St. Patrick was a great man not as human beings judge greatness, but as the Holy Spirit understands true service to the Divine Plan. In the Holy Spirit's eyes Patrick's contribution consisted of listening inside and following the instructions he heard inside, much like the story of Abraham in the Bible. When men and women always trust their inner hearing and consistently follow their inner guidance they are "great in the service of the Holy Spirit," even if in the eyes of human beings their accomplishments seem not so great.
Patrick had no idea what he was really accomplishing with his mission to Ireland. He had no idea that within 50 years the Roman Empire would be like the cold ashes of an extinguished fire spread underfoot. He could not have possibly foreseen that 1500 years later historians with hindsight would give him credit for literally saving civilization with the academy-like monasteries he had founded in Ireland.
Nor did Patrick have a clue of what we know today, that he was really saving Christianity.
Modern scholars are now convinced beyond any shadow of doubt that the "Christianity" which the Apostle Paul taught in the Greek and Roman world was not the same spiritual teaching that Jesus gave to his disciples in Galilee and Jerusalem.
It is well known that Paul had serious differences and arguments with James, the brother of Jesus, and other leaders of the Jerusalem Jesus movement. What has been hidden by the Roman church and by history itself until mid-twentieth century evidence has been unearthed is how vastly different the otherworldly Christianity of Paul was from the Jewish spiritual fundamentalism of Jesus, James, and the other leaders of the Jesus movement in Jerusalem.
Stated in simplistic terms you might say that while Jesus was zealous over the spirit of the law versus the letter of the law, Paul threw out the law altogether on the philosophical grounds that we are not of this earth anyway.
Paul's version of Christianity grew like wildfire in the Roman Empire not only because it consisted of old Egyptian, Greek, and Roman spiritual teachings now fervently retold in the context of fresh stories of happenings in Palestine, but also because Paul's otherworldly focus allows a freedom from concern about what one does in this life. If grace is all that is necessary for salvation, then the intellectual mind can conclude that ethics in the usual religious or philosophical sense is not only unnecessary but inefficient. In a leisure oriented empire at the peak of its prosperity, allegiance to a God who automatically forgives any and every kind of behavior is very appealing to the subconscious ego mind.
By 407 A.D. Roman Christianity was so different from the teachings of Jesus that some might say Jesus would have turned over in his grave had he not already overturned his grave.
A rescuer became necessary for Christianity and the rescuer was Patrick (born Patricius), a Roman Christianized Breton Celt who as a boy had been painfully (from the boy's point of view) and fortuitously (from history's viewpoint) kidnapped and made a slave by pagan Irish Celts. Patrick's many years as a slave in Ireland had a way of sorting out the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. It was his luck to become far less Roman and far more Irish, if you can see the value of calling a painful experience lucky.
Just as Paul had made the teachings of Jesus a lot less Jewish and a lot more Greek, Patrick's mission to Ireland made the same teachings a lot less Roman and a lot more Irish. Christianity came back down to earth and integrated the otherworldly and new worldly and multi-worldly perceptions. There was still plenty of freedom of behavior and plenty of grace, but there was also now an attunement to spirit in everything in nature and a uniquely Irish way of seeing things.
In Irish Christianity, which later heavily influenced the Christianity of most of Europe, Mother Earth was not divorced from Father God. Oneness was glimpsed and appreciated in everything.
In Patrick's world, shape-shifting and "alternative realities" were experienced and expected every day as seen in this Irish saying:
For Patrick's Christians a miracle was certainly of God, yet quite in the nature of things. Miracles were not strange to Patrick's world but natural. If miracles did not occur, something was amiss.
By 500 A.D. when the sprouts of Patrick's work were turning green, the three leaves of clover could be used to symbolize the 3 phases Christianity had by then experienced: (1) initial movement (Jerusalem), (2) deviation (Rome), and (3) synthesis reestablishing balance in a new and more serving configuration (Ireland). Isn't that how the Holy Spirit works, three in one?
Shift to the twenty-first century when A Course in Miracles now flowers the fields of Christianity. Can we expect to see leaves of clover within the Course in Miracles movement? Can we expect (1) initial movement, (2) deviation, and (3) synthesis?
We are reminded of an old Irish story.
Once upon a time there were three leaves of clover.
The first leaf said, "If I ever teach A Course in Miracles, I will teach it is a device for living a much fuller, much richer life in the world, seeing the world so differently that life becomes gloriously joyous."
The second leaf said, "If I ever teach A Course in Miracles, I will teach it is a device preparing us to leave the world in a flash of light. Ultimately the world shows it's true purpose to be an addiction to pain, sickness, and death, so I will teach the goal of ascending, flashing out, leaving altogether."
The third clover leaf said, "If I ever teach A Course in Miracles, I will teach that living here and leaving are the same. After all, if clover doesn't 'leave' it doesn't live."
Just what you'd expect from fun loving Irish clover... a punny story.
But there is also truth in the story. An enlightened teacher is one who is able to for all practical purposes leave and be here all in the same experience.
Actually an advanced student of A Course in Miracles who has finally learned what the Course is really about learns to leave the world of form, then come back to a whole new world, then again leave the world of form, then again come back to a whole new world, and over and over again, until the leaving and coming back is done so fast and so often that the feeling is of living in and out of a world in the same experience.
Then finally an enlightened master teacher of A Course in Miracles literally experiences leaving here and living here so completely that he is able to say both "I am not of this world," and "I am with you always."
"Being in the world but not of it," has more meaning than most Romans would have understood. But the Irish saw the vision. Patrick on his mission to fun loving Ireland was able to pick up the exact clover from our story above, hold it high for all his students to see, and say with confidence:
The Irish brought fun back into Christianity. They made it fun to be a Christian.
Patrick once got a twinkle in his eye and said to his students: "Nothing you can do will make the world disappear, true or false?"
When his students seemed befuddled he joyously gave the answer: "True! The world can only disappear when you do nothing in your mind. When your mind does something the world is formed and held in form."
So Patrick's monks were joyous. Compared to early Christian desert monks who fought against "desires of the body" and Benedictine monks of mainland Europe who fought against inner temptations, Patrick's monks lived their lives with gusto and full artistic expression.
The beautifully decorated manuscripts of Ireland's monks are priceless museum treasures in every corner of Europe today and speak of their undying devotion to God. But we also have evidence of their attitude toward enjoying life in their monasteries where there were no rules disallowing girl friends, boy friends, wives, and husbands. One of Patrick's monks wrote:
As if any of us could ever sleep alone in a spiritual sense.
Just as the Irish basically said to the rest of the Christian world "Are you having fun with your Christianity?" so the Holy Spirit is asking all of us these days in the Course in Miracles movement "Are you having fun with your Course in Miracles?"
Are you starting to see worlds of form as unreal, with the shifting of shapes or perhaps the shifting of "realities," as the Irish did?
Are you laughing at everything that goes on in the Course in Miracles movement with the same "when Irish eyes are smiling" viewpoint that sees everything like a morn in spring and laughs at everything?
If so, maybe your three leaf clovers are transforming into four leaf clovers and you are seeing that the "luck of the Irish" has something to do with having fun.
Maybe very soon you will not know which comes first, the spiritual opening, or the fun.
For fun this month you might want to imagine St. Patrick is somewhere present and say to him many times a day:
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