continued. Stay tuned...
Living more on the net than in Colorado (as I do), of course I get my news of local events from the UK...
