The annual conference of the Centre for Celtic Spirituality will be held in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh, from 20 to 22 May and booking for the conference is now open.
As reported earlier on this site, the principal speaker will be John Joe Spring, the well known expert on Celtic spirituality. He is Vice- President of All Hallow’s, College, Dublin, and co-ordinator of the B.A. programme in pastoral theology. He will speak about the faith of our ancestors who lived with deeper awareness of the cycles of the natural year and marked out the times and seasons and holy places with insight and wisdom, and also about the concept of Heroic Sanctity which was a central feature in the early church’s monastic and missionary tradition.
The opening session, on ‘The Celtic Sense of Space and Time’ will be on Friday 20 May at 7.30p.m in the Cathedral. On Saturday morning there will be a workshop on the Celtic understanding of Heroic Sanctity and this will be followed in the afternoon by a Walking Pilgrimage to Navan where there will be a visual presentation of myths and legends associated with this ancient place and, on the Hill of Navan, an opportunity to share in Celtic prayer. In the evening in the Cathedral there will be a concert by Martin Donnelly from Co. Antrim who writes discerning nature poetry, in the pattern of Patrick Kavanagh, which has been set to music. The conference will conclude on Sunday morning with a Celtic Eucharist at which the preacher will be the Revd Kiran Young Wimberly, Pilgrimage Director.
Full details may be had from the Centre for Celtic Spirituality, 43 Abbey Street, Armagh BT61 7DY (contact@celtic-spirituality.net)
The Centre for Celtic Spirituality is charitable project shared by Anglicans, Methodists Presbyterians, Roman Catholics, Quakers and Mennonites. It is staffed by the Revd Grace Clunie, (Church of Ireland) and Revd Kiran Young Wimberly, (Presbyterian Church in Ireland).