#66.2, Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Jutland

         Maybe it was after a snooze, or another day and night altogether when I awoke to hear the seiðr bargaining with the sailors to give us passage for the journey to sail across the sea. And so, we are sailing now. We two passengers are just riding along when the sail is all that is needed and even the oarsmen seem to have little to do. Only the tiller needs a man, and that is because we are human, and we think we know better than the wind how to choose a direction for our wanderings.

         The seiðr speaks softly, under the sounds of sea and wind creaking the mast and rope lines of this little boat. She tells me something of this journey.

         “I’ve not been back to my homeland since I was carried off so many years ago.”

         “You were carried from your home as a young woman — all alone?”

         “I was an infant. But of course, even Jesus was rejected in his own land.”

         “You know that of the Christian story?” [Mark 6:1-13]

         “I know that is true for seers, prophets, truthtellers, maybe even time-traveling rune signs.  People fear knowledge from a distant source that just comes to one who is common among them. Older generations only want the children to know what they, themselves, have to teach. If there is a mystery to be found from another source it is perceived as fearsome.”

         I understand what she’s saying. My thoughts are unspoken.  The invisible God with no name has so many ways to speak through Creation to all humankinds and maybe even to critters too and once in a while someone listens. Then the voice of God becomes known. It is human nature to grab the tiller of that wind driven craft and create a religion, or a cult of ritual, or a system of obedience, to allow some to be included and some to be excluded. It becomes smaller than the mystery, smaller than the universe, smaller than the flames of the gathering fire, until it is small enough to be all in human control.

         What can I say to her?

         “How is it that you know the Christian stories?”

“I don’t know all the Christian stories. And if I ever came upon a great binding of bible, which I’ve heard tell of, I wouldn’t even know how to read it.”

“How is it you know the Christian stories?”

         “They are all around us always being told.”

(Continues tomorrow)