Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
Thunder frightens Trinity. As night comes so does the distant rumbling and flashes of light in the dark circle of sky. The little monk sleeps but I’m awake and very still as the canine would have me be. In the storm, she’s paces nervously. The shag sees. Then there is a sudden light that fills the eye and the whole inside of our hovel, followed by the boom. Trinity is terrified — she looks hard at the sleeping monk. Surely, she must know this is just another storm and storms come and go with night noises; but her whole boney frame quivers.
I would speak my worn out mantra, “I can’t help you.” But now I have something new to say aloud, “I can help you, sweat Trinity; come over here to me. I can help you.” And the three-legged boney canine immediately flops onto my own boney frame, her heart pounding, her breath is pacing into panting faster and faster gulps of fear. I find I can wrap her in the safety of my arms. I sing her a soulful lullaby in my own odd Hebrew words; the dog and bird know I’m singing and the psalm blankets us in peace.
It is all about the healing now. I thank God for these creatures, and for my own healing amid the quivering breaths and the song. “I can help you to the calming place of the song. I can help you.” I say again and again aloud for my own hearing. “I can help you dear faithful Trinity.”
***
On this fresh new day, I find I am able to move as I haven’t stretched my limbs in a very long time and realize I am on the mend. It is slow, and uneventful, hard to notice. But slow is good. It is still the opposite of dead.
Then this morning while the little hermit is deep in prayer, the shag silently, without any fanfare or grand overture, hops from the top perch onto the rock rim of the hole for the sky. It perches on the opening. Trinity paces her concern then nudges the little hermit away from his meditation.
His prayer doesn’t end but becomes a full-on dance of joy. He looks at the nearly healed shag from inside then he goes outside followed closely by Trinity. Dear God, you are celebrating with us this moment, are you not?
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 