Esther de Waal lives in a small cottage on the Welsh/English border. After studying and teaching history at Cambridge University, she married, had four sons, and moved to Canterbury, where she lived in a house that had been part of the medieval monastic community. She leads retreats, lectures, and travels widely. Her major interests are the fields of the Benedictine and Celtic traditions.
"In what will undoubtedly be a classic on Celtic spirituality and
prayer, Esther de Waal leads her readers to a rediscovery of the
beauty and richness of the Celtic way of life."
--Rosemary Rader, OSB
"What Esther has written is superb, because the combination of
Esther's own spirituality and early Celtic spirituality is bound to
be superb...I have read every word slowly, carefully, enjoying,
being nourished. It isn't just that Celtic spirituality with its
loving immediacy is appealing, it is that it is necessary at this
time of violence and indifference and greed in the Western world.
It can, indeed, be our salvation."
--Madeleine L'Engle
"Esther de Waal's unique contribution to Celtic Christian studies
is that she is never outside her subject. Her constant ability to
apply the life of those earlier centuries to her own devotional
life makes it possible for those of us who read her to encounter
those people in such a way that their Christian journey can become
food and drink for us in the hunger and thirst of our own
century."
--Herbert O'Driscoll, author of A Doorway in Time
"A rich tapestry of learning, personal experience of prayer,
empathy with monastic endeavor and a real understanding of what
inspiration is needed by so many of the laity also in their journey
of Christian prayer today."
--Patrick Barry, OSB, Abbot of Ampleforth Abbey
In this beautiful book, retreat leader de Waal recovers the spirituality of Celtic religion and integrates it into a kind of guidebook. Through Celtic poems, songs, Irish litanies and medieval Welsh praise poems, de Waal conducts the reader on what she calls a "peregrinatio," or journey into prayer. Believing that the metaphor of a journey comes closest both to the Celtic way of prayer and to our contemporary description of seeking spirituality, de Waal traverses what she calls the "common realities of life: time, presence, solitariness, dark forces" to demonstrate how prayer may be integrated into the fabric of daily life. In addition, she recovers Celtic symbols as ways of enriching the religious imagination. Finally, she asserts that discovering the rhythms of natural life provides a "corrective to our cerebral emphasis on prayer which has for too long stifled our approach to prayer." (Aug.)
"In what will undoubtedly be a classic on Celtic spirituality and
prayer, Esther de Waal leads her readers to a rediscovery of the
beauty and richness of the Celtic way of life."
--Rosemary Rader, OSB
"What Esther has written is superb, because the combination of
Esther's own spirituality and early Celtic spirituality is bound to
be superb...I have read every word slowly, carefully, enjoying,
being nourished. It isn't just that Celtic spirituality with its
loving immediacy is appealing, it is that it is necessary at this
time of violence and indifference and greed in the Western world.
It can, indeed, be our salvation."
--Madeleine L'Engle
"Esther de Waal's unique contribution to Celtic Christian studies
is that she is never outside her subject. Her constant ability to
apply the life of those earlier centuries to her own devotional
life makes it possible for those of us who read her to encounter
those people in such a way that their Christian journey can become
food and drink for us in the hunger and thirst of our own
century."
--Herbert O'Driscoll, author of A Doorway in Time
"A rich tapestry of learning, personal experience of prayer,
empathy with monastic endeavor and a real understanding of what
inspiration is needed by so many of the laity also in their journey
of Christian prayer today."
--Patrick Barry, OSB, Abbot of Ampleforth Abbey
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