Sacred Stones: Chapter 1 : The Still-Speaking Rood.
This is the complete first chapter of my forth-coming major work: Sacred Stones: Ancient Celtic Crosses and their Life-Affirming Messages for Today
“Then shall the trees of the forest sing for joy before the LORD”-1 Chronicles 16:33
“I nevertheless beheld sorrowing the Savior’s tree until I heard it utter words, begin to speak,”—Dream of the Rood[i]
Encounter
1642: Ruthwell Scotland, Events Imagined
“I won’t do it, I cannot. It is blasphemy dressed up as piety.”
As the Reverend Gavin Young spoke, his right hand, which held the awful letter, shook. Unconsciously his left hand pulled at his clerical collar, as if it were choking him.
He stood in the nave of his church and gazed up at what he knew was the most important monument of primitive Christianity in Scotland or England. “For five centuries it’s stood protected here in our kirk, what madness has gripped these men?”
His wife Jeannie, standing beside him, put a comforting hand on his back and gently pulled the letter from his grasp. She read aloud, in an increasingly quieter voice:
“Reverend Young, It has come to the attention of this assembly, by testimony of reliable and devout men, that the popish travesty stands still in the center of Ruthwell Kirk. Ye know well the unanimous decision of this holy assembly, declared now two years past, that idolatrous monuments, made by false and popish hands, and bearing images of Christ, Mary, or saints departed, must be cast down, demolished, and destroyed. As you have failed to cleanse the House of God in your parish of these defilements, we are of holy necessity forced to action. Soon we shall send a venerable and sober emissary, who will expect to see the idol cast down and destroyed. If any remnant remain standing in the holy place we will know you to be unsuited for the sacred ordination to which you have been called.”
“Ah, Gavin, what will you do?” she asked, when done reading the dire missive.
“I’ll not let them in, I’ll bar the door,” he replied.
“Nae, my love,” she shook her head thoughtfully, “You cannot defy all the wieghty men of the assembly in Aberdeen; they will appoint a new minister to this parish, and that one will do their bidding. And what then would we do? It’s been decades since you were a lad and worked a farm, and we have no savings, so what would become of us ?”
Reverend Young sank to his knees and put his head in his hands. Jeannie spoke sooth, but doing this thing was unthinkable. How could it be that the elders of the presbytery saw only heresy on the sides of the great shaft? Over the years of his ministry Pastor Young had caressed the intricate vine patterns and ancient runes, dreamt of the earliest Christ-followers in this land who performed a miracle of artwork and masonry. The cross itself preached—told the stories of the Gospels to people in a ruder age who lacked the ability to read God’s Word for themselves. In the time of the Crusades local workers had built this church to protect the great cross. And Pastor Young knew in his heart that over the centuries, as eyes gazed upward at the ancient rood, their hearts likewise lifted in adoration of Christ.
“There may be a way,” Jeannie whispered, crouching beside him, “to see that all is not lost.”
He turned and looked at her, wondering what this might be?
The following week there were many meetings of the Ruthwell congregation; none were formally announced, but members came together in small gatherings at the manse or in their cottages. Farmers and laborers procured tools, and workers hastily erected a wooden scaffolding around the great stone cross.
A week after the arrival of the dolorous letter the good minister again stood within the sacred temple, his wife at his side, along with his children and a small representation of the congregation. Brawny men with leather aprons over their clothing and heavy hammers in their hands stood on the scaffolding beside the arms of the cross.
A call came down from the towering framework, “We are ready, Reverend.”
The minister hesitated.
His wife squeezed his hand to assure him.
“Very well Mister McKenzie, now be sure that your hammers and chisels go straight to those chalk marks that I showed you. And when you hear the stone of the crossbars start to creak, then be ready with the hoist so they come down gently.”
“Aye Reverend, we know well our task!”
The sharp sound of hammer blows echoed from the walls of the nave.
Three weeks later the messenger from Aberdeen arrived. He wore a black jacket and hat and grey britches, all neat and pressed like the city man he was. In an expressionless tone he demanded entry into the church. Minister Young walked him without hesitation into the temple, and pointed to where stones and dirt covered a hole—where the cross had formerly stood.
“Honored sir, here”—the pastor produced a satchel of folded leather and opened it so the messenger could see the paper inside—“is a document notarized by a dozen honest men of this village, each sworn with their hand on Holy Scripture, and in the presence of a judge, who declare that the ancient stone crucifix has been broken, cast down, and buried, to no more cause trouble for God’s people in this place.”
The messenger read the letter, glanced at the signatures, and looked for a long minute at the clumped earth in the church. “Very well Reverend Young, the assembly of learned and devout men thanks you.” And with that he departed.
The minister walked slowly back to the manse, removed his boots at the entrance, and sat at the little table beside the inglenook, where Jeannie set before him a dram of their best whisky, which she kept back in a cupboard for special occasions.
“It’s all done then, Gavin?”
“Aye.”
“You told him the cross is broken, cast down, and duly buried from sight, as the dour men have demanded?”
He nodded.
“And you spoke nothing but God’s own truth, for you did by the letter what they asked.”
She affectionately ran a hand through his hair, and a sly smile came across her lips. “But ye did not tell that man how you marked out the lines for its disassembly, so that each section would carefully be preserved?”
“I did not.”
“And you did not tell him how carefully each bit of the revered rood was lowered to the ground, so the ancient stone be not crumbled?”
He chuckled and shook his head.
“So he knows not that each bit is wrapped and covered and buried carefully, and all this recorded in a letter with instructions for the minister after you, so the cross may be reassembled in a more sensible age?”
“Please, let it be so, in the time of God’s choosing,” he whispered.
2012: Ruthwell Scotland, Remembered
“Hey! Stop! Turnaround!” I cried out. My wife was driving the little Vauxhall we had rented. It was March and we were headed to see the town of Dumfries. From the corner of my eye, I had just caught sight of a sign, “Ruthwell Cross.” I knew of that cross from reading, but I hadn’t realized that it would happen to be right on our route.
We turned about and parked beside an old church, then stepped out of the car into what seemed a perfect Gothic setting. Throaty caws from a clamor of rooks in a nearby tree echoed among the lichen-covered gravestones that lay about the church.
Would the church be open? It was! We stepped into the sanctuary, alone, except for the ancient monument itself which was a palpable and formidable presence. It was bigger than I had imagined it would be--three times my six-foot height--and more beautiful than pictures had portrayed.
There was a conveniently placed booklet and from that we identified the themes portrayed in separate panels on the sides of the great stone edifice: from the bottom of one face of the cross we saw Jesus’ crucifixion, then a scene of him healing, then Mary Magdalene washing the Saviors’ feet: on the other face, Egyptian Saints Paul and Anthony, and Jesus glorified with book and halo. On the narrower sides of the cross was a lifelike sculpted tangle wood of vines and birds.
Deepening
The Dream of the Rood
While the artwork on the Ruthwell cross is impressive, there is something even more unique about this particular high cross. There are inscriptions--in Runic letters--that cover all the frames around the sculptures. The words are an excerpt from the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem The Dream of The Rood, similar in age to the more famous tale of Beowulf. With the inscription of The Dream of the Rood, the Ruthwell Cross is literally a message from the past.
The Dream of the Rood recounts the story of a talking cross (the word ‘Rood’ was used in Old English to describe the instrument of Jesus’ death). This living cross speaks of its life as a tree, and how the Romans felled it to serve as the site of Christ’ sacrifice. The words inscribed on the Ruthwell Cross tell how “the young hero that was God almighty ascended the wretched gallows.”[ii] The rood tells how it shared the same sufferings as the crucified Savior: evil men “pierced me with dark nails, mocked us both together.”[iii] After Jesus’ body was removed from the tree, then he “rested there awhile, weary after the great war.”[iv] Men buried the cross but later rose up from its grave, to be honored as a “great beacon” of hope.
The story told by the talking rood--how, like Christ, it died, lay buried, then rose --seems amazingly appropriate for the Ruthwell Cross itself. In 1642 the Church of Scotland ordered the destruction of the ‘popish’ Cross. The minister of the church was reluctant to destroy it.[v] He dismantled it, then buried the cross in portions. Centuries later, one of his successors exhumed the cross, re-assembled it, and placed it in the center of a newly constructed church home. The story of the shamed and re-glorified Ruthwell Cross brings to mind Jesus’ words to his detractors in the Gospel of Luke: despite their attempts to silence the Good News, the stones themselves will shout out the message of Christ.[vi]
Standing in the cupola of the Ruthwell Church, I felt a sense of vibrancy, of timelessness about the cross. In defiance of the grey skies outside of the kirk, in defiance of time and attempts to destroy it, this rood still spoke--proclaiming the resilience of faith and the love of the One crucified.
Messages in Stone
Oliver Crilly, Irish priest and scholar, describes one of the ancient stone crosses as “an icon which persists in the landscape of faith, like a gateway leading to the rich traditions of the early Irish Church.”[vii] I have had similar impressions throughout the Celtic Nations. The Ruthwell Cross in Scotland’s Burns country, the great and revered crosses of Iona Abbey, the Cross of the Scriptures in Clonmacnoise Ireland --all these stone crosses seemed to speak, as if they yearned to share life-affirming truths.
The ancient crosses hold within them mysteries and revelations; locked within their mineral core are expressions of “the manifold wisdom of God.”[viii] John Scotus Eriugena--an Irish theologian who was renowned in the 9th century--said that in each passage of Scripture there are innumerable meanings, like the multicolored splendors of a peacock’s tail feathers.[ix] Just as Anglo-Celtic Christians celebrated the immensity of meaning in each portion of the Bible, they also expressed manifold levels of meaning in their cross sculptures. These crosses still embody layers of truth for today.
Does it seem incredible to you that a cross--an inert object--should speak? To us jaded moderns the idea of a talking cross may seem as quaint as Jesus’ face appearing on a tortilla. Yet the communicating cross made sense to people of faith over the long span of Christian history.
For Jesus’ original followers, there was a deep sense of bafflement regarding the way that their master died; the cross was the worst sort of torture, and it served to humiliate the one crucified. How was it that the one exalted to sit at God’s right hand should die so horribly? They soon came to understand that “in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself.”[x] Over the next two thousand years Christians would continue to work out exactly how the crucifixion accomplished this great redemption--but all agreed that it did. They enshrined a Roman torture device as the nexus point of humanity’s deliverance.
Depictions of the cross do not appear in Christian art until several centuries after Christ’ death and resurrection, as the grisly reality of crucifixion was still a real experience in the Roman Empire [xi]. However, the idea of the talking cross appears in the second century apocryphal writing called The Gospel of Peter. This early Christian document tells how on the morning of Christ’s resurrection two angels lifted a cross extending from the empty tomb up into heaven. A voice from heaven cries out “Have you preached to those who sleep?” and the cross itself replies “Yes!” (Chapter 10 of this book reveals the meaning of this question and its answer). Centuries later, Irish sculptors depicted this story of the talking cross on their stone high crosses.[xii]
Saint Francis’ Talking Cross
One of the most famous tales of a talking cross concerns Saint Francis of Assisi (1182-1226). Known as “the most perfect imitation of Christ” Francis continues to influence Christians today who care for the poor, for peace, and for the environment.
In the 21st century, Assisi Italy still seems imbued with the sanctity and sacredness of its most famous citizen. Ochre-colored stone dwellings of the 12th and 13th centuries lean over winding narrow streets, much as in Francis’ time. The places of his birth, baptism, and childhood home can still be seen today. Franciscan friars and Sister of Saint Clare walk about the city and sing God’s praises in its churches.
The church of Santa Chiara is a tall and stately edifice perched at the edge of the medieval town overlooking a broad fertile valley. There is a smaller nave beside the larger main sanctuary, and there hangs the cross that spoke to Francis, changing the course of Western history. A Franciscan priest explains how a talking cross brought about Francis’ spiritual conversion: “The San Damiano cross is the large Romanesque rood cross that hung in the abandoned chapel near Assisi. While still in his early 20’s and seeking his place in the world, Francis of Assisi was praying before this cross when he heard the voice of God commanding him to “rebuild my church.” All Franciscans cherish this cross as the symbol of their mission from God.”[xiii] After Saint Clare’s death and entombment, the San Damiano cross was moved to its present location in Santa Chiara.
Waiting for the Claretian sisters to sing Compline, I sat gazing at the very cross which spoke to Francis. Softening my gaze a little, beholding the cross as much within my heart as with my ocular vision, the form of Christ seemed to take on three-dimensional form. The enlarged eyes on Christ’s face gazed into mine and I felt a deep tenderness. Unlike Francis, I received no audible command. Yet this ancient piece of wood so carefully rendered by Byzantine artists of the Early Middle Ages still communicated Christ’s compassion to my soul.
Icons
Any cross can serve as an icon. As Wendy Stein of the Metropolitan Museum of Art explains, in the Middle Ages, “An object depicting a sacred scene had an active role in religious practice... to connect the worshiper to heaven.”[xiv] Iconic objects are vessels of God’s power, means of Divine grace. Christians in the Orthodox Church see icons as “windows” that enable worshipers to enter, via contemplation, the realm of God, the saints, and the angels. As such they can inspire, guide, protect, or heal people in their immediate presence. They are instruments of God’s work on earth.
To use a popular spiritual expression, each icon is a “thin place” where the curtain between visible and invisible realms draws back. Such art, in the words of Irish artist Patrick Pye, “does not tell us what to believe, it tells us what it feels like to believe.”[xv]
If you are of Orthodox or Roman Catholic faith, this might make easy sense for you. There may be holy icons in the churches where you worship, and sacred objects such as the rosary necklace or a home shrine have likely been part of your devotional life since childhood. The power of sacred objects is an instinctive part of your faith.
For Protestant readers, or those unfamiliar with Christian faith, the attachment of holy power to inanimate objects may be more of a challenge to wrap your head around. And yet, the investment of agency within physical objects seems an instinctive part of human thinking; spiritual practices inevitably lean toward embodiment of some kind. Today’s “spiritual but not religious” practitioners affirm the healing powers of incense, crystals, dream catchers, and other such ritual objects. Devotees of 21st century mythic worlds– such as the Star Wars or Marvel Comics universe– collect likenesses of the power-objects of their legends (from light sabers to Thor’s hammer).
As the existential challenges to humanity mount, so does the importance of God’s union with the material world. Jesuit Priest Father Richard Rohr, in his widely read book The Universal Christ, brings together the Scriptures of Christian faith, the emerging discoveries of physics, and the perennial wisdom of spiritual traditions to explain how “Everything visible, without exception, is the outpouring of God”.[xvi] Spiritual masters of the Early Middle Ages and of our time agree that God can be discerned in objects; shouldn’t this be especially true of the cross--an object representing the heart of God’s loving interaction with humankind?
The ancient Celtic high crosses are a unique development in the history of sacred objects. Throughout the Celtic Nations and the British Isles, over five centuries, artists erected hundreds of artfully rendered stone crosses, many of which endure today. The great stone crosses are part of a larger belief in the power of sacred icons, yet they make their own unique contribution to the world of sacred objects. As Father Crilly says, “These crosses will stand out as wonders in the study of art, not just in Ireland, but in the world.”[xvii]
They speak more loudly, more strongly, from a greater height than other holy vessels. The stone crosses remind us of what the Psalmist declares about the heavens, “Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. There is no speech, nor are there words; their voice is not heard; yet their voice goes out through all the earth, and their words to the end of the world.”[xviii]
Many times, I have experienced this “voice” of the ancient cross, which “declares knowledge” without audible words. Because it is the still-speaking voice of Christ, the Divine Logos, it comes to us not merely for our growth in knowledge. “Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up.”[xix] The ancient crosses convey meaning for us to live all that we learn, for “the only thing that counts is faith working through love.”[xx]
Application
Paying Attention
In the well-preserved monastery of Saint Kevin, in Glendalough Ireland, Marsha and I watched a tour bus from Dublin disembark. The tour guide said, “Okay, this was an ancient monastery. Be back on the bus in fifteen minutes,” and they were. I suspect those tourists gained nothing more than a few quick photos and a stop at the loo. By contrast, we spent two days around that sacred enclosure (which includes medieval high crosses) drinking it all in, and those days seemed too little time to absorb the meaning of the site.
If you wish to learn the meaning of the Celtic cross, you will need to pay attention. There is a difference between looking at an object and seeing it. When you see anything deeply you are focusing your attention, focusing your energy, on that object. People know whether we are actually seeing them, or just casting an impartial glance their way. When we look at people with loving intention, they will (eventually) realize that, and they will reciprocate caring attention by revealing more of their secrets, enriching both parties in a mutually trusting relationship. The time-honored stone monuments work the same way. If you look long and hard at one, and focus loving attention on that, it will gradually reveal its treasures.
A Cross that Speaks to You
To gain the most from this book, I invite you to select a cross and commit to a relationship with that. Your goal is to see beyond the object or, to put it another way, you are perceiving by means of the physical cross, in order to gain access to the spiritual truths signified by this material object.
If you happen to live near one of the ancient Celtic crosses, either in a churchyard, outdoor enclosure, or in a museum, then you are fortunate indeed. Your practice of cross-gazing may involve slipping on your waterproof- and boots for a stroll or taking the bus and presenting your card for admission. Be sure that you protect and honor these time-touched survivors from the past; don’t handle the stone surface and respect the space around the cross.
For those of us living outside of Cornwall, Wales, Ireland, Scotland, or Northern England, this will require a bit more creativity. If you have access to the internet, you can easily find multiple images of the ancient crosses. You might wish to skim ahead in this book for ideas of one that you wish to focus on.
If your eyes are tired of focusing on pixelated screens, then there are a number of large books with glossy photographs of the high crosses. These unfortunately tend to be expensive but that is why public libraries exist.
There are also artistic renderings of many high crosses, done in clay, bronze, or plastic compounds, and available online. Some of these are produced by small-workshop artists and you will bless them with your purchases. One advantage of such a model cross is that you can incorporate it into your own home devotional space.
Outside of the Anglo-Celtic nations, there are also many beautiful examples of Victorian or modern Celtic crosses, in cemeteries, churchyards, and church buildings. For example, in Flagstaff Arizona the Episcopal church of the Epiphany has an extraordinary Celtic Cross wrought in iron overlooking the church’s equally delightful labyrinth, and in the Mount Hope Cemetery in the City of Rochester, New York, there is an elaborate and well-executed stone memorial cross.
And you don’t need to limit yourself to a Celtic wheel shaped cross. The so-called ‘Celtic’ crosses of the Early Middle Ages combined African, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, Eastern European, Italian, Scandinavian, and Indigenous motifs--they were global-fusion artworks. Are you intrigued by crosses of your own culture, or of another culture? A turquoise-embellished yucca wood cross from the Southwestern United States? An intricate Ethiopian bronze-cast cross? A cross of blue-glazed Portuguese porcelain? A brightly painted cross from Central America? An Olive Wood cross from Jerusalem?
Pick a cross that speaks to you, and then commit yourself to give it attention. Gaze at it as you drift into contemplation, feel with your hands, think of its color, composition, material, geometry, patterns, portrayals, symbolism, history of production and ownership. Sit still with it like you’d sit in the quiet presence of a friend. In your mind’s eye try and see through the cross—or past it—regard the object in front of you as a portal. Christ himself awaits you on the other side, filled with fondness and longing for your company. Your time with a cross is time sitting with your dearest friend in the universe, the one who intimately formed you in the womb, who has walked beside you feeling your joys and hurts throughout life, and who asks for nothing except the joy of feeling your affection. Hear the voice of love speaking to you from the cross.
The cross of Christ at my sitting.
The cross of Christ at my lying.
The cross of Christ all my strength,
until we reach the King of heaven.
The cross of Christ over my community.
The cross of Christ over my church.
Until the day I die
before returning to the earth,
I shall trace on myself
the cross of Christ upon this face.
–The Lorica of Mugron, Irish c10th[xxi]
[i] Robert Boenig, Anglo-Saxon Spirituality: Selected Writings (New York, New York, Paulist Press, 2000) 260.
3 Ibid.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid., 261
[v], The Ruthwell Cross, Historic Environment Scotland (November13, 2021), https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit-a-place/places/ruthwell-cross/history/.
[vi] Luke 19:39-40
[vii] Oliver Crilly, The Great Irish High Crosses: Meaning and Mystery (Dublin, The Columba Press, 2013) 64.
[viii] 1 Peter 4:10
[ix] John Scottus Eriugena, Periphyseon on the Division of Nature, trans. I. P. Sheldon-Williams (Washington DC: Dumbarton-Oaks, 1987) 390.
[x] 2 Corinthians 5:19
[xi] Judith Couchman, The Mystery of the Cross (Downers Grove IL, Intervarsity Press, 2009), 92-93.
[xii] Eamonn O Carragain, High Crosses, the Sun’s Course, and Local Theologies at Kells and Monasterboice, in Insular & Anglo-Saxon Art & Thought in the Early Medieval Period, edited by Colum Hourihane, (University Park, PA, Penn State University Press, 2011) 156.
[xiii] Fr. George Corrigan, OFM, SAN DAMIANO CROSS: TELLING THE HISTORY OF CHRIST’S PASSION, Franciscan Mission Service, (October 5, 2012) https://franciscanmissionservice.org/2012/10/san-damiano-cross-telling-the-history-of-christs-passion/.
[xiv] Wendy Stein, 16.
[xv] Ibid., 41.
[xvi] Richard Rohr, The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe (USA, Convergent Books, 2019) 13.
[xvii] Crilly, 86.
[xviii] Psalm 19:3-4
[xix] 1 Corinthians 8:1
[xx] Galatians 5:6
[xxi] Paul C. Stratman, S.T.M. Prayers from the Ancient Celtic Church (Lexington, KY ,CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2018) 5.