Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Skåne
“So when you were an infant you were put out to die of exposure here in a ruin of a house? And that practice is why women are rare here?”
The seiðr fondles the jade pendant still at her neck. “You speak as though being rare were a problem.”
“Isn’t something askew when a whole people simply puts its girl children outside in the wind to die?”
“So, the Christian God sent you back from your own death just so you could come here and judge our Pagan rituals and wonders?”
“No! I’m not on a mission from God to judge you. I am simply a normal empathetic human being. All my years have allowed me the opportunity to hold and nurture infant daughters and infant sons. I’ve seen my children grow up as individuals – as unique and valued human beings – not valued for their rarity of gender, but for who they are.”
“I hear you judging us. It seems to be the Christian nature to come creeping into another’s land uninvited and decide if we are righteous in the eyes of some invisible unnamed loser god who hangs suffering on a cross while other gods are honored on runestones and monuments as winners.”
What can I say? Is this the time that calls for this Christian pilgrim on a mission to gather up multitudes of Pagans, pleasing God with the head count, then, like holy magic, the Paganism is vanquished and the saint scores a win for the Christians? After all, proselytizing seems to be what Christians do best.
My silence is gaping. I walk out onto the rocks in the tide to give this my best thought and I come to the edge of the sea offering God a silence in which to answer.
Dear God, what can I say? I’m waiting for your answer, God. Is she asking me to explain the value of human life? Should I mention the love command, the love source, the fearless love? Give me the good words for this sermon I need to give now.
I have nothing to say. I look back toward the doorway that isn’t a door and I see the seiðr alone there, so rare. The wind fondles her skirts, pressing her robes against her abundant woman’s form – breasts that have never nurtured an infant, a belly that has never shared the thump of life and there I see my answer to her should not come as judgement, or a win, rather it is more of a shared grief.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 