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My Developing Spiritual Journey - Donald McKinney, May 2003
Why not compare this with your own experiences?
Excerpt
from Walking the Mist: A Practical Guide to Celtic Spirituality
For
me the story begins in the summer of 1987. That year we were staying in
a wee but'n'ben on the Berwickshire coast in South East Scotland, not
far from where we now live. (In a book I found there),I was shocked to
discover how little I actually knew about Scotland's early history. One
fact in particular leapt out, that, before St. Andrew, the patron saint
of Scotland had been St. Kessog of Luss who had been a Celtic Christian
monk living on Loch Lomond in the sixth century AD. That simple fact stayed
with me. It seemed to demand attention though I did nothing about it for
months.
(I soon discovered)
that there was indeed precious little on St. Kessog Perhaps, I eventually
thought, this is meant to be. If the information was too easily obtainable
then I wouldn't have valued it. Perhaps. It certainly fuelled my curiosity
and began to give St. Kessog a mystical quality that has, over the years,
developed into something of an obsession. He has been the key, the talisman,
the guardian if you will, to my whole journey into Celtic Spirituality.
Unable to
find out more about him, I began to research the Celtic Christian Church.
I discovered that the church had grown out of Ireland and had spread across
Scotland and down into England until by mid seventh century, it covered
the whole of the British Isles except Kent. While Europe fell into a Dark
Age it was the Christian Church in Ireland and Scotland that kept the
candle of learned study and Christian teachings alive. Albeit in a rather
unique form.
At this point all this study was highly academic. Indeed when I started
teaching classes at the University of Edinburgh, I used to say to my students
that I was the best person to teach this topic because I was an atheist.
I could explain why people believed what they believed but that didn't
mean that we had to accept it. I didn't believe in the spirit world or
any of that stuff. I was clear on that.
But in retrospect
I can see that I was most definitely on a path. I may not have recognised
it, or even understood it. But it was there none the less. Looking back
I see that there was a clear progression. It would have been impossible
for me to have made the leap to where I am now in one bound. There was
too much non-belief that had to be overcome; too much scepticism and cynicism.
The way I came was slow but clearly signposted.
The
first signpost was indeed St. Kessog. He personalised the whole thing.
Without him, it is highly unlikely that I would have taken any notice
of this whole area. I began to wonder what kind of man he had been to
dedicate his life to being a monk living an austere and 
rigorous
life. And it seemed to me as if he was reaching down to me over all these
years and indeed was there beside me; tantalisingly close and yet out
of reach. Slowly I came to realise that I was indeed questing for something;
some sort of spiritual truth.
But why Celtic?
Why not Buddhism? Or Church of Scotland for that matter. For me the Celts
had always held some appeal. At an early age I had began to read Neil
Gunn whose books seem to suggest that another mystical dimension of thought
and experience was there, somewhere just beyond here.
..... Another
pointer was that I have always loved to be in the countryside. As a child
I used to roam far and wide over the hills that surrounded the small town
where I lived. As an even younger child I had been used to playing on
the beach of my place of birth: Thurso in Caithness. I have, I think,
always carried the sense of wide open space that is so pervasive in that
most northerly of counties. Up on the moors of Sutherland or the flat
bogs of the Flow Country it is possible to almost feel the ebb and flow
of spirits on the wind. Every tuft of heather or tiny hill loch seems
magical and full of hidden secrets and on the brilliant white sandy beaches
who can fail but rejoice in the sacred beauty of nature?
As a young adult, city life was exciting. With pubs and clubs to visit,
theatre and cinemas easily available and all the other accoutrements of
a Western European materialistic lifestyle to hand, it was fun to be a
city dweller. However even then in my quieter moments, I heard the call
of the wild and then I longed to escape; to turn my back on the ugly orange
street lights and race again across the wide open skies of my childhood.
So while there might well have been that moment in 1987 when I discovered
St. Kessog, the wisps that make up the atmosphere of Celtic Spirituality
had been woven around me from a much earlier age.