Historical setting: 589 C.E. In the Vosges Mountains
There, breaking through the brush at the trail, in the spring breeze is all the lightness of sunshine — it is Ana.
“The servant told me of your thoughts. I ran ahead of him to see you and to say I’m grateful, I’m so happy…”
I lay down the saw in the heaps of brush and go closer to her for the perfect silence – a gaze with no word spoken.
We stand here just … just looking, until the servant catches up, and he is here with us too.
“I see you’ve already told him, Ana.”
“Told me?” I ask.
“I was hoping you’d come back.” She said. “I didn’t know there was a rule. And you aren’t even a monk, how could there be a rule?”
“It is as you said, the rule made by men for woman can too easily be oblivious to the nature of women. No wonder we get into tangles.”
I happen to have a twig in my hand. I just notice I am still grasping onto it. It was with the brush I gathered to thatch the nesting boxes. I laid the tools aside, but I still have the twig. Now Ana is looking down at the twig in my hand so I hand it to her. “It is the way of birds, you know.”
She takes it from me laughing with her creek-sparkling blue eyes. We both glance at the servant. She explains, “It’s probably not a bird thing for cages, but the wild wrens and the doves know well what it is.” She brandishes the twig. She looks the twig over very carefully then tells me, “It is a very lovely twig. It is by far the best twig ever offered to me, so let us now just fill the house all up with twigs and sticks and call it a nest!”
“Thank you God, for simple gifts.”
Says the servant brother. “I’ll just walk back alone now and I will let the father know the rule of Ana has been breeched and also we may soon be able to send all of our messages off to Ana on bird’s legs. I will bring you a pair of squabs that will always come home to your house when they are of an age to fly.”
Brother servant goes on his way, and Ana and I drag the thatch and sticks all the way up the hill to the house with no roof – yet.
(Continues Tuesday, May 3)
Lazarus Ink 