Why I Find Jesus in the Celtic Calendar of My Ancestors

For me, connection to Jesus and my shifting Christian faith often feels closer during the ancestral Celtic festivals than in church and organised religion.

Anyone who knows me well knows that encountering Jesus and experiencing the love He spoke of in the Gospels changed my life. It led me to explore church, searching for that love in teaching and community. But over time, I realised that some of what I encountered didn’t match the deep love I had experienced.

Like many, I went on a personal pilgrimage, sometimes leaving church, sometimes staying, but always journeying inward, alongside others on that journey. Jesus’ teachings remain as real to me now as they did at age 19; I’m simply older, more experienced, and more aware of my own light and shadow.

I often say my church is the woods, and more broadly, the Celtic calendar of my ancestors. It marks the changing seasons, the movement of the sun, the rhythms of the earth, and it reminds me of our reliance on this planet, her provision of warmth, food, and shelter. These wild, natural rhythms reconnect me to my true humanity and to the way love resides - sometimes hidden - at the heart of things. Life surrounds me in the wild, stirring my aliveness and my awareness of God’s benevolence.

I want to live a life of love that Jesus talks about. I have an intrinsic desire to draw towards what many call God. While I know it doesn’t have to be either/or, deep immersion in these ancestral rhythms, the seasons, the earth, the cycles of growth and rest, repeatedly saves, enriches, and empowers my soul in ways church settings often cannot.

This understanding is at the heart of the retreats I offer: spaces to reconnect with yourself, the earth, and the love within and around you, whatever name you put to it – because if it’s true, it’s true everywhere. Love is love. Through the rhythms of the Celtic year, meditation, reflection, and shared silence, we can rediscover a wild, living faith that sustains and nurtures us.

Anna leaning against a tree in spring time.