I am very pleased to share the following reflection from Kreg Yingst, including a selection of his original block prints. Kreg is one of the regular contributors in our Facebook group Celtic Christianity, which is where I first encountered his beautiful artwork. He did a touching piece depicting my favourite scene from the life of St Brendan, when he and his monks encounter a mystical tree covered in angelic birds. This story is the primary inspiration for my book Psalter of the Birds, and so I was very pleased when he gave me permission to use it in my book. I’ve added it to the end if you want to check it out.
You can visit Kreg’s website by clicking HERE and his Etsy shop by clicking HERE
My excitement continued to build as I researched the final preparations for our family trip to the Emerald Isle. Would my bucket list of things to see and places to visit differ from the others? I would need to be flexible. What could we realistically experience in two short weeks anyway? And how many monastic ruins did I honestly need to see?
I started a new series of woodcuts earlier that year, allowing me to journey to the land of the Celts via my imagination. My reading list was stacked with the early Christian saints—Patrick, Brigid, Brendan, Kevin, Ita, Aidan, Hilda, and others. Not all the saints were specifically from Ireland, but I had initially hoped to expand our sightseeing tour to include Scotland (Iona in particular), Wales, and Northumbria. High hopes indeed!
I created sketches featuring each saint as I read their colorful stories, intending to make a woodcut from the drawings after returning from Ireland. I wanted to hold off, immersing myself in the environment for inspiration. This would allow me to experience what the saints experienced: the cold sea spray, the panoramic hilltop views, and the slowed-down pace of rural life. If I imagined differently than the reality, I could always make adjustments later.
All was going according to plan, and then the bottom dropped out. The Covid pandemic hit, bringing travel to a screeching halt! Plane tickets were postponed; reservations were reimbursed. I have to admit, the air was let out of my sail. Nonetheless, the year 2020 proved fruitful. I suddenly found myself on a forced sabbatical with all my art festivals canceled. I journeyed onward, reading and discovering the warm embrace of many Celtic anamchara soul friends, while reaping the benefits of their spiritual insights.
My daughter gave birth to our first grandson the following year, appropriately naming him Rowan. We celebrated with dinner and a pint at the local Irish pub as soon as she could leave the hospital. Two years after our initial travel plans, we boarded the plane for Ireland, little Rowan in tow, and this time celebrated his first birthday in a genuine Dublin pub! The whirlwind “pilgrimage” proved to be everything I had hoped for; each day had a magic all of its own. In the great Irish Trinity tradition, I’ll leave you with three spiritual insights I gleaned from my new soul friends.
St. Kevin: The Sacredness of Soil
Nurture: St. Kevin of Glendalough. painted block print 8”x8” 2020
After touching down in Dublin, we headed south for our initial stay in Glendalough. In this Valley, surrounded by the beautiful Wicklow mountains, St. Kevin retreated to live the hermit life in the sixth-century. His monastic ruins are still well preserved, featuring a round tower, cathedral, priest’s house, and Kevin’s Church. There are several stories told about St. Kevin which capture his character. One of my favorites is when he retreats into his hut and extends both arms out the windows on either side for prayer. While he’s praying, a blackbird lands in his hand and begins to build her nest. Kevin remains perfectly still. The bird eventually lays her eggs, they hatch, and take flight.
Sometimes I wonder: Can I ever become a tree, like Kevin? Planting my roots so deeply into the soil of God that I remain immovable? What would I need to do to have a nurturing prayer life like his—to stay faithful despite hardship, struggle, and times of waiting? If I learn patience, will my prayers someday ascend? Will they move beyond the mundane, nurturing a faith that believes all things are possible?
Bonnie Bowman Thurston captures the story of Kevin in her poem of the same name:
Monks taught you,
but you did not dwell
with your brothers,
went the hermit's way,
prayed alone.
A blackbird
laid her eggs
in your hand.
You held them
until they hatched,
her whole world
in your hands.
The heaven's are God's;
the earth God gives us.
Teach us to love this world,
to hold its eggs gently
and when they hatch
to open our hands
and glory in their flight.
St. Brendan: Wonder and Amazement
The Voyage of St. Brendan. painted block print 8”x8” 2020
We headed southwest to Cork, then to Kenmare. From Kenmare, we took a day’s drive around the lower Peninsula, stopping for a picnic lunch on the beach at St. Finan’s Bay. The weather was unusually warm, so we removed our shoes and waded in the cool waters. As I looked out to sea, I could make out the silhouette of Skellig Michael—the isolated rock-island with its ancient monastic ruins hundreds of feet above the sea. My thoughts turned to St. Brendan and his voyage searching for the Isle of the Blessed.
Brendan was a Peregrinus, an adventurer who threw caution to the wind. He climbed into his tiny coracle made of animal skins and prayed for God’s Spirit to blow him where it would. It must’ve taken an immense amount of courage on Brendan’s part—an undeniable trust in God for guidance, protection, and provisions. The stories of his voyage in the Navigatio Brendani are replete with fantastical elements: sea creatures, talking birds, rivers of gold fire, and crystal pillars. In the pages of this early Ninth Century classic, fiction meets non-fiction, and allegory melds with history. What do I take away from Brendan for my spiritual journey?
- Learn to live without fear
- Trust God—even when taken to the edges of the earth
- Pilgrimage into the mystery of God—a world of wonder and radical amazement
Christine Valters Paintner captures the magic of St. Brendan’s journey in the following poem:
Imagine the hubris, searching for the saint-promised island,
the stubbornness to continue for seven journeys around the sun.
Each day on the rolling sea, his fellow monks
jostled and tossed by waves.
Brendan asks late one evening:
How will I know when I find what I seek?
Easter Sunday brings liturgy on the back of a whale,
but as if that weren't miracle enough, they travel onward.
The ship is tossed onto sand and stone.
They look up to behold a broad and magnificent
oak frosted with white birds hiding the branches entirely,
downy tree limbs reaching upward.
The monks stand huddled under a blue stone sky,
relieved to be on stable earth for now.
The sun descends, Vespers, rose to lavender to violet,
heralding the great night's arrival.
They release a collective sigh of contentment, the air expands
around them as a thousand snowy birds ascend into that
newly hollowed space, and throats open together,
a human-avian chorus of shared devotion to the ancient songs and ways.
Ever eager to journey forward, Brendan still lingers for fifty days
sitting in that oak cathedral, feathers scribing their own sacred texts.
In those moments, did the relentless seeking fall away,
sliding off like the veil hiding a bride's expectant face?
Book of Kells (St. Columba): The Work of Our Hands
Peregrini (St. Columba). painted block print 8”x8” 2020
We spent a few days in the Baytown of Galway, taking a boat out to Inis Mor one day and on another, exploring the Cliffs of Moher, a must-see, then headed east, back to Dublin. We had secured tickets to see Ireland’s national treasure, the Book of Kells, at Trinity University. This artistic jewel, the illuminated Gospels, was said to have been created on the island of Iona around 800 AD. Saint Columba, the founder of Iona, was believed to be one of its contributors, but that’s proven highly unlikely as he died in 597 AD.
The manuscript survived various Viking raids and has its own fantastic story to tell—if only it could talk. The book eventually traveled over land and raging sea to the monastery in Kells. And from Kells, to its final resting place at Trinity College Library. This singular focus on one piece of art was a different experience for me, unlike the artistic treasure trove I observed in Italy.
We waited for our time slot and then entered with a dozen or so fellow-gawkers. I reviewed the first room with its written facts and enlarged six-foot reproductions. From there, I walked into a darkened room. One person and a guard hovered around a glass case. I had seen so many facsimiles that I asked the guard if this was it. She nodded yes.
I quickly scanned the page, which featured an image of a blond-haired Christ from the Gospel of John, then turned to move on. Something inside of me quietly whispered—look, look! I turned back, realizing I had come halfway around the world to view this single page of creative genius. The detail was astonishing. The more I looked, the more I saw.
How had this gift to God and man survived when so many other manuscripts had been destroyed? It was only by the grace of God. “The artist, then, becomes something of a prophet: the seer, the mouthpiece. The role of the artist is to call to attention,” writes Luci Shaw in her book, Breath for the Bones. “There is another calling for the artist, and that is one of linking earth to heaven, pointing the human to the divine, finding the connections.”
That is quite a lofty ideal, but here it was fulfilled, in this bullet-proof case: the words of the prophets, the colors of the artists, the intentions of the Divine. Could I pour into my own work the same kind of love, passion, and creativity that these monks poured into theirs? “Let the favor of the Lord our God be on us,” the psalmist writes, and “establish for us the work of our hands—establish the work of our hands!” (Psalm 90:17 CSB)
Barbara Crooker captures the tedious work of the Celtic monk in her poem, The Scribe:
Before the scriptorium, I worked in my cell,
plain simple beehive made out of rock.
Or outside in good weather: old book on one knee,
new sheepskin on the other, copying, copying.
Under the greenwood tree, listening to the cuckoo's song.
By the end of the day, my hand grows weary,
and the sharp quill starts making wobbly lines.
But I marvel how far my inky fingers have traveled,
copying these books from across the far sea.
I don't think of words, just the shapes of the letters,
as they steadily march on the plains of the page.
My pen drips brownish gall ink, makes me think
of the nut-brown ale that is waiting, along
with an apple, and a small wedge of cheese.
When darkness surrounds me, I'll take to my bed,
ready to rise with gladness tomorrow,
and, once again, take up my pen.
The Scribe (St. Colman). block print 8”x8” 2022
This is the piece that can be found in Psalter of the Birds
St. Brendan and the Paradise of Birds. block print 8”x8” 2024
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