From Volume 8, Number 4, Spring 2002

The Story of the St. Aidan Trust: Vision

Most of the questions we get about this ministry are "what" sort of questions: What do we do? What do we believe? What resources do we have? The one question we're rarely asked is "Why?" That's a bit of a shame, because without knowing why, the point of most of the "what" questions is missed. In order to talk about why we exist I need to give some background.

From a practical perspective, we do this ministry because we were invited to carry it to the new world at the British symposium in 1994 that launched the St. Aidan Trust in the UK (now the Community of Aidan and Hilda). Yet before we received this invitation there was a more powerful why that drew us to Britain in a cold and windy March to attend the symposium.

We could also say that the reason why we do this is that we believed we were led by God to do so. Certainly, it felt like that when we received the invitation. Nothing in the past eight years has changed that impression. We=re still not terribly sure what God is up to in all this, but we are sure that God is up to something in this work.

The key to why the St. Aidan Trust - USA exists is found in the titles of two books, Every Earthly Blessing by Esther de Waal and The Soul of Celtic Spirituality by Michael Mitton. However, these were the titles assigned by US publishers. Their original titles in the UK were A World Made Whole and Restoring the Woven Cord.

A World Made Whole

Fragmentation and alienation have been part of human life since humans have been on the planet. Nearly every major religion has some story of a world created whole and then wholeness lost most often through some human transgression. The pain of the fragmentation haunts us and much of our activity beyond simple survival is dedicated to ridding ourselves of such pain. Some of us work to heal the pain through religion, through service, through politics, through any means that can bring about positive change in the world. Others prefer to deaden the pain through work, play or anesthesia (drugs, alcohol, sex, food, etc.) But still the pain is there. The very presence of that pain is what convinces us things were not supposed to be that way.

The Bible tells of a creation in which the Creator exults with a triumphant "GOOD!" at the end of each day. It speaks of the creation of a creature in the fragility of innocence, naked and unashamed. Both the goodness of the creation and the innocence of humankind are still sensed today through the miasma of ecological destruction and human sin. There is still a yearning for that original wholeness deep in every human heart. In spite of that yearning the human race seems to move deeper into fragmentation and alienation with each generation and our vision of wholeness grows ever dimmer.

Our "sophisticated" culture (and was there ever an adjective so ill-used?) looks back with nostalgia to times when we seemed more whole, more connected. For the European based culture of the US, the world of the ancient Celts fits the images we have of a healthier culture, a more connected way of living. Of course, we can maintain that view only by maintaining a profound ignorance of that ancient Celtic culture. But even if we suffer the disillusionment of historical knowledge, there is something there that appeals to our hunger.

Restoring the Woven Cord

The hunger for a world made whole is, for many Christians, equally matched with a hunger for a Church made whole. I do not speak of the reunion of the institutions which mark the boundaries of a divided Christendom, but of a hunger for a community where all aspects of the revelation of God are equally welcome. Richard Foster, author of the highly influential book, The Celebration of Discipline, also heads a ministry called Renovaré. Renovaré identifies six streams of Christian life that illustrate the fragmentation of Christian life: the contemplative stream, the holiness stream, the charismatic stream, the social justice stream, the evangelical stream and the incarnational stream. Michael Mitton envisions them as separated strands that need to be restored as a woven cord. For Michael and for thousands of others, the era of Celtic Christianity represents a time when we came close to seeing those strands woven together.

The Vision

It is no small vision that drives us: A Church made whole that the world may be made whole. Even the Bible does not promise us that such a vision can be brought to reality -- by our efforts. It does promise a time when God will finally and ultimately intervene with a new heaven and new earth and sorrow will be banished at last. At the same time, the Scriptures also bid us to work towards that end, that signs of God's coming Kingdom will be visible in each generation until the end. And that's why we exist. Because the passion of our hearts is to see the woven cord restored and the world made whole. And though we are small and of little account in the values of human systems and governments we will press on. The vision is from God and of God. In spite of the impossible odds, we will not relent. As Mother Teresa of Calcutta observed: "God does not ask us to be successful, He asks us to be faithful."