I wish Celtic monasticism would have won out over Roman

And these excerpts from the early Irish and Welsh are why I wish this:

A hedge of trees surrounds me, a blackbird's lay sings to me, praise I shall not conceal,
Above my lined book the trilling of the birds sings to me.
A clear-voiced cuckoo sings to me in a gray cloak from the tops of bushes,
May the Lord save me from Judgment; well do I write under the greenwood.

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The path I walk, Christ walks it. May the land in which I am be without sorrow.

May the Trinity protect me whereever I stay, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Bright angels walk with me--dear presence--in every dealing.

In every dealing I pray them that no one's poison may reach me.

The ninefold people of heaven of holy cloud, the tenth force of the stout earth.

Favorable company, they come with me, so that the Lord may not be angry with me.

May I arrive at every place, may I return home; may the way in which I spend be a way without loss.

May every path before me be smooth, man, woman, and child welcome me.

A truly good journey! Well does the fair Lord show us a course, a path.

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And this from the homily of John Scottus Eriugena on the prologue to the Gospel of John:

"What was made in him was life." Far removed from the power of all reason and intellect, the blessed Evangelist has revealed to us divine mysteries.... This sentence can be read in two ways. We can say either "What was made," adding "was life in him," or we can say "what was made in him," adding "was life." Thus by virtue of this ambiguity, we can discern two meanings here. The interpretation: What was made fragmented in space and time, distinct in kind, combined or separate, all this was life in him, is not the same as: What was made in him was nothing other than life. Let our meaning be the following therefore: All those things which were made through him are life in him and are one in him. For all things existed--or subsisted--in him as causes before they came into existence in themselves as effects. The mode of existence beneath him of those things which were made through him is not that of those things in him whch are his very self.

All things therefore that were made through him live immutably in him and are life. In him all things neither existed nor shall exist according to intervals of time and space, but all things in him are above time and space and are one. Visible and invisible, corporeal and incorporeal, endowed with reason and without reason, all subsist universally in him, heaven and earth, the abyss and whatever is in them, these things live in him and are life, and they subsist eternally. Even those things which seem to us to lack all power of movement have life in the Word. And if you wish to know how and in what way all things which were made through the Word subsist vitally, uniformly, and causally in him, then take the nature of creatures as an example and learn to see the Creator in those things which were made in him and through him: "For the invisible things of him," as the Apostle says, "are clearly understood by the intelligence, being understood from the things which are made."

See how the causes of all things which the sensible sphere of this world contains all subsist simply and uniformly in this sun which we call the great luminary of the world. From there the forms of all bodies proceed, the beauty and diversity of colors and all the other things which can be said of sensible nature. Consider the manifold and infinite power of seeds, and how a great number of plants, shrubs, and animals are all contained at once in individual seeds, how there rises from them a lovely multiplicity of forms beyond number. See with your inner eyes how the many rules of a science become one in the artistry of an expert, and how they have life in the spirit of the person who masters them. See how the infinite number of lines becomes as one in a single point, and take note of other examples from nature. Raised up by these beyond all things as if by the wings of the contemplation of nature, you can gaze into the secret places of the Word with the pinnacle of your mind, aided and illumined by divine grace, insofar as this is granted to human beings who seek their God by rational arguments, and see who all the things which are made through the Word live in him and are life in him. "In him," as the divine voice says, "we live and move and have our being" (Acts 17:28).