Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
I know something of healing. It doesn’t always appear with the fanfare of instant restored flight. Sometimes it is only discovered in the remembrance of the hurt, then it is simply taking notice of the painlessness of the healing scar. A new freedom from the pain and the limitation must be imagined and searched for then discovered anew. It requires one to discover what was thought to be damaged. Healing is just present to be found, not earned. It is grace.
Thank you, God.
I know prayers here begin as they do in all Christian places, with a separate name for each of the three legs of the monk’s dog. The names are Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And it is the fully accepted theology that if one leg isn’t spoken the dog will fall down — a three-legged stool would tumble with only two or one leg. Standing requires balance. And balance requires three, so if God is invented from human understanding, a tripod is required. But if God is, with or without the pull of the earth, if God created the earth as a beloved work of art, and God created the downward pull that clings all things to earth, then the larger than visible God, possibly also stands on three prongs, or maybe none at all, and in that way is all around us and yet everywhere else at the same time also.
Thank you, God, by no name, by three names, by any name, the beginning and the end, or perhaps no end. And in your namelessness, may healing be noticed even as it is unspoken.
Today, the little monk celebrates the departure of the bird. He grins, and prays, and takes the pail of sea-stuff back to the sea, then returns and starts to remove the branch which takes up precious space in our midst. I object, and he doesn’t hear me. I want to use that branch to pull myself up as I continue healing.
Trinity hears me and argues to him to keep the branch, barring her teeth, and clasping onto the branch when the monk tries to remove it. Frail though I am, I reach for the branch, and draw myself up with it, and finally the monk understands it is my need that the canine begs for.
Thank you, God.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 