A Service of

Celtic Prayer
Adapted from “The Book of Taliesin”
(Wales, 6th-13th Century)
(Rev. Dr. Chris McMullen, Parish of Upper Kennebecasis, October 18, 2020)

Call to Worship:
Everlasting Trinity, who made the world,
And, the world once made,
Made Adam and Eve, skillful and beautiful,
And blessed your people, Israel, too;
Through Christ, who wards off wrath,
Making the Law and Gospel to name us,
And holy means of grace, To make us praise you…
The One Creator, The Ruler working His will;
The Twelve tribes of Israel,
and their son, too, Jesus, Worker of Miracles:
From the Father, from the earth, from blessed Mary too,
From all three mothers Jesus came;
And we may come too, blessed with a providential heritage.
Christ, be our strength; Lord of all blessing,
May your redeemed people invoke you
As we do now:
This is how we may prosper –
By being reconciled to You!
(Liberally adapted, as all below, from Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams, trs.,
The Book of Taliesin: Poems of Warfare and Praise in an Enchanted Britain
[London: Penguin Classics, 2019, 2020], “Everlasting Trinity”, # 58 pp. 181 f.)

Hymn:
“When Morning Dawns I’ll Greet the Sun”
(Tune: “O Waly Waly”)
When morning dawns, I’ll greet the sun;
I’ll set my feet and start to run
The race that God has put me to:
He’ll give no task I cannot do.
(Continued…)
 (2)
And Jesus takes me by the hand.
We walk with strength through shifting sands;
And all the waters of the sea
Can’t wash away God’s love for me.
Though seas are rough, and water’s wide,
I’m sure to reach the other side.
Not by my strength; I’d surely fall:
The Lord upholds me through it all.
At setting sun when ev’ning calls,
I’ll set my peace as darkness falls:
I gave the day what it was due;
God gave me strength to see it through.
Lewis A Kocher © 2018 www.crowtower.com
Used with Permission CCLI # 3117248

Psalm 90 (Paraphrased):
1-2 
God, it seems you’ve been our home forever;
    long before the mountains were born,
Long before you brought earth itself to birth,
    from “once upon a time” to “kingdom come”—you are God.
3-11 
So don’t return us to mud, saying,
    “Back to where you came from!”
Patience! You’ve got all the time in the world—whether
    a thousand years or a day, it’s all the same to you.
Are we no more to you than a wispy dream,
    no more than a blade of grass
That springs up gloriously with the rising sun
    and is cut down without a second thought?
Your anger is far and away too much for us;
    we’re at the end of our rope.
You keep track of all our sins; every misdeed
    since we were children is entered in your books.
All we can remember is that frown on your face.
    Is that all we’re ever going to get?
We live for seventy years or so
    (with luck we might make it to eighty),
And what do we have to show for it?
Trouble.  Toil and trouble and a marker in the graveyard.
Who can make sense of such rage,
    such anger against the very ones who fear you?
(Continued…)
 (3)
12-17 
Oh! Teach us to live well!
    Teach us to live wisely and well!
Come back, God—how long do we have to wait?—
    and treat your servants with kindness for a change.
Surprise us with love at daybreak;
    then we’ll skip and dance all the day long.
Make up for the bad times with some good times;
    we’ve seen enough evil to last a lifetime.
Let your servants see what you’re best at—
    the ways you rule and bless your children.
And let the loveliness of our Lord, our God, rest on us,
    confirming the work that we do.
    Oh, yes. Affirm the work that we do!
(Paraphrase by Eugene Petersen, The Message, © 1993, 2002, 2018)

Scripture:
I Thessalonians 1: 1-10
Meditation:
”Hope, Holiness, and Heroism”
Affirmation of Faith:
Since His birth, the earth’s face
Show no equal to Him:
One Gracious Son, in the Great Trinity,
Of divine Persons, Son of the Godhead; yet Son of Man.
Son of the Father, my stronghold,
Sweet Mary’s baby; God’s Word in a sweet child.
Born of Adam and Eve, Chosen in Abraham;
With all the earth’s multitude, fulfilling the prophecies,
Born of God’s own love.
With a Word he delivered the deaf and the blind,
The distressed, the wretched, the Sick, the despairing.
May we ascend, to the Trinity’s own Life;
Salvation’s work completed,
By Christ’s radiant cross.
His grace a shining armour against all harm:
Against all wrath and evil, however fearsome,
Our sure stronghold!
(Adapted, Lewis and Williams, Book of Taliesin, “Alexander’s Breastplate” # 51 pp. 159 f.)
(Continued…)
 (4)
Prayers of Intercession:
Lord of Heaven, permit our prayer to You:
From wrath, may our worship save us.
High King of glory, petition artfully through us,
Spirit of prophecy, who fees us from hell’s slavery!
Make us like oaks, mighty and magical,
Even in the face of conflict and death.
May our souls receive Christ’s wholesome food,
Even his body and blood –
for words in a book say little to us,
compared to death, and what follows, and the prophet’s poetic song:
May we gain heavens country, our true and best abode.
(Adapted from Lewis and Williams, Book of Taliesin,
“Lord of Heaven, Permit My Prayer to You,” # 50, pp. 157 f.)

Make us sweet in virtue, when we repent of our sin;

Sweet God, who is our salvation!
Make sweet our eating, unspoilt by worry;
Make sweet our drinking, as of heaven’s delight!
Make sweet the fruit of the Spirit in us,
As sweet to You as the berries of autumn!
May we praise you for the strength of a stallion at gallop;
And delight in your intricate art in a spider’s web.
May we praise you like ospreys on shore at the high tide;
May we dance in your Spirit, as the gulls loop above.
May our penance at the Altar be as sweet as a poet’s song;
May intentions be as sweet as bread and wine at your Table.
May the clergy be sweet in their faith and integrity;
May our leaders be sweet in their legislation and service.
As you made the moon sweet in its night-time shining,
So make us sweet, as we encounter the good.
As you made summer sweet in long days,
So make us sweet in long-standing love.
As you made the fruit sweet, high in the tree,
So make us sweet, reconciled to You in the Cross.
Sweet are the fish in the shining lake,
Sweet too, the play of light on the water.
(Continued…)
 (5)
Sweeter though the words that You, the Trinity, speaks:
Enlightening us to sweetness, as we turn from sin.
The sweetest of all, we would ask of our God:
To be set free and embraced by you, on Judgement Day
(Adapted from Lewis and Williams, Book of Taliesin,
“Taliesin’s Sweetness,” # 15, pp. 42-44.)

Prayers of Thanksgiving:
Help us to admire all your Creation,
O God who guards the wind!
When you come in glory,
with creation full of song,
To take us to eternity,
May our victory be as day over night,
Yet resting as at night,
In the mirth that comes from our great King, Jesus!
…O God, who liquefies grain until it grows,
And lets us soak it again until it turns into malt:
…When we, like the beer,
are set before the King,
For his excellent feast,
sweetened by the Spirit’s honey,
Though we may taste sharp,
may it be pleasing to You.
Most generous Trinity,
Who makes the drinker happy,
…Nothing is achieved
without your blessed strength.
(Adapted from Lewis and Williams, Book of Taliesin, “A Song About Beer,”
# 25, lines 1-11, 24-28, 35-38, 40-41, 50-51; pp. 85 f.)

Introduction to the Lord’s Prayer:

We make our prayer to the Three-in-One God:
Lord, let us sing your praise.
The world’s roar places us in peril;
Deeds of goodness even cause great peril
To the family of Your saints.
O High King of Heaven’s hosts,
Make us eloquent in your praise,
and help us pray and live the “Our Father,”
(Continued…)
 (6)
Overcoming sin
with your kingdom, power and glory,
Though we are afflicted,
lost, and in hardship;
Suffering at times far from your presence.
We beg you, King of Peace,
in us your will be done:
Grant your Kingdom on earth,
As it is in Heaven!
(Adapted from Lewis and Williams, Book of Taliesin,
“I Make My Prayer to the Trinity,” # 52, pp. 161 f.)

The Lord’s Prayer:

“Millennium Prayer (Our Father)”
(Tune: Auld Lang Syne. Syllables carried for two notes are underlined)

Our Father who art in heaven

Hallowed be thy name!
Thy kingdom, come, thy will be done,
On earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread
And forgive our sins
As we forgive each one of those
Who sins against us.
And lead us not to the time of trial
But deliver us from evil
For thine is the kingdom,
The power and the glory.
…Let every home and every dream
Be born in love again;
Let all the world sing with one voice;
Let the people say Amen!
Paul Field and David Deal
© 1998 Meadowgreen Music Ltd. (EMI Christian Music)
Used with permission, CCLI # 3117248

(Continued…)
 (7)
Hymn:
“Spiorad Naomh” (“Holy Spirit”)
A Sevenfold Prayer to the Holy Spirit
(Tune: Old Highland Air, “Ho-ro, mo nighean donn bhodheach”, “Ho-Ro, My Nut-
Brown Maiden”)
Most powerful Holy Spirit!
Come down on us and save us;
From glory in the heavens,
Come, light your fire in us!
O Father of the helpless,
And Giver of all goodness,
O Shine your mercy on us,
And shield us from all ill!
For nothing can, without You,
Be worthy of your glory;
O King, we sinners need you
To heal us from all wrong.
There is no better Helper,
From evil, no other Shelter:
Christ’s flesh and blood are sweeter
Than any other food!
So, Spirit, bend my stiff knees,
And energize my heart’s pleas;
That penance may come truly,
And steer my soul toward You.
All that pollutes Your glory
In my own human story;
And all that mars my spirit,
Sprit of God, now heal.
Spirit, I must obey You,
So give me strength to trust You;
That your seven-fold gifts
May make me always true!

Based on translations by Alexander Carmichael, Carmina Gadelica:

Hymns and Incantatiions Collected in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (1899;
modern edition ed. C.J. Moore. Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1992), # 244, pp. 216 f.; and
G.R.D. MacLean, Praying with Highland Christians: Selections from ‘Poems of the Western
Highlanders’, ed. Sally Magnusson (London: SPCK Triangle, 1988), 72 f.
--Rev. Dr. Chris McMullen, June 1, 2020.
 (8)
Benediction:
There is a fine fort, set on a high place:
It’s feasts are splendid, the songs of praise rich and strong.
Beauty all around it, stronghold of the saints,
Wet with baptism’s grace; the Spirit ever blowing;
Even the seabirds ascending ever upwards.
Wrath and enmity are doomed away from its heights;
May the saints enjoy supreme contentment!
The blessing of the Prince of Peace, Heaven’s Lord, preserve us:
Never will we lose the pasture and garden
Destined for Eve’s and Adam’s own!
(Adapted from Lewis and Williams, Book of Taliesin,
# 61 “In Praise of Tenby”, lines 48-57, p. 191)

* * * *
Taliesin was a court bard in the “heroic” age of the early British (Welsh)
Christians, in the Sixth century. He is remembered in beautiful poetry,
both spiritual and secular, and in many legends of battle and miracle –
rich in the Druidic culture of the past. Those were the years after the
withdrawal of Rome, and subsequently of fighting the invading pagan
Saxons –think of the culture of the legends of King Arthur and Camelot,
which hearken to this age! His poems, and others later written or
associated with his name appear in a Thirteenth Century collection, now
in the National Library of Wales.
I have taken great liberty in these adaptations, often abridged, and
often more like paraphrases, to adapt them for prayer today. For the
Welsh bards, as in early Celtic Christian spirituality generally, the secular
and the spiritual, the poetic and the prayerful, are intermingled together
in a way that I have tried to recreate here. Some of the songs I have
used would be called “secular” today, speaking of heroes, places or
everyday delights; but I have allowed them to inspire my prayers.
Others are definitely poems of spiritual communion –but the communion
of a warrior as much as a pilgrim; a man of the world, as much as a
man under the spiritual inspiration of the Celtic “otherworld”.
I pray they inspire and enrich your day-by-day walk under, with and in
the Holy Trinity!
 (Rev. Dr.) Chris McMullen,
Apohaqui, New Brunswick, Canada,
October 2020.