Welcome to the Loved Called Gifted podcast. This is your place to come for musings about spirituality, identity and purpose. I'm your host, Catherine Cowell.

C: So for this episode of the Loved Called Gifted podcast, I'm really chuffed to be joined by Paul Byrne, who is joining us from Ipswich. Hi Paul, thank you for being with us.

P: Hi, thank you for having me.

C: Do you want to just introduce yourself a bit? Tell us where you are currently and what you get up to.

P: Yeah, so I currently work as a family and children's worker at a church called St Mary's Stoke in Ipswich. I'm also studying a Diploma in Theology and Children's Ministry at St Mellitus.

C: Yeah, so we got chatting about prayer and it transpired through our conversations that you have for a long time had a fascination with Icelandic culture and spirituality and I've not met anybody who's been into that before and it's been really for me in our conversations, it's been a real gift to hear something of your passion and also you shared bits and pieces of Icelandic poetry that I found really, really moving. And so there are a couple of things that we're going to kind of look at in this podcast. One is sort of hearing about your passion for Icelandic poetry and culture and all of that stuff and spirituality and how that's been helpful to you. But also I think it's really interesting to hear a bit about your journey of how you've ended up integrating that into your spirituality because there was a point at which they were kind of separate passions if you like. So where did you first encounter Icelandic culture and literature?

P: In university I was studying history and literature and when we came to choose our options for the third year I saw Icelandic literature. So I did that and I was studying under Dr Joella who was a massive proponent of Icelandic literature. He was very good friends with an Icelandic translator called Bernard Scudder who sort of translated a lot of the works including a lot of the poetry. So I read from the sagas which are like the very original Icelandic works to sort of more modern stuff and I fell in love with a particular book called Angels of the Universe which is still to this day my favourite book. And then for my 40th birthday I got the opportunity to finally go to Iceland and I got a tattoo done of an angel with the Icelandic underneath it saying Angels of the Universe. And as part of that I met a couple of people who knew people who knew the author of that book and it just felt amazing to be there in that country.

And it was later on thinking back on that trip how much because literally at that time I had just become a Christian how much taken from that and then speaking to you I suddenly realised a lot like the Celtic prayer which speaks to me in the nature. It's so evident in all of the Icelandic stuff I'd been studying all this time. Religion is so ingrained into the Icelandic nature, more so in the past than now I'd say.

C: Yeah, so you weren't a Christian when you first encountered Icelandic literature?

P: No, so I've only been a Christian for about three years now.

Yeah. I was going through a troublesome time. For some reason I decided to visit the church near me and I was prayed for and one thing led to another and it just felt right and I gave my life to Christ. I remember very early on we had a meeting learning about Christianity where the priest was talking about our callings and I asked her, I said, "Oh, how do you know what your calling is?" And she said, "Oh, you have to pray on it."
I went home that night and I prayed like, "What is my calling?" And that night I had a dream and I woke up with the word 'patience'. I remember that and now a couple of years later the opportunity came up to get a job with the church and then study at St Mellitus at the same time and it all just worked out perfectly. And then as part of that I reached out for a spiritual director to help me guide this new journey and from that it sort of clicked that this passion I had for Iceland wasn't more than just for Iceland. It's like everything. It just fits together.

C: Yes, yeah. It's quite easy isn't it if you've had a passion that's kind of happened before you come to faith to separate those things out. Well that was a before thing and now I'm meeting God and encountering all of this great Christian stuff and so part of what we were working on together was sort of bringing those two things together.

I'm wondering if there are any moments that you can think back to or perhaps passages from books or whatever that really hit your heart when you started studying the Icelandic stuff?

P: So from Angels of the Universe, which is my favourite book, it follows the story of a young man who has mental health issues. So he ends up in the Kleppur which is like a psychiatric hospital in Iceland and there's a passage where one of his friends die and he wants to attend a funeral.

And another character says to him, "Oh no, you can't attend the funeral. God doesn't care for us." And he says, "God cares for everyone, even those who are sick. We're all just angels of the universe."

And that really spoke to me at the time and it spoke to me even more now because obviously my coming to Christ was a lot to do with my depression and my own mental illness and that God loves you even if you are sick and it doesn't matter how you're sick, whether it's like physical or mental, he does love you.

But that whole idea of like we're all just being part of this universe or just angels of the universe just really spoke to me which is why when I went twice and I got that tattoo.

C: Yes, yeah. That's really fascinating isn't it? It's almost like God was leaving you a love letter in your soul back then when you wouldn't have kind of connected the two and that helped you when you needed it in your journey towards the divine.

That's really rather lovely.

P: Yeah, I remember it speaking to me and then obviously just put somewhere at the back of your mind until it's needed.

C: Yes, safely filed away. Yeah. Until the moment. How would you describe the feel of the land in Iceland and the culture and the people?
What sort of feel does it have to you?

P: Iceland as a place is constantly changing.

So like there's parts where the plates of the earth are coming apart and that is actually on the site of the Orthing National Park where they had the original parliament. That's also the place where they converted to Christianity.

C: Right.

P: The nature is like described in the poetry.
So the same author who wrote Angels of the Universe wrote a poem where he describes the ocean as the countenance of God. And Iceland is obviously surrounded by the ocean and it's that God is facing them on all sides and it's got this nature.
In another poem the land is described as a shrine to the Holy Ghost, which I quite like.

And like looking at the poetry, if you look at the different poets, especially the earlier ones, they will always be a priest and a poet. A priest and a poet. It's like you would become a priest in Iceland and you would also become a poet.

There's a lot of literature in Iceland and they've got a thing on Christmas Eve where they give each other a new book and they sit there reading it in front of the fire eating chocolate.

C: Your first degree was history and literature and then your second was a master's in literature and creative writings. And you are in Christian ministry. So I imagine that idea of priest and poet would speak quite deeply to you.

P: Yeah, so that's something which I really love the idea of. You look at Jesus for example. He told parables, he told stories to help people understand.

And it's in the telling of stories we all learn stuff I believe. We all have our own story.

Like my story would involve coming to Christ at my age and sort of going to Iceland.

And it's within those stories that we can find how closeness we've got I think.

So being a priest is like being a storyteller. It's telling, well the greatest story ever, story of the Gospels and sharing that. But also actually with my work with children, it's telling these stories in a fun engaging way and trying to get this sense of wonder with the children. And one place where you always get wonder and you can always see God at work is in nature. And you get this Icelandic landscape with the volcanoes and the flats and the glaciers.
And you look at it and it's just, it takes your breath away and you can understand why people wouldn't want to leave this place. There's that whole idea of God being in nature and us telling stories. And Iceland is a very storytelling nation. The old tradition is very strong in Iceland.

C: Yeah. You're talking a little bit about that point in Iceland's history where they chose to become a Christian nation. So how was Iceland evangelized? Who went there? Do we know?

P: There were a couple of people who went. The actual story about him coming is in the book of Icelanders.

C: Right.

P: They had to decide between Christianity and like the pagan religion. And the chief at that time had the job of deciding. So he covered himself in furs and then he took himself away.

And for two days he was thinking on it. And then he came out and said, "We're going to be a Christian country." And he rode back home to the north of Iceland, took all his pagan idols and threw them into a waterfall. And that waterfall is called God's waterfall. So you can still go and see that today.

C: Yeah.

P: So there's something called the book of Icelanders which is their history. Some modern historian might contest it.

C: Yeah.

P: But it's what we've got. And again, it's just telling a story. And I really liked the idea of this man riding home and then throwing all these pagan gods in the waterfall. And I think that speaks to me more than like signing bits of paper.

C: Yeah. Because even if people are now contesting exactly the truth of the stories, that those are still the stories that people have lived with and that have kind of influenced their being and their culture.
So there were a couple of people who came across to Iceland. It sounds like it was around about 1000 AD. And do we know where they came from?

P: It would have been Denmark. But there's also quite a lot of the original centres of Iceland were Irish and the Celts. So a lot of ancestry comes from the Irish side, which is where you get that sort of Celtic tradition, which suddenly speaks to the Icelandic tradition of religion as well.

C: Yes. Yeah.

P: The whole idea of nature and sort of just being there.

C: Yeah. You're talking about the way that the land is kind of always changing in Iceland. And I'm wondering if there've been moments when that has particularly spoken to you.

P: So there was an Icelandic eruption and it ended up killing 25% of the population.

C: Wow.

P: And it sent large ash clouds into the air. And obviously it caused famine in Europe. And one of the results of this eruption led to the French Revolution, the poor uprising against the rich. And that makes me think of the gospel and sort of the whole idea of standing up for the widows and orphans.

I like that idea of sort of shifting of fire and ice. It's those two elements, which I think you get in Christ. He's peaceful and he's loving, but he's not afraid to sort of speak out against the establishment. And that the people he draws close to him are the people you wouldn't expect, like the fishermen and the tax collectors. And obviously with Christianity, when that came to Iceland, it brought writing and different forms of poetry like hymns, etc.

So the earliest hymn is still remembered today and it was written 1208.

C: Oh wow. I'm wondering if you were thinking of sharing a bit of that with us.

P: Well, I can share the first stanza of that.
"Hark heavens maker, hear the poet's prayer.
May thy merciful grace grant me its embrace.
Thus I vow to thee who have created me.
I am thy slave. Thou art my Lord."
And that was Colvin Tromason.

C: Yes. For people of my generation, the famous Icelandic name would have been Magnus Magnuson.

P: Yeah.

C: He did mastermind for a while. Yeah.

P: Yeah. He did some of the translations of the sagas.

C: Oh wow. I didn't know that.

P: His translations are better than some of the more modern ones, if you ask me.

C: That's fascinating. I didn't know that that was something that he'd done.
Because are the sagas kind of pre-Christian?

P: Yes. They sort of tell of the history of Iceland before the conversion, at least the ones I've read. But they've got such good stories in them.

C: I'm wondering if you see threads of the divine in those stories within the sagas.

P: I think there's something there. A lot of it is like these great moments in time.

And if you actually look at the time, you get whole years where nothing happens, but nobody writes about that. And something which actually is quite interesting is in the sagas, and Iceland in general today, they're very focused on the genealogy.

C: Right.

P: So they're focusing on he was so and so and go all through. And you find that obviously in the Bible, the genealogy, the different things. And I think that's the closeness between them.
There's something there in the stories and the way they're told.

But then later on, once Christianity does come, there's a man called Hildgrím Héldgrím Píttursson. So he wrote 50 hymns about the Passion of Christ. And they are still played on the radio in Iceland today. Every Lent they play them.
And I like the idea that Christianity is sort of embedded within a culture. And it's a culture of stories and parables and of history and known to history.

And like in Haldor Laxnáss's book, like this protagonist, when he was eight years old, he had read the book of Icelandic folktale and Bishop Peter's short stories and St. Luke's Gospel, which made him cry because Jesus was so alone in the world.

And just that line there. An eight-year-old reading that.

And this Gueld Ligh is about a poet. And again, it's the idea of the poet and priest and sort of his early life with the Book of Sermons, which is a very famous Icelandic book by Bishop John Skjálltút, which was published in 1718 to 20. And it's got rich language and colorful style, and it dominated Icelandic religious life for more than a century. So the whole thing is just amazing that it's still there.

C: So there is something about the ancientness of that culture that really speaks to you.

P: Yes.

C: Which isn't really a surprise given that you were drawn to history and literature.

P: It seemed the perfect mix of the two, the stories of the history. So the sagas, for example, are the stories of these people. And the fact that I can go today and stand where these people in these histories stood, see the same things that they saw, pretty much. And it's that connection.

And it takes you back to this whole idea with the Celtic prayer and the idea of a thin place and bringing heaven down. And I just think that in Iceland, I think Iceland is very close to heaven in many aspects. It's sort of this history, these stories, and it's not built up. And it's just, you can feel close to God.
When you see, like when you're stood, looking at a waterfall, which is towering above you, and you think of God's creation, it's wonder, basically.

C: Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

P: So this is on how the lax in this world like, and he's talking about spiritual experiences. "He would be standing down by the bay, perhaps in the early days of spring, or up on the headland to the rest of the bay where there was a mound with a rich green tusker on top, or perhaps up on a hill above the home field, when the grass was high and ready for mowing. Then suddenly he felt he saw God's image open before him.
He felt the deity reveal itself in nature, in an inexpressible music, the sonic revelation of the deity. And before he knew it, he himself had become a trembling voice in a celestial chorus of glory.
His soul seemed to be rising out of his body like frothing milk brimming over the edge of a basin.
It was as if his soul were flowing into an unfathomable ocean of high, high life, beyond words, beyond all perception. His body suffused by some surging light that was beyond all light."

C: That's really evocative, isn't it?

P: I just love the idea of the deity revealing himself in nature and in that everything coming together. Sometimes you just get that feeling.

God is there in that nature. And that's where I feel closest to God, in the nature, which I just think is fantastic. And it's not something I even thought about before I started speaking to you and made that connection between Iceland and the spirituality.

But as soon as that was made, then it all just makes sense. It's everywhere.

C: So how has it impacted your spiritual life?

P: So I do a lot of the Celtic prayer. Now, if I want to be spiritual, I do tend to go into nature more. I sort of walk on the waterfront. It's also made me appreciate stories more and do a lot of work within my own children's ministry on stories.
So one of my projects I'm doing is called Story Church. And part of that, I want to recreate moments of wonder. So last Christmas, we had something called Lost in the Snow. And as part of that, a lantern was lit and held up. And as it touched, we had someone turn on snow machines. So suddenly it was snowing inside with the children.
And that moment of wonder and that sense of God within that wonder.

And in summer, we're going to do one based on Jonah and the big fish. Again, the sense of wonder and nature and the ocean, which was described as the countenance of God. And that has stuck with me, that description. And I want to somehow impart that onto the children who come to this event.
So it's just made me feel more alive actually, that part of this nature and part of this kingdom of God that he's not just in the church.

C: Yeah. So it really sounds as if your awareness of your connection with God has really broadened from just what you would have seen as what you ought to do in church into all aspects of both who you are in the world in which we live.

I'm hearing connections to story, to history, to politics. You were talking about the volcano erupting and the French Revolution and seeing Jesus's heart for the poor in that and also in nature and in your kind of creativity.
So it sounds as if some of the stuff that you're bringing to the kids, you wouldn't have done if you hadn't kind of joined some of those dots.

P: Yeah, I'd say that's correct. So in terms of the politics, we're an estates church and we're very big on being there for everyone like Jesus was. And the trouble is being in estates church, there's not much nature around. So we have to try and make what little green space we have around the church into nature, so people can come enjoy it and feel the same.
Because a lot of people can't get in a car and drive down to a beach or see the ocean. So we need to try and do that.

So yeah, then I wouldn't have made the connections between the stories and history before. Because like you were saying earlier, you had your life before you become a Christian and your life after you become a Christian. But then if you reach back into that before life, so to speak, there's so much which you can sort of pull back with you. Like the whole Icelandic thing had been sort of 25 years odd, probably more. So just ruminating about the angels of the universe, of the ocean being the countenance of God, the poetry and the stories and the priests. And then it all suddenly clicks and things make sense when they need to make sense.
And I think sometimes you just need a little nudge from someone to make that final connection. And then it's like opening the book anew, so to speak.

C: Yes. As I listen to you, my sense is that your soul had already connected with the divine in the context of quite a lot of this stuff that you were studying before you met God in a sort of more conscious way.
So part of this for you has been kind of unearthing this huge treasure trove of knowledge and passion about something really quite unusual, which I hope will be really encouraging for people. That thing that you're passionate about and that you love, you can find God in it very probably.

P: Yeah God, is everywhere. When you start really looking, you'll find him. And you'll probably find him in ways you weren't even expecting.

And he would have already sowed the seeds. You just need to wait for him to bloom.

C: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And for people who are Christians, there are seeds blooming that we tend not to spot because they don't look sort of church-shaped as you might have put it.

P: Yeah. You need to look around and so just be open at any time, I suppose, and just prayerful.

C: Yes. There was a stanza from something called The Lily that you shared with me that I found really, really rather beautiful. I wondered if you'd like to share that.

P: Yeah. So The Lily was written by Árstein Esquimson and I apologise for my pronunciation. It's probably not even close. So he was a monk and a poet. And The Lily, he wrote, and it's considered a masterpiece in Iceland. And there's an expression everybody wanted to have composed The Lily.

C: So when did he write this? When are we talking?

P: So he died in 1361. And this is the final stanza.

"Almighty God, commanding every station of angels and nations, unneedful of place or time, holding firm with false unmoving, being at once without, within, above, below, and there between. Praise be to thee forever after, one true God in Trinity."

C: Yeah, that absolutely kind of encapsulates that sense that we've been talking about of God being everywhere, that phrase unneedful of place or time. Being at once without, within.

P: When I first read that, it just clicked. And it's very similar to a lot of the Celtic prayer, like without within, God above me, God below me.
But I love that, I've got that last stanza printed next to my desk in the restory. And whenever I sit, I will pray that before I start work, just as that reminder that God is everywhere.

C: Wonderful. Yes. Yeah. So you're in Suffolk.

P: Yeah.

C: In East Anglia, which is a very different kind of landscape to Iceland. Do you find God in the nature around you too? Is it wild enough for you?

P: Well, it's everywhere, but I find him like the waterfront we've got. I think God is very strong in water and streams and oceans. So that's probably where I feel him closest in this area.

But he's even in the parks and the trees. I mean, if you ever get a moment of stillness somewhere, you can hear the birds singing, and then God's there in that.

C: So it sounds like part of what kind of reconnecting with your passion around Iceland and Icelandic culture and landscape has done is that it's helped you to kind of put into your spiritual practice, going out into places deliberately.

P: Yeah, that's true. The more I do it, the more it becomes ingrained and the more I see God in it.

C: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's brilliant. Well, thank you ever so much, Paul. That's been really, really interesting.

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