What’s an Abbey: Connection

If your enemies are hungry, give them bread to eat;
    and if they are thirsty, give them water to drink;
for you will heap coals of fire on their heads,
    and the Lord will reward you. -Proverbs 25

The Letter to the Romans quotes Proverbs 25. Growing up in the Midwest with a lot of Nebraska nice, the heap burning coals on their heads always struck me as passive aggressive.

No, ‘if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads.’ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Romans 12: 20-21

For a long time, this seemed like a “kill them with kindness” sort of thing that might actually hurt. I could understand giving folks water when they were thirsty and I have delivered plenty of casseroles to understand that, “if your enemies are hungry feed them” bit. But “the heap burning coals on their heads” bit from Romans did not have any real meaning to me. Until a historian or two pointed out that folks once carried things on their heads and perhaps in some places around our globe folks still do. 

Heap burning coals is about sharing the fire from your hearth, the flame and the ember that can keep another's house warm, bake their bread and cook their food. A burning coal is essential, its fuel and faith is about sharing it and keeping everyone warm…even if they top your enemies list.  

Irish Abbeys had warming rooms. The blue prints and drawings of historians and anthropologists show warming rooms at lots of different Abbeys. It’s usually not the only fire in the Abbey, even today you can see there were fireplaces in the dormitory and probably the Prior’s office where all the paperwork was pushed and there were enormous hearths to cook the community meals. 

I love the name warming room and I love imagining a monk or a team of monks with the job of tending this fire; keeping it should any one else need an ember to kindle their flame. 

St. Bridget’s Abbey had a Fire Altar. You can still see the great stone outline of its later configuration within a great stone cathedral. In Bridget’s day (1,500 years ago) it was a beautiful hilltop of one great oak, community building surrounded by several cozy beehive huts where folks slept and cooked and prayed and wrote and even tended the fire.  Kildare means church of the oak and Bridget’s fire altar, just like the grove of Oaks had ancient roots. Her fire altar was likely in use 2,000 years before her community gathered around to warm their hands and break their bread. 

Fire is essential in the Pre-Christian Irish spirituality. Important hilltops hosted these community fires for generations. The most important being the Hill of Tara, where the leader of the Celtic people, pending consent by the hill, would dance naked to the top and be crowned king. The Druids and perhaps even earlier peoples on the island created not only great burial mounds but also a remarkable celestial calendar with these many hilltops. From Tara you could see Newgrange and Knowth and Slane and beyond. These hilltop fires and centers created ways for folks to communicate across the island. The Druids didn’t believe in writing their knowledge down, because knowledge was so powerful it could be misused if entrusted to the wrong person. One needed to look a person in the eyes before sharing their knowledge, writing was a risk. So it is hard to say for sure what these Pre-Romanized folks believed but given the state of social media today, “I told you so” seems reasonable.  

Every spring, the people extinguish the many hilltop fires and then to celebrate new life, the King lit a new fire at the Hill of Tara. From his enormous bonfire; folks carried torches, olympic style, to light all the new fires. 

They heaped burning coals and shared the fire with each other. Fire connected them. 

All of this is moving along with its normal human drama (which is to say that folks are prone to war and harm just as much as they have a glimpse of love and peace), until Patrick (Pre-Saint) comes back with a plan. On the day everyone is celebrating and getting ready for a new fire, he conveniently chooses to celebrate Easter, with a brand new Pascal Fire. Before the King can light the fire on the sacred Hill of Tara; Patrick lights a fire on the Hill of Slane. Patrick lights a fire but this fire is Chrsitian.

The King assumes danger and hostility, the fire may be a warning or a threat. With his crew ready for a fight, they go to Slane and find a Priest. The official story gives the impression that Patrick convinced and converted folks, at least enough that no one hurts him and that’s how the Christian story becomes an Irish story, at least in the official church history. 

This move is so wild to me, it might be stunning and brilliant as activist art except Patrick doesn't seem to be protesting any injustice. Mostly it’s so on brand for empire driven, domination driven Chrisitanity: past and present. He sets a new fire. On their holiday, making it his holiday. It’s astounding. This fire is Chrisitan and that fire is Pagan. This fire is right and that old fire was wrong, you got to pack it up and move on. 

But Bridget is a few hills away in Kildare and she is tending the same fire. She is keeping the fire and adding new fuel to it. She hears the story of Jesus; power that is vulnerability and strength that is weakness. She lives in a world that needs peace and justice; she falls in love with this message and honors it by building community. For Bridget, the stories of Jesus come alongside the stories that root her in the soil of Ireland.

She keeps the fire and milks the cows because connection doesn't come through debating the finer points of fire's metaphor for life but by nurturing life. Knowledge, philosophy, or theology that upholds systems of enslavement, violence, domination and injustice are a problem for Bridget whether it’s from her Druid dad or her Christian co-workers. 

Bridget’s community will tend the fire, the ancient fire, for generations to follow. 500 years later a ‘righteous’ church leader will come to town to extinguish that “pagan fire.” The official stories suggest the nuns tried to protest but lost. Of course the people of Kildare, with a glint of fire in their eyes, say, “do you think we would let that happen?” The fire lives on in kitchens where bread was baking and the forge where metal was being worked and hundreds of thousands of other candles and fireplaces and hearths too. 

Patrick and Bridget both have fires and both have stories and they are not that far apart in history or place. But they couldn’t be more different. 

We too have a choice. 

What kind of people do we want to be? What kind of Abbey do we want to be? How will we heap burning coals and gather round to tend these fires?

May we have the courage. 

Amen