Praying with Celtic Holy Women

This book invites readers on a journey through Ireland, Wales, and Cornwall where we contemplate the sacred feminine in Celtic spirituality. Here you will connect with the age-old Christian traditions and their sometimes pagan antecedents, discover how springs and holy wells were associated with birthing and healing, and contemplate the feminine wisdom hidden in Celtic traditions. Here you will meet women who were spiritual leaders, prophets, martyrs, and anam charas or spiritual friends in the early Celtic Church. Let us invite these women of faith to accompany us in the twenty-first century: that we may “be like Christ” in our generation, as they were in theirs.
We celebrate the lives of our loved ones after their deaths, in pictures, stories, and prayer, and within a generation or two, our families often forget their legacy, and memories grow dim. But what if the memory of a holy person is still celebrated by the community fifteen hundred years after her death through daily prayerful visits to a site, a concerned upkeep of that property, and the continuing reverential use of water from the sainted person’s well? Clearly, this centuries-old popularity indicates a life that conveys a universal truth and wisdom across the ages. These soul friends and partners speak inspirationally to us, standing as we do at the cusp of a new millennium.