In introducing the Celtic world’s ancient spiritual path, John Philip Newell, former warden of the iconic Iona Abbey in Scotland’s Western Isles, pictures “a stream of wisdom that nourishes the deepest knowing of our being—that the earth and every human being is sacred.” What’s more, and this Spirituality & Practice points out in its review, “He goes on to show how a Celtic way of seeing and being can be accessed by anyone.”
Shalem, the Institute for Spiritual Formation, describes the book as “a great resource of Celtic treasure with relevance for our lives today.” True, Newell “cautions us that this is not a tradition that can be ‘reduced to a set of principles or beliefs’,” but what it does do, the Shalem reviewer explains, is point us toward “the ‘good way’ that offers rest for our souls in troubled times.”
Each chapter introduces an important Celtic prophet, almost all of whom “fell foul of church authorities,” according to Britain’s Church Times. In its critique, it points out that Newell “is an unashamed and unreconstructed Celtic romantic,” but acknowledges that his book “abounds in striking quotations about the sacredness of matter, and the weaving together of the spiritual and physical….”
Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul: Celtic Wisdom for Reawakening to What Our Souls Know and Healing the World
By John Philip Newell
HarperOne, 2021
