Saint Gobnait, Image source: Iconography by Melissa Strickler
Sixth century Irish mystic Saint Gobnait went in search of her ‘place of resurrection’ as the gateway to fullness of life. This is a journey that Dr Cath Connelly* has found to be a source of passion and inspiration for her own search for a spiritual home where ‘one’s spirit is totally whole’ and where ‘one is most completely alive’.
Legend states that whilst Gobnait was at prayer, an angel appeared to her and told her that her destiny was not to remain on Inisheer (the smallest of the Aran Islands off the far west coast of Ireland). Rather she was instructed to go on a journey to seek her true place of resurrection. ‘Go until you find nine white deer grazing’ the angel told her. ‘It is there that you will find your place of resurrection.’
Gobnait attended to this angelic voice. She left her Island sanctuary and wandered about the southern coastal counties of Ireland – Waterford, Cork and Kerry – searching for the meaning of the angel’s message who had promised that Gobnait would find her place of resurrection when she found nine white deer grazing. Her travels took her to Clondrohid in what is now County Cork. There she was astonished to come across three white deer, all grazing in a clearing near where she stood.
The deer left that place and Gobnait began to follow them, continuing her peregrinations for a short while further to what is now known as Ballymakeera. Here the three deer joined three more white deer. Six white deer grazing together.
It wasn’t until Gobnait came to Ballyvourney to a small rise overlooking the River Sullane that she saw the nine white deer all together, grazing … just as the angel from Inisheer had prophesied. A promise fulfilled.
Gobnait crosses the river, settles and establishes a community of women on the very place where those nine white deer were the revelation of the divine. This is how that moment is captured in poetry by Christine Valters Paintner:
rather than
running toward them
she falls gently to wet ground,
sits in silence as light crawls across sky,
lets their long legs approach
and their soft, curious noses surround her.
We don’t have to run in, boots and all, and stomp all over our revelations. There is a time to speak out about what has been revealed. There is also a time just to be quiet and let the experience of oneness with God permeate all our being.
And there are other times when we neither shout out from the mountaintops that which has been revealed, nor sit in the deep silence of meditation and contemplation, but rather we just get on with the everyday work of doing our bit of being love in this world.
In a way Gobnait did all three. She established a monastery for women where they tended to the needs of the poor, they prayed, they sang, they meditated, they worked in the fields. And Gobnait kept bees. Indeed, Gobnait is known as the patron saint of bees and beekeepers.
Gobnait’s association with bees extends further than her probable skills as an apiarist. Typical of the ecclesiastical records of the era, several miracle-embellished stories survive of Gobnait and her bees. One story tells of how she cured one of her nuns through the healing properties of honey. There are also several accounts of how Gobnait prevented invaders from carrying off cattle by garnering the help of her friends the bees. One version of this tale has the beehive turning into a bronze helmet and the bees themselves turning into soldiers. Another version tells of how she let loose the bees from her hives and they attacked the invaders.
Certainly, beehives only survive if the colony works together. Each member of the hive has her or his distinct role and fulfils this role with great dedication. This is a beautiful metaphor for the idyllic community that Gobnait is said to have fostered. It is said that the members of the community ‘herded sheep and cows, made butter and bread, and kept a hive of bees … it was a self-supporting settlement, including a limited amount of metal and bronze workmanship among its craft output. Vegetables and wild berries added to their daily fare, and their main meal they shared each evening.’[1]
For fifteen hundred years, people have lived and loved on the site which is now known as Gobnait’s place of resurrection.
This tale of St Gobnait raises three areas that speak directly into my spiritual journey.
1. Is three enough?
2. What is this ‘place of resurrection’ and how will I recognise it for myself?
3. What’s my take on angels/beings from another dimension?
Is three enough? After all, three white deer is pretty impressive, right. Is it okay to settle for a ‘near enough’ relationship with Holiness? Is it okay to read the mystics and study theology, attend retreats and undertake on-line courses, listen to podcasts, surround my house with Celtic objects, tune into Benedictus Contemplative Church for meditation in the evenings, and never quite get around to stepping into the big ‘yes’ of the 1-1 relationship that the Holy desires of me?
Am I so distracted by the signposts, by the joy of finding three white deer, that I forget the message of the angel that calls me to continue my unfolding pathway, until I am led to my actual place of resurrection?
No, three deer are not enough for me. I guess I’m an all-or-nothing woman who seeks the fulness of all that we are invited into.
And what is this ‘place of resurrection’? It was said by the angel that if Gobnait followed this vision, she would find her place of resurrection. One of the core archetypal images of the early Christian Irish community was that of a (usually male) monk casting himself off into the oceans with nothing but a wattle and cow-skin coracle to protect him until he landed on an unknown landmark from which the monk would wander the countryside seeking his place of resurrection.
St Brendan and St Columba were both such perigrini. I was recently reading one of the Latin texts of St Cairan of Clonmacnoise (in translation!). This text specifically uses the phrase ‘place of resurrection’ when referring to Cairan’s journey from Insihmore. Gobnait’s journey to Ballyvourney can similarly be seen in this light, traversing the countryside rather than the oceans, trusting in God to show her the final stopping place.
The idea of finding one’s place of resurrection comes from Abraham and his decision to leave his homeland and secure surroundings to head off for ‘a place that I will show you’ (Gen 12:1). This story had an enormous impact on the Celtic imagination. It became the inspiration for an untold number of Celtic saints – both men and women - to head out into the unknown, in trust that God had a plan for each one’s life and that a journey in faith would uncover that plan.
‘We see them moving into hermitages deep in the forest, heading off in their coracles or currachs or walking across the countryside in faith and expectation. Many monks found their way to Europe, establishing communities of faith throughout the continent. The inspiration of Abraham’s journey led Irish monks to recognise the divine call within themselves to leave the security of home and to travel to where the spirit would lead them.’[2]
The motivation of these women and men to wander the countryside was not to spread the news of the Gospel; this was the end result, but not the motivating force. The effect they had on local populations wherever they travelled was a fruit of their lives but not the object of their lives.
The reason these monks cast themselves off into the unknown was to find their place of resurrection. ‘For the Celtic wayfarer, the ‘place of resurrection’ was sensed as a space of deep awareness of the harmony and wholeness of all things, as well as, quite literally, a place in which to settle, physically and spiritually, to await the fullness of life and experience, and to prepare for death as the gateway to new life, the end of the old cycle and the beginning of a new.’[3]
The connection between the eternal world and the physical is nearly unidentifiable in a place of resurrection, for they are knitted together in an inextricable pattern where neither can be separated from the other. The place of resurrection then is the combination of both this world and the world beyond the veil. I think the core of the understanding of our place of resurrection is around finding that stance that keeps our eyes sparkling in the service we do and are for others.
Perhaps it can best be said that the place of resurrection is the pinnacle:
‘that place where one’s spirit is totally whole, at home, with no longing or yearning to be anywhere else. A place of resurrection is not only the place where one’s spirit will resurrect from its lifeless body upon death, but also the place where that spirit is most alive inside the living body. And I believe that a place of resurrection is the spiritual home where one is most completely alive and able to create, to discern, to prophesy … to be wise.’[4]
Which brings me to my third pondering about St Gobnait in relation to my own spiritual journey. What is this thing about messengers from the Otherworld? For the angel that appeared to Gobnait on Inisheer is not the only heavenly being in this story. White deer are also visitors from another realm.
The Celts thought that white deer were messengers from the Otherworld. For King Arthur and his knights, pursuit of the white deer was a spiritual endeavour and the sign of a quest beginning. White – purity, otherworldly… And the number nine – this is the symbol of completion, three times three. It represents resolution and the ending of a cycle, all of which are relevant in Gobnait’s case.
For my own spiritual journey, am I on the lookout for visitations from another dimension? Do I trust enough in the revelation of angels, of the insights of prayer, of the desires I have to be at one with Holiness, to continue to see if there really will be nine white deer all grazing together?
Am I prepared to leave my comfort zone to enter into mystery? Am I alert to signs and visions, to the voices of angels and prophesies, so that I might get into a coracle to be cast into the unknown seas, so as to find my place of resurrection?
How often have I asked for direction in life but not have the courage to step out to claim the answer? St Gobnait gives me the courage to trust in my own dreams as revelations of that which will liberate, showing me at the same time that I do not have to settle for less than the complete fulfillment of my dreams.
Gobnait heard the voice of an angel; finding her place of resurrection was the outcome of listening to that voice. I am increasingly fond of Gobnait; I invite her to continue to stir up passion within me for the fullness of life in the Holy One.
And Gobnait for you? My desire for you is that angels constantly interrupt your meditations, that bees bring sweet honey to your visons and that you find the courage to submit to your yearnings for oneness as you step out to find your place of resurrection. Likewise, may you remember the insight from Celtic mythology that ultimately your soul will depart your body shaped as a bee to know forever the best of all sweet things.
*Dr Connelly is director of the Abbey Retreat Centre in Gippsland, Victoria, co-director of The Living Well Centre for Christian Spirituality in Melbourne, a spiritual director, an internationally renowned Celtic harpist, and author of ‘Handbook of Hope: Emerging Stories Beyond a Disintegrating World’ (Published by Pilgrim Spirit).
This article is a slightly edited version of a talk she gave at The Well on 25 May. See the recording here (use Passcode: 0Tk+gxL5): https://us02web.zoom.us/rec/share/7ay_nkUEFytJ48MkFcFeKM_o9OeiDX0xtKMTI1s_CilKcpx2jqkQnqnp3kaqQMOp.uFDsCvRFvfTviT6O
The Well provides an online opportunity to drink deeply from the Well of Living Water offered by the mystics and poets. These monthly online Sunday night sessions consist of a reading, a 20-minute meditation, and a talk in which the speaker reflects on how a mystic or poet has been life-giving, a source of Living Water, in their lives.
The next talk at The Well will be given by Dr Sarah Bachelard on poet-priest Michael McCarthy at 7.30pm via zoom. For more details and the zoom link, see: https://www.thelivingwater.com.au/events
Footnotes:
[1] Meehan & Oliver, Praying, 75.
[2] Dara Molloy, The Globalisation of God: Celtic Christianity’s Nemesis (Inis Mor: Aisling Arann, 2009), 163.
[3] Margaret Silf, Sacred Spaces: Stations on a Celtic Way (Oxford: Lion, 2001), 93.
[4] Burgoyne, St. Gobnait, https://thinplacestour.com/st-gobnait-patron-ballyvourney-county-cork/.