On the Loss and Renewal of Power in Spirituality
Michel Quoist once wrote, “It is a bad sign for a follower of Christ to be well thought of by conventional Christians. Rather, it would be better if we were singled out as crazy or radical. It would be better if they pursued us, signed petitions against us, tried to get rid of us.” — Prayers of Life (1953)
He was speaking from within a religious context, but his words touch something far larger. They point to a truth that runs through every form of spirituality, creativity, and even subculture: the moment a living fire becomes respectable, it begins to die.
In his 1979 book Subculture: The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdige observed that “when a subculture is absorbed into mainstream culture, its oppositional force is neutralised.” When an idea becomes mainstream, it loses its power — and when a subculture becomes commercial, it loses its soul. The same can be said of religion and spirituality. The moment they become systems rather than movements, brands rather than mysteries, the power leaks away.
Even Jesus, when he first appeared, was profoundly countercultural. He stood against both the empire and the religious orthodoxy of his day, announcing a Kingdom “not of this world” (John 18:36). He ate with outcasts, broke purity laws, healed on the Sabbath, and overturned the tables of those who profited from faith. Scholars such as N. T. Wright and John Dominic Crossan describe him as a figure of radical renewal — a prophet whose words and actions disrupted the hierarchies of power. His way was never meant to become an institution; it was a movement of the heart, a rebellion of love against fear. Yet, as with all living movements, time and familiarity soften the edges. What once turned the world upside down becomes a structure trying to hold it still.
Every great spiritual current begins as an act of wildness — a spark of direct encounter with the unseen. The prophets, poets, and mystics who first felt it were usually misunderstood. They weren’t trying to build institutions or products. They were trying to articulate the inexpressible, to translate an experience of the divine that shattered ordinary categories. Over time, their followers built temples, wrote doctrines, and created safe language around what had once been dangerous. The edges were softened, the paradoxes resolved, and the mystery made palatable.
It’s easy to see how this happens in religion, but the same process occurs in every spiritual or creative field. The arts of inner transformation — prayer, contemplation, and the subtle workings of awareness — are meant to be doorways into encounter. Yet when they become codified, commercialised, or purely theoretical, they lose their living pulse. The same is true for changework. The hypnotic and linguistic arts were never meant to be reduced to “techniques.” At their best, they are doorways into transformation — the meeting of Presence and will, where awareness itself becomes the agent of change. When changework turns into corporate mindset training or self-help slogans, it loses its soul just as surely as religion does when it becomes comfortable.
The Celtic Christian tradition understood this instinctively. The early saints of Ireland and the Scottish isles lived close to the elements — prayer and practice woven into the rhythm of wind, sea, and soil. Their spirituality was experiential, relational, and earthy. They didn’t seek approval; they sought Presence. Many were regarded as eccentric or even mad by the standards of their time, yet that “madness” was simply the refusal to separate spirit from life. They lived the thin place — that sacred edge where heaven and earth overlap — not as metaphor but as reality.
The mystic and the prophet both know that real transformation always looks a little wild. It disrupts the predictable. It upends convention. That’s because true spirituality moves from the inside out; it can’t be contained by doctrine, structure, or technique. The deeper we go into Presence, the less we can explain it — and the less we fit neatly into anyone’s system.
For me, this has become a guiding truth: to live an authentic spiritual life is to stay in relationship with the living current, not the shell it leaves behind. Whether you call it prayer, contemplation, changework, or mindfulness doesn’t matter. What matters is that the practice remains alive, relational, unpredictable, and real.
We all face the temptation to domesticate what once set us free. The church does it, the self-development industry does it — and, if we’re not careful, we do it to ourselves. We take what once moved us deeply and turn it into routine. But the Spirit — or whatever name you give to that sacred Presence — cannot be tamed. It keeps spilling over, breaking forms, whispering in new tongues.
The challenge, then, is to remain a little mad — to keep something of the wildness alive. To pray not only in words but in movement. To find sacrament in washing dishes or walking in the rain. To let our work, whatever form it takes, return to its essence: the art of awakening what is already divine within us.
The Celtic way teaches that the sacred is never far away — it’s simply waiting to be recognised again. The deeper magic, as C. S. Lewis hinted, is love moving through everything. It can’t be owned, sold, or made respectable. It can only be lived.
So if you find yourself misunderstood, out of step with convention, or quietly dismissed as “too much” — take heart. It probably means the flame is still burning.
Ancient Whispers 
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