04/11/2026
The In-Between Place
a blog of the Halcyon Community
There are sacred moments in our everyday lives when doors open between the worlds: dawn, dusk, the moment inspiration sparks new creativity, love's unfolding, adolescence, graduation, retirement, initiation, the shoreline. Opposites dance and merge, seconds feel like eternity, and new vistas surprise without us going anywhere.
I am fascinated by these golden moments when the sun rises or sets behind a hill and the gray of striving lives takes on a rich glow as if from within and we rest.
One of these between places that holds me fascinated is when paganism met Christianity in the British Isles. By all accounts, the transition was surprisingly peaceful, even grace-filled, unlike elsewhere in Europe where Christianity conquered and colonized, rather than absorbed, or did the Celts do the absorbing? Legends have it that Christians first came to Britain in the 1st century and myth says even earlier. Perhaps the Sun/Son glowed within tranquil druidic hearts like zodiacal light before Jesus walked the earth.
Between the first and sixth centuries in the far northern isles shrouded in mist, something unusual took place that later hardened into creed and sin. Magic and spirituality circled one another like yin and yang, unjudged, inseparable. Earth and sky danced in hearts as matter and spirit flowed into a living consciousness in every moment. A salvation separate from the earth's annual cycle of harvest, death and rebirth was not conceived with any artificial hierarchy and control. Wisdom was found in earthlight as much as in skylight, and imagination was as real as the dawn.
Emerging from these between times is a compelling spirituality. Two Halcyon programs that will continue through the summer months this year explore this Celtic twilight both in its historical source and in imagination.
We are returning to fiction in Spiritual Journeys with The Maeve Chronicles by Elizabeth Cunningham, a four-book series of visionary novels that reimagines the life of Mary Magdalen. The series blends Celtic myth and Hebrew scripture. These books of historical fiction present "Maeve," a feisty, red-haired Celtic priestess who is the partner and "cosmic twin" of Jesus or Esus as he was known in his youth. We start in April with Magdalen Rising, the prequel of this visionary series.
Then, the day after the Summer Solstice, we launch a new cohort group exploring the transition from Paganism to Christianity. We will read The Naked Hermit: A Journey to the Heart of Celtic Britain by Nick Mayhew-Smith. This book invites the reader on a journey into the heart of the Celtic wilderness, exploring the deep-seated impulse to mark natural places as holy. It ends with a vision of how we can recover our harmony with the rest of creation: with the landscape, the weather and the wildlife, and ultimately with the body itself.
Before you write off these programs as mere romanticism divorced from our modern lives, these books aren't all dreamy eyed hallucinations. Elizabeth Cunningham researched ancient Celtic traditions for 20 years before writing her series about Mary Magdalen. And her character Maeve's visions are far from easy; they promote her adolescent awakening and her growing autonomy while they also challenge our assumptions about what it means to walk our own spiritual paths. Mayhew-Smith's researches both in British libraries and outside in what remains of wilderness in Britain, show us that the preoccupation of the Celtic saints' with immersion in nature wasn't just about the beauty of the landscape though that was important, too. It was also about biting midges, brambles, frigid water, and profound, often painful, spiritual awakening, as he reads, walks, and even swims his way into the the lives of those long ago saints.
Join me on these journeys of spiritual transition between ancient paganism and the rise of Christianity. They may be journeys into legend, myth, and imagination, but they are also profoundly transformative, perhaps opening doors of perception from the gray of our everyday lives of relentless striving into the vibrant glow of the in-between places.
Learn more at http://www.hartsne.org
