"Fearless Acceptance" — A Conversation with the Poet S.E. Reid

The Christianity of Celts, poetry as devotional attention, and the freezing of peas.

“NURTURE: Saint Kevin of Glendalough and the Blackbird” by wORKINGARTS. Image courtesy of their Etsy.

To the poet S.E. Reid, there is only the finest line between the natural, poetic, and Christian worlds. That evanescent boundary is where she worships, gardens, and writes.

You can experience all three of her activities (though she doesn’t strongly differentiate them) in her newsletter, The Wildroot Parables. There, S.E. mixes devotional poetry, community conversations, and glimmering essays inspired by the natural enclave she and her husband are raising in the Pacific Northwest. She was kind enough to speak with me back at the end of August, just as the summers around us were turning into the earliest moments of fall.

Her Faith and Celtic Christianity

Me: How did you come to Christ?

S: My memory is of coming to Christ at five, in vacation bible school. I'm pretty sure those little resurrection eggs probably had something to do with it. I remember growing up nondenominational Protestant. My father was a worship leader, he did that for years and years. And my older brother was a worship leader for years and years. Quite frankly, I have always thought I should have a more sweeping, epic faith journey, than to be 34 and still a Christian. But I don’t, you know? I came to faith at five and just marched my way through Christian high school, Christian camps, different churches, and here I am, still a Christian. It's been almost 30 years of just learning and growing.

Me: I’m glad to hear that it’s something that you haven’t fallen away from, that’s a blessing.

S: Yeah, especially since it does seem like deconstruction is quite common now. And I have only respect and compassion for people who who are dealing with that.

Me: So after you grew up non-denominational, how did you come to be attracted to Celtic Christianity?

S: My parents were adult converts, and I have a theory that parents who didn’t grow up in the faith are more open with their own children when it comes to what’s acceptable and what isn’t. And so I grew up with a lack of fear when it came to things that are on the boundary between what’s considered acceptable for Christians to think about and what isn’t. I grew up very steeped in fantasy, fairy tales, and folk tales. The Last Unicorn was my favorite movie growing up, and my dad was is really into Tolkien, so he read me Lord of the Rings when I was in fourth grade. That’s where the Celtic attraction started, in this interest in the more mystical and mysterious things I grew up with.

I've been fascinated with Ireland since I was very small, and when I was a late teen, I traveled there for the first time and just fell in love with the place. Then when I was in my twenties, I really started reading more widely. I’d always been interested in language as a writer, but it took me a while to find my groove as a reader. And so when I started discovering the mystic Christian writers like Julian of Norwich, Hildegard of Bingen, and others, my whole world opened up. I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, there are people who think this way, there are people who write this way, this is fascinating.’ It was through Ireland and through that reading that I started to realize there was this whole other corner of Christianity that I’d never heard of. And around that point, I found John O'Donoghue, who very famously wrote a lot of beautiful, Irish spiritual books.

And that’s also when I started posting my own Celtic poetry on Instagram. And as soon as I started hashtagging my poetry as #CelticChristianity, it’s amazing how many people found me that way. I’m still friends with a lot of them, and I’ve even met a few of them in person. It was just wonderful to find these people who were also interested in what interested me.

Me: What did you find attractive about Celtic Christianity and the thinkers that you mentioned?

S: Foundationally, I’m fascinated that Celtic Christianity was one of the few corners of Christianity that wasn’t colonized. The Celts weren’t taken over. They weren’t forced into Christianity. The missionaries showed up in Ireland and said, ‘Here’s this thing we have!’ And the Celts went, ‘Hey, we like that. We’ll use that.’ And what’s so beautiful and powerful about Celtic Christianity is its fearless acceptance that God’s character can be found in places that you wouldn’t expect. That has been the most powerful thing for me in the last few years: when I stopped seeking after theology and doctrine (having a firm foundation in those things, of course) and started seeking the character of God, it was amazing how unafraid I became. You can read something that you don’t necessarily agree with and still say, ‘That’s okay. I can still find God’s character in this.’ The more you seek after knowing Him and His character, the less afraid you become of those things. It only shows you the hugeness of Him, the vastness of Him, and how un-topple-able He is. It isn’t a word, but you can’t knock Him off His throne. It’s very easy for Christians to get fearful of knocking God off His throne somehow. I wonder if it’s because we shrink Him so often.

Her Devotional Poetry

Me: How did you begin with your poetry and your devotionals? Unless you don't separate the two.

S: I don't separate them now. When I was little I wanted to be a writer, and of course when you’re a kid and you say you want to be a writer, you mean you’re going to be a published author and have all these books that you’ve written. That hasn't happened yet, and that’s okay. Poetry was something I dabbled in early on and then let fade out. I took a poetry class in college and thought, ‘Okay, fun,’ and then I didn’t come back to it for the longest time. And I had a resistance to ‘Christian’ writing, because growing up I had read some obviously Christian fiction and gone, ‘No thanks.’ It just didn’t speak to my experiences.

But it’s interesting how God led me back into Christian writing. If you told the me of 10 years ago that I’d be mostly sharing Christian writing, I probably would’ve been like, ‘Yeah right.’ A lot of it happened from reading work by the Celts. Poetry was a big deal in the Celtic world, and not just because of its beauty, but because of the meanings behind everything in it. Poets were considered the weavers of magic. And so I started writing little poems on Instagram, which is where it started. I realized that I had this platform of a few hundred people following me at the time, and I just thought to share these little poems here and there. Why not? And the more I wrote it, the more I started to realize that it wasn’t difficult. And I was like, ‘Okay, I guess I’m a poet now.’ I don’t know if it’s a good thing to say or not, but it wasn’t taking much effort to write these poems. It was like I was just describing an image in front of me. It wasn’t something that I had to sweat for, which I feel bad saying because I know so many poets really work hard at their craft. I like to practice, but I’ve noticed that, for me, poetry is more of a devotional act.

Me: What do you mean?

S: I want people to see what I’m seeing. Like I’m catching God in the corner of my eye, and I want someone else to notice Him too. And I think that’s especially important because many of the people who found me on Instagram happened to be outwardly pagan or somewhere on the fringe of belief, where they don’t feel like they fit in the Christian faith. So they feel lost when it comes to talking about God. And so to hear a Christian say, ‘I see God in nature. How about you?’ almost opens the door for them to say, ‘Oh, yeah, I guess I do see that. I don’t really know what that means yet. But I’m curious to find out.’

God at the hummingbird feeder? Image courtesy of S.E.’s Instagram.

Me: You said that poetry was about seeing God from the corner of your eye and then bringing that to others. Can you describe that as worship?

S: Growing up Christian in America, I had more than my fair share of apologetics classes. I’ve been there, done that, when it comes to evangelizing, I’ve gone on the mission trips and shared my testimony. And I’m not gonna say any of it was hollow, because it definitely wasn’t hollow. But I do think that story matters so much more when it comes to revealing God’s character in people’s lives. It’s telling the story of how He has appeared. Especially when I look at nature, I just feel like if you’re really looking, you can't miss Him. And sometimes, it’s in a way that’s frustrating, like, ‘Oh, and you’re still there!’

I think what evangelizing often fails to do is allow God to be who He is. We lock Him into this picture of what Scripture says He is, which is where you start, right? If you’re a Christian, you start from the fact that the character of God is revealed in His scripture. But if we believe in a living God, He’s still living and still active. I think the Incarnation teaches us that He uses incarnational things to reveal Himself to us. And, to me, that’s anything created. Whenever you catch a breath in wonder at something, who’s to say that isn’t a tiny incarnation of God saying, ‘I’m still here’?

So to get back to what you’re asking about the poetry, I’m very aware of the pagans in my audience. I want to say in a quiet, understated, non-preachy way, ‘The God that you think you know from the Bible might actually be broader.’ All the while trusting that if they’re sparked by that, then the Holy Spirit will then lead them toward the truth. I just feel it’s not necessarily my job to preach the gospel so much as to open its door just a crack. You may have heard all these terms and you may think you know what they mean, but there might be more to it. The story might still be going on, and it might find you in surprising places that you already love.

Me: Have you read any of the Romantics? They have a concept of the sublime in the natural world, and I was curious if that was something you’ve adapted.

S: I agree with that idea. The term ‘mindfulness’ maybe gets thrown around too much nowadays, but I do think that a lot of transcendence is awareness. We go through our lives so quickly, all the time. I do it, I’m just as guilty of missing things as anyone else. And so if a poem or an Instagram caption or a Substack newsletter can make someone stop the next time they notice something and think, ‘Oh, yeah, I see that,’ then it’s worth it.

To your question, I love Gerard Manley Hopkins. I absolutely adore his poetry, along with W.B. Yeats to a certain extent. And I love Billy Collins, who’s actually my favorite poet. I just love the way his poems switch in the final lines. I also love Pablo Neruda and Emily Dickinson, though I do need to branch out more when it comes to poems. I should read more poetry than I do, but I find that I have a kind of echolalia, where I copy someone else’s written mannerisms and pick up what I read. I have to be a little bit careful sometimes with that. I remember I went through a James Joyce phase and for the longest time after, I just couldn’t write a long sentence.

Now, the Serious Topics (Questions My Wife Told Me to Ask About S.E.’s Gardening)

Me: My wife sent in a few questions because she wants to be you when she grows up. We’re big admirers of your lifestyle. So I have a few questions. What does your year look like, between your garden, living, and cooking?

S: I’ll preface by saying that I personally am not a huge fan of the term ‘homesteading,’ given its historical baggage. And our goal has never been self-sufficiency, I don’t really believe that humans can be fully self-sufficient. We’re always going to rely on each other in communities. Our year is seasonal and actually begins in the fall, and so we’re coming up on the new year right now. For us, the new year is when everything slows down, thanks to the time of contemplation through Advent in the church calendar. But it’s also because of what’s considered the Celtic new year: Samhain, which is the end of October.

When fall starts, the first thing we do is clean out our chimney and our wood stove. We heat our house exclusively with firewood, so the wood stove is the heart of the house in every way. Winter (through Christmas) is definitely a time of slowing down. The garden rests, it all slows to a stop. We really try to focus on that idea in the wintertime, like it’s time now to just let new ideas ferment, germinate, incubate, and just stick. I really believe that a time of quiet is necessary for things to flourish.

In January, we start thinking more about getting everything set up for the garden year. Because of where we live in the maritime Northwest, we have quite a long growing season. We can start things early because it never gets super cold, and so in January I’ll start some of the earliest seeds and prune our apple tree, all in preparation.

But as soon as spring starts around February and March, that’s when it feels like the year never lets up. It’s starting seedlings, it’s rotating things in and out of the greenhouse, it’s getting the soil ready, it’s all this stuff and more. And spring is my favorite season. When it finally shows up, it’s like the best thing on earth: the signs of spring, the daffodils, when we know we finally made it through winter.

And then summer is just nonstop again. This year, we had a very strange garden year where everything started quite late. So it feels like we’re finally starting summer now. I’m finally seeing the things in the garden that will be ready to harvest. And so now’s the time, I’m gonna start canning and preserving and doing all the stuff we do in the kitchen. Our apple tree is producing, and I want to use as many of those apples as possible. We make applesauce, apple cider, and apple everything. We’ll even get tired of apples for a few weeks while I’m canning everything. So summer is busy busy. We’re busy just trying to get everything ready and trying to take time just to relax as well. But we want to make sure we have as much put away as possible so that we don’t have to think about it later. And then as fall rolls around again, even that early fall period tends to still be quite busy because we’re still finishing up on all the freezing and canning and preserving. And then it does slow back down, and it’s like, ‘Okay, we did it.’

Doing it (in chacos). Image courtesy of her Instagram.

Me: Why do y’all do this?

S: The main reason is because I have this deep philosophical issue with wasting anything. And so if we have something, I want to make sure we can use it. We’re not completely out in the boonies. We have neighbors, and we have a store that’s not too far away. We’re not completely isolated. And the financial perspective is part of it, we’re trying to cut down on the things that we spend on. But also, being connected to the things that we’re eating is just important to us.

Me: How do you prepare and preserve your garden as the year goes on?

S: It depends on how much produce you get. We inherited soil that was quite spent by the time we got it, and so the last few years have really been about amending the soil and adding compost to get it ready. I would get these beautiful vegetables, but they’d be tiny. I had a pumpkin one year that was this big, you know? [Measures a tennis ball with her fingers] Just for a laugh, I carved it into a jack-o-lantern.

Also, I like to preserve what we grow instead of eating it fresh because that helps us stretch it out. So for example, we eat a lot of peas. We love to put them in everything, and so I grow a whole lot of peas. Every day, it means going out twice a day, picking as many are ripe, shelling them right away, leaving them in the fridge until I have enough and then putting them straight into the freezer. So by the end of the season this year, we got a whole gallon bag of peas, which was awesome. It’s this process of just trying to always think, ‘Okay, would this food be better for us to eat fresh right now, or would it be better for us to preserve it by pickling it or turning it into jam?’ It’s just thinking ahead, and that way we know we’ll have it for later. Because there is nothing like opening a jar of applesauce or blackberry jam in winter and just being like, ‘Oh my gosh, I missed blackberry so much.’ It really does brighten everything up. It’s not out of a sense of desperation, since we’re not subsisting on what we grow, but it still feels better to crack open a jar of something that you planted yourself.

Me: What’s your relationship with the birds and wildlife in your garden?

S: They’ve been really gratifying. We do have our share of pests, but part of my goal for the garden is to introduce more green spaces and shady places into the garden. It’s working because we are getting more frogs, birds and snakes this year. They’re garter snakes, we don’t have any venomous snakes. You really do notice the difference, because now I have very few problems with slugs, which are a huge thing here. I mean, slugs just love our weather, and they’re usually a problem here. But lately they’re getting picked off by by the birds and the frogs.

Me: What do you mean, ‘more green spaces’?

S: The previous owners of our house were clearly very organized people. They were engineering brains, and so the way they laid everything out is beautiful. But it was very clear they did not want clutter of the natural type. They wanted to keep nature behind a certain boundary and not allow it to come any further. And so the garden is these raised beds, surrounded by pea gravel on top of landscape cloth. It just drives me absolutely nuts. Because the rocks pick up the heat and makes everything so hot, it’s just awful. So my goal starts with shuffling those rocks and getting rid of our gravel, so there’s a gentler boundary.

Me: I appreciate your time, and I have enjoyed this a lot. Thank you so much.

S: Thank you so much for reaching out. This has been great!

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Again, you can follow S.E.’s poetry and other writings through her newsletter, but you can also follow her garden’s pilgrim-like progress through her Instagram.

Thanks for being here, y’all. I’ll be in touch again on October 20 with a certain prayer for the artistic beauty of the Christian, as I’ve learned that beauty this past year.