Homing in to Celtic Wisdom: From Spirituality to Scientific Storytelling

When I walk through the Alpine meadows, I feel connected to the beauty of the creation. This beauty has inspired and accompanied me throughout my adulthood. In summer, the abundant Alpine flowers provide colorful pathways dotted by pink rhododendrons, blue gentians, lupins, and a rare form of fuchsia Alpine orchids. They appear to live in colorful plant communities, attracting our gaze with their loveliness. I imagine what the mountain looked like during the Celtic period. The Helvetii were a Celtic tribe or tribal confederation occupying most of the Swiss plateau at the time of their contact with the Roman Empire in the 1st century BC.
 
The Celtic wisdom traditions teach us how to listen to our souls. John Phillip Newell traces the history of the Celtic people and their unique way of seeing and understanding. In his book, Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul, published in 2021. He tells the story of Celtic saints and mystics and how they fashioned a spiritual approach that revers the natural world. His books and retreats provide a framework for spiritual questing. 
https://www.earthandsoul.org/john-philip-newell

John Muir, an American Celt, drew from this Celtic approach to the natural world and influenced the creation of the National Parks in the United States. He was able to listen to the heartbeat of God and recognize the essence of God in nature. He believed that hope lies in God’s wildness. He proclaimed the sacredness of earth and condemned the sacrilege of earth” (Newell, 2021, p. 168). Muir built a cabin on Yosemite Creek and wrote in his journal of a conversion experience that was engendered by his intense encounter with the forces of nature. Yosemite National Park was modeled after Yellowstone National Park. As a nature writer he sought to tell the story of nature in an accessible account that all readers could understand. His writing was a form of prophecy that sought to change our vision of nature. He saw the wild country and Sierra Nevada Mountains as his home.
 
Celtic wisdom allows us to experience revelatory encounters with the Creation. The pioneering Scottish mountaineer and poet, Nan Shepherd, offered a poetic account of her own encounter with the living mountain that was first published in 1977. Shepherd gleaned abiding wisdom for the art of living through her relationship with the Scottish mountains that she shared in her book, The Living Mountain.
https://www.themarginalian.org/2018/03/19/the-living-mountain-nan-shepherd/

Her woman’s gaze allows her to perceive what male authors before her hadn’t expressed in the same way. She braids together memoir, field notes, and philosophical inquiry that bring her mountain to life. She explains how her encounter with the mountain alters her understanding of the interconnectivity inherent in the natural world. Through a form of radical presence, she can listen deeply to the wisdom imparted to her by the living mountain.
Like Shepherd, I have gained wisdom from my Alpine mountains. Being rooted in the mountainscape has allowed me to tap into the Celtic wisdom found in the Alpine regions.
Shepherd writes so beautifully about her desire to be with the mountain that was like visiting a friend:

“What more there is lies within the mountain. Something moves between me and it. Place and a mind may interpenetrate till the nature of both is altered. I cannot tell what this movement is except by recounting it”
(Shepherd, 2011, p. 6)

Ecological challenges are on the forefront of our concerns. Scientific writers are writing in more easily understandable ways that respect their readers. They are working on making science accessible to a wider public. Two examples are Hope Jahren and Zoe Schlanger who have both gotten wide recognition for their award-winning books.
 
Zoe Schlanger, an award-winning science writer who wrote The Light Eater’s explains the current discussions in biology that are arising from new evidence that sheds light on plant consciousness and intelligence. Her poetic descriptions share the discoveries that are changing current scientific paradigms. She shares research findings that reveal how plant communication works suggesting a form of plant behavior. Plant sensing has also been observed with the ability to hear, possibly see, and even morph.
 
She presents controversial finding that are investigating how plants are able to shape themselves and the possibility that they have vision to see or chemical transmissions that allow a rare form of morphing that previously weren’t known about. Plants also register touch, sensing attacks and creating defense responses. There is a widening circle of recognition that believes that living creatures have consciousness and different forms of intelligence including memory. She opens our minds to how plant communities’ wellbeing and our wellbeing are entangled by describing life’s intertwined connections.
 
Biology studies evolutionary processes that create solutions to the challenges different life forms face. These resolution processes have patterned human resolution processes. Recent research is investigating plant agency. Plants, microbes, and parasites have been found to influence our human behavior. Epigenetics allows us to understand how our environments shape us. Her book raises the question of our moral responsibility to plants and the natural world and our participation in ceaseless creativity. She reminds us that a sense of awe gives rise to mutualism and an increased desire to care. Here is a link to an interview with Schlanger:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hp_c-vchgSE

Hope Jahren is an award-winning geobiologist, professor, and writer who explains the links between our consumption habits and our endangered earth. Her first book Lab Girl is an autobiography. Her second book, The Story of More How we got to climate change and where to go from here, shares her insights on climate change. Professor Jahren explains how we can use less and share more, engaging in conscious lifestyle transformations. Here book grew from a class that she taught at the university. She explains how an increase in population has led to a massive increase in production and waste. She points to the distribution problem we are currently facing, underscoring that our ability to share food could solve the problem of undernourishment.  
 
Her goal is to inform and not scare her students and readership. She shares tools for change and trusts her readership to make appropriate changes, explaining how we got to this point in time. She invites us to reflexively look at our lifestyles and make doable changes, not waiting for policy changes but acting upon our own ability to initiate constructive ecological change. She explains how we can take stock of our small purchases and become conscious of what we are watering with our money. She question, “Are we watering viable ways of living?” Here is a Harvard University Book Talks and Research:

​These women have followed Muir’s example by studying nature and writing books that are easily accessible to readers. Their shared love of nature has enkindled a desire to search for hidden truths that have the potential of changing our scientific paradigms. As we increasingly understand our interconnectedness, we are being called to enact what Pope Francis refers to as an ‘ecological conversion’.
 
Here are picture of rhododendrons, Alpine orchids, gentians, and lupins.