#56.14, Thurs., May 30, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. Vosges Mts.

         “So, Brandell, while Gaia was interrogating the nuns, did you find the monks as intimidating as the last time you met with the brothers?”

         “No Papa, it was really very fine.  I think my own brother, Gabe put them up to it.  But I’ve been commissioned to paint a mural of a Jesus story on the wall there that will be visible from the healing waters.”

         “Really? They want you to paint them an icon?”

         “No, a mural, a full, wall-sized picture of a bible story. The people can be life-sized, as though they are in the same room with those actual people praying for healing.”

         “What story are you going to show them?” Maybe I was assuming it would be Lazarus, in his strange state of perpetual healing. I am fully prepared to help him get it right and solve this rumor of a rumor once and for all. But no.

         “They asked me to paint any other healing story and I’ve chosen John 9 the healing of the man who was blind from birth. I will have Jesus kneeling nearly at the edge of the healing waters of the monastery, reaching down as though he was taking mud into his hand. Then a blind man will be there anticipating his new way of seeing when he can use physical eyes to look upon all the things he knows from touch and sound and smell. Behind them will be the faces of all those people, the Romans looking for cause to persecute the pharisees, and the pharisees looking for the rule, the Church doctrine authority, wondering how this could happen at Luxeuil, then the Persians at the silk market, the slaves from the hippodrome, the icon painter, a Master too easily mistaken for God but really just a mad Poseidon up from the depths of the sea. Everyone with every different idea of earthly rule will be there in wonder and awe confused by notions of sin amid the simplicity of a healing.”

         “And you don’t think that will stir the ire of the Church?”

         “Papa, surely you don’t think I am going to put name tags on all those people. Even if everyone knows who they are, no one would dare to say it with words.”

         “How is that spit and mud of a healing story gives the hope for those swimming in the waters of Luxeuil?”

         “Well, in the end Jesus sends the man to the healing waters to wash away the spit and clay. Vision came with washing the things of earth away.”

(Continues, Tuesday, June 4, 2024)