#59.10, Thursday, August 22, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. farm in the Vosges Mts.

         While Ana sleeps, I keep watch and I am remembering the times of our lives looking at this shelf of precious things Ana keeps.  Now I see that Ana keeps a love letter I wrote to her while I was observing silence with the monks at Annegray before there was Luxeuil. I should read it over remembering how I expected our love should be kept secret from the monks, now maybe it should be secret from the grandchildren too.  I read it again for things I wouldn’t want read by others.

         No, it doesn’t have secrets from children, just from monks. I went to the monastery for Lenten prayers before we were blessed into marriage, but it was no use because my thoughts of Ana were leaping and dancing delighted, through any possible somber remembrances of Holy ritual before I could turn my prayers of gratitude over into the required seasonal sorrows of Lent. Just now, I could easily say those grieving Lenten prayers properly. But then, there I was, praying without ceasing with the monks, side-by-side with my deepest memories of Jesus, my friend. I know he would have appreciated my inattention to solemn prayers just for the sake of love. All of the many varieties of love were the theme of Jesus’s everything. He wouldn’t have required my sorrow at his death when I, myself, am the earthly sign that it isn’t a forever death. But the monks require the sorrow and the tears, and just now, I am really glad they do. My spirit aligns with the those who are grieving this day. When I wrote this letter my hopes were that Ana and I could live together forever. Now those same hopes are this sadness.

         Dear God, I should find gratitude for all these old hopes fulfilled, but right now that giddy gratitude seems as misplaced as the required sorrow was on the day I wrote this letter. I am grateful, but not joyful.

         And here is the ash-root harp Simon and I made for him that terrible summer. He wanted to fill the hole in the music that my absence had left at the church. Then it was his absence from us that left the deepest hole in our hearts. Simon’s book is here on the shelf as well.  It speaks in his voice of the child’s goodness. Ana and I still grieve for him.

         Then his harp kept newer songs because Brandell learned his own music on this harp.

(Continues Tuesday, August 27, 2024)