Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Skåne
My rowing mate shows me his collection of chism and he’s telling me a perception of Christianity I’ve been critical of from time to time, but in my own constant devotion to the simple Jesus love, I’ve never considered the collection of wealth as the very nature of Christianity.
I keep the teachings of my dear friend, Jesus, always so close it is the love that beats my heart. And now I find, in this future world where I’ve awakened, I miss a few things of Christianity.
I long to be with Christians because, even amid all the oddities Emil perceives as Christian, is the spiritual community he doesn’t know or see – the ancient chanting and shared music of the ritual — the pilgrimages of many with one spirit — the lone dessert mothers and fathers always keeping the faith — the unceasing welcome from strangers who also claim Christianity — the accessibility of shared prayer — the belonging in the love that hides in the hearts of so many of us – people with all their differences and sameness woven together in patterns of belonging. Even these nearly 800 years after Jesus’s earthly life, the bonding together in the invisible love of God continues.
I even miss the Jewish root in the ancient scriptures – tables set for family gatherings, or the student poring over the scriptures by dwindling flickers of candle, suddenly noticing an amazingly simplicity in the shared love law, deep in everyone’s root. Jesus called it to our attention, reading again Leviticus 19:18. He argued that the lawyers of his time were letting this important law go in all their efforts to keep the clutter of ritual. But ritual is a door that can open or close.
And now, it is the thing that Emil believes defines Christianity. He notices golden reliquaries without a thought of any saintly virtues that drove people to enshrine bones — as tangible Christian evidence that such goodness can persist on earth as it is in heaven.
He collects the white linen given in grace, and he values the weave of the flax, and the silks and dyes of the costly garments of priests, the grandeur of the churches, amid the poverty of the people.
What I see as Christian is a symbol of hope and abundance, a sign of the turning, giving power to the poor. Yet a Viking, nurtured in greed, sees a rich church rising up in a humble land as an unguarded resource of wealth.
(Continues Tuesday, April 22, 2025)
Lazarus Ink 