I am the wind that breathes upon the sea,
I am the wave on the ocean,
I am the murmur of leaves rustling,
I am the ray of sun,
I am the beam of the moon and the stars,
I am the power of the trees growing,
I am the bud breaking into blossom,
I am the movement of the salmon swimming.
I am the courage of the wild boar fighting,
I am the speed of the stag running,
I am the strength of the ox pulling the plough,
I am the size of the mighty Oak tree,
And I am thoughts of all people who praise my beauty and grace.
This piece we are told is reportedly written by a Welsh monk who shared his writings in the "Black Book of Carmarthen," complied in the thirteenth century though much of the work in it, is much earlier.
The early Celtic Christians did not worship creation, but rather they worshipped the Creator and they gloried in God's creation. They went beyond just worshipping God the Creator, but actively looked for the presence of God in the creation and this took them in to appreciate the whole of the world as God's creation and all that was in it.
The early Celtic Christians like, Illtud knew that if they wanted to know God and further to know more about God they would really have to know what God had created. God doesn't want to be trussed up in a church building, but to be found everywhere in the world that He created.
There is a lesson here for us today, if we knew God, in the created world, surely we would be far more keen on being faithful stewards of it. If we shared with our early Celtic Christian brothers and sister the joy of discovering the Creator in everything around, then we would be eager to make sure we cared deeply and practically not just once in awhile, or when it suited us but every day and all the time. So we would be desperately worried about all the plastics in the seas and in landfill, we would be concerned about yet even more Amazon fires, we would be active in pollution of rivers and waterways, of farming sustainably and so on of the melting of the ice cap of the loss of so many species of animal and plant. This knowledge of the Creator in all of the created world would surely be reflected in the way we live, love and feed ourselves.
