by Richard Thomas

At first sight, Christianity and Druidry seem to be different, irreconcilable religions. Christians find the authority for their beliefs rooted in a set of sacred scriptures, whereas Druids have an oral tradition and base their beliefs on internal experience.

Photo : Richard blesses the Mead Avebury Alban Eilir Gorsedd 2003, by Little Mouse

Many Druids think that Christians worship a fierce God who stands outside his creation, whereas many Christians think of Druids as ‘tree-huggers’, worshipping nature as deity. Christian faith is based on a belief that God became a person in Jesus, that he was willing to give his life in order to pay the price for our sin, and that God raised him from the dead. Most Druids find the concept of ‘sin’ difficult, and prefer to work with an understanding of personal responsibility and the sacredness of nature.

The list of apparent differences could be a lot longer. Yet many Christians who have been to Druid meetings, or who have spent long, warm hours around a log fire deep in conversation with their Druid friends, enjoying good beer and good food, have come to understand that, despite the differences, there can be a meeting of the heart and the spirit that transcends the differences of belief. This meeting of the spirit points to something beyond them both: something that they share and honour in common.

It is that ‘something’ that I want to reach towards, to explore. It is an elusive thing, an agreement of the soul, a recognition of something profoundly sacred that both the Christian and the Druid can sense. It is calling us from a place that is deeper than our differences, and is stronger and sweeter than our fears.

The Biblical account begins with a wonderful picture of God at work. Some have argued for its literal interpretation, but it is, of course, a poetic myth: a story that seeks to convey a deeper truth. And it is all the more powerful for that.

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and void, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters.

This is something that most Druids will recognise. The ‘Awen’, or inspiration, is both the driving force of the creation, and is also responsible for its beginnings. One of the central features of Druidry, the desire to understand the energy of life itself, to honour ‘Awen’ and to draw it into oneself, is also a central feature of Christianity. The language is different, but the meaning is strikingly similar. This is prayer, and prayer, for each of us, is a desire to enter into the sacred, the divine heart of the Universe. For each of us, prayer can be song or silence, action or stillness. For each of us, it is a sacred space where we are called into a relationship with the sacred.

So from the very first words of scripture, Christians and Druids begin to find common ground. The ‘Breath of God’, the Inspiration, the ‘Awen’, moves across the darkness and chaos of matter. Those two small words, ‘moved upon’, barely reflect the strength of the original Hebrew. They are words of storm and power, and reflect an imagery that itself creates movement and response. The language is both mystic and sexual – the Spirit of God penetrates the chaos of unformed matter, inseminating it, bringing it to life. These same ideas are echoed at the start of the New Testament, when the Spirit of God ‘overshadows’ Mary, bringing about a conception that is both human and divine. And so Christians, as well as Druids, can understand the formation of our universe as a form of birth. We can speak of the Spirit of God making chaos pregnant with meaning, form and purpose. We can speak of the dark warm woods, the wild animals, the buzzing insects, even the great seas and mountains, as both spirit and matter: rich and pregnant with the divine nature. Druids and Christians have common ground not simply because we share the same humanity, but because we have a similar understanding of our nature: we are creatures of both matter and spirit. And in speaking of the things that are sacred, our spirits reach out together towards this ‘something’ that is common to us both.

Yet one of the great stumbling blocks to our mutual understanding comes only a few verses later, when the writer of Genesis speaks of God’s purpose for Adam and Eve. These are not simply the first man and woman, but represent you and I. We are given our purpose and our place:

God blessed them, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth."

Those two words ‘have dominion’ have been responsible for so much misunderstanding. At the heart of Druidry is the desire to walk in the footsteps of our ancestors, to walk with love and respect for the earth. Druids long to feel the life of the deep, rich soil under foot; to breathe crystal clear air deep into clean lungs; to be alive with the freedom and wild passion of animal nature. This wild and gentle relationship does not sit well with the word ‘dominion’, or with the treatment of the earth as a mere ‘thing’ to be used and disposed of. The picture of human exploitation, of forests cut down, of polluted seas, of concrete wildernesses and violent streets, seem to Druids to be a direct result of such ‘dominion’, the fault of Christian theology, and we Christians appear to have done little to challenge the ecological disasters that are suffocating and strangling our world, or to correct the thinking that lies behind the abuse.

Yet the word ‘dominion’ is itself a problem to many Christians. It was used in the King James translation of the Bible of the 17th century, when the primary role of the King was care for his subjects, to protect them from harm, and to create an economic climate in which they could prosper. But the word reflects a ‘king-ship’ that is much, much earlier and closer to the soil. Today, the word has lost much of that meaning, and has become harsh: a word of power, of abuse, of rape and plunder. A much better translation would be that of ‘care-taker’. Not the passive care-taker who simply opens up a building for others to use, but an active ‘care-taking’ that inspires, that breathes its own life into the things for which it cares.

It is easy to get stuck on that small word and to miss the much greater importance of the story. Because it is at this point in the story that we humans are given our purpose and our place in nature. Sharing its matter and its spirit, our purpose is to defend, to protect, to care, so as to enable the fecundity of nature to do its work. By the very fact of our birth, we are called to be priests to the world around us. Whether we like it or not, we are created to be in relationship with nature, and that relationship is one of active nurture. So the Christian, just as much as the Druid, seeks to honour her brother and sister animals, plants, rocks and water; to honour that which is sacred, to call out the essence of the rock and leaf, the fin and fur that surrounds us. The Christian, just as much as the Druid, walks with the staff of priesthood in the steps of his or her ancestors, seeking the well-being of the land where he or she has been placed. Whilst the Druid calls to the many spirits and deities, the Christian calls only to the one. Awen or Spirit, there is a similarity of purpose that is striking. The Christian needs no ordination for this priesthood; we are born to be priests of creation, to walk the sacred spaces and to make God visible in the places to which we are sent.

Maybe it was this kind of priesthood that inspired one of our Saints, St Francis, to write his great prayer of creation:

All praise be yours, my Lord, through all that you have made,
And first my lord Brother Sun,
Who brings the day; and light you give to us through him.
How beautiful is he, how radiant in all his splendor!
Of you, Most High, he bears the likeness.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Moon and Stars;
In the heavens you have made them, bright
And precious and fair.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Brothers Wind and Air,
And fair and stormy, all the weather's moods,
By which you cherish all that you have made.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Water,
So useful, lowly, precious and pure.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Brother Fire,
Through whom you brighten up the night.
How beautiful is he, how gay! Full of power and strength.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Earth, our mother,
Who feeds us in her sovereignty and produces
Various fruits with coloured flowers and herbs.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through those who grant pardon
For love of you; through those who endure
Sickness and trial.
Happy are those who endure in peace,
By you, Most High, they will be crowned.
All praise be yours, my Lord, through Sister Death,
From whose embrace no mortal can escape.
Praise and bless my Lord, and give him thanks,
And serve him with great humility.

Such a prayer will stand the test of many Pagan rituals. Even death, seen by many Christians as the enemy, is recognised by St. Francis as ‘sister’, and honoured for that sisterhood. It would be possible to imagine Francis, with his staff and his simple life, standing in the sacred grove and calling to the spirits of trees and springs and living air, honouring the balance of life and death, feeling the pain of suffering and the longing of resurrection.

So as we sit around the fire, sharing our hopes, enjoying our drink and our conversation, what do we Christians and Druids make of Jesus? Is this not the one thing that separates us? Are we avoiding the dreaded ‘J’ word in order to create a false sense of agreement? Is it not the task of Christians to convert others, to bring them to Christ? Once again, we are driven back to look at the meaning of words, in order to get a fuller understanding of their meaning.

Let’s look first at how Jesus described himself. The phrase he most often used to describe himself was ‘Son of Man’. In the four gospel accounts of his life, Jesus uses the phrase 75 times. But the phrase ‘Son of God’ occurs only 24 times, and most of those are when either the devil, or evil spirits, or other people refer to him. So Jesus clearly preferred the words ‘ben Adam’ , Son of Man, as a title. But the Hebrew word ‘Adam’ is linked to the word for earth, Adamah. The words ‘ben Adam’ can be translated as ‘the son of the one hewn from the earth’. We do not deny his deity, and nor did he. But Jesus refers most often not to his deity, but to his earthy-ness, to his one-ness with nature. He was, and is, the original Green Man, drawn from the earth, born of the union of spirit and humanity, bringing life to those he meets. He uses the things of earth to show his power: he uses water to celebrate marriage, and turns it to wine; he uses mud and spittle to create healing, and turns it to medicine; he uses a few small loaves and fishes given by a child, and turns them to a feast; he calls for bread and wine to be used in celebration of his death and resurrection, and turns that celebration into life itself.

There is much more that needs to be said, and the conversation, like the sacred grove, is young and wild and in need of the gardener’s touch. But one final issue here is to answer those who call for us Christians to convert our Druid friends, rather than honour them. The word ‘convert’ does not appear much in the New Testament. I could find it only twice. Instead, I looked for the word that is used to describe the process itself. It occurs twenty four times in the New Testament. It is the word ‘repentance’. It means a complete and absolute change in our relationship with God and with each other: a relationship based on the honouring of the sacred, the development of a ‘new mind’, and an embracing of those from whom we were previous separated. To repent is to develop a new mind-set, to have a change of mind; to think differently about things. It is the altered consciousness that comes from recognising the sacredness of things. To have an encounter with the divine, with God, is to be given a new way of thinking that leads to new relationships. This is what conversion means. Not the arrogance of assumed righteousness, but the humility and awe of discovery. Maybe part of that new way of thinking, that new relationship, is to recognise the sacredness of nature; maybe it is to recognise in Awen the spirit of God; maybe it is to discover the spirit of God in the Druid or the Pagan with whom we sit. It was this kind of thinking that people found so difficult when dealing with Jesus, because he had this annoying habit of commending prostitutes and welcoming thieves.

So maybe we Christians need to share with our Druid brothers and sisters that most profound meeting of all – the change of mind that allows us to honour each other as friends in the spirit, and to affirm our mutual priesthood of creation. Maybe it is this repentance, this change of mind, that allows us to make the greatest discovery of all: that at the heart of all things is the one who calls us both, Druid and Christian, to a deeper exploration, to honour the integrity of the other, and to risk the disapproval of our peers in order to bring new understanding. Maybe we can explore together the stories of our ancestors in faith, the stories of gospel and grove, knowing that in the quiet space beyond our doctrine, both deep within us and far outside our understanding, something or someone is calling to each of us, longing for the change of mind, the new way of thinking, that will bring us each closer to each other and to the sacred centre of all that is. This, too, is Awen. This, too, is Spirit. This, too, is conversion.

Richard Thomas
February 2003

Richard Thomas is an Anglican Priest and Director of Communication for the Diocese of Oxford.