Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
Sitting here on a stacked stone wall, reeling from the climb up a long path I see Sister Brigid is already across the valley. She went on back without waiting for me. I wonder if she assumed I would find a welcome among this community of monks so I would now be staying here.
She’s probably going to Timothy’s little cell. They will speak with silent fingers and Timothy will know she has sent me to Brother Lugh.
She told me the monks in this cluster of cells are fairly new inhabitants of this place, not yet here a whole year round. She told me it is usual that monks come and go but those who die here get buried here forever and ever. Apparently, death lingers, but the living come and go.
These stone hovels have endured many seasons; yet every community that inhabits them is mortal. When a place is populated by generations of people continuance is promised through its children. To have on-going generations it requires a heterogeneous social network, more than a monastery provides. It is the simple fact of life. Continuation requires all ages and stages of humankinds, women, and these young men with their visions, and the old dreaming dreams. I assume Sister Brigid is right. The community of this monastery will always be a narrow sliver of only one immediate generation, without any enduring legacy. Broken stone hovels and markers provide the memorial to failing human endurance.
Brother Lugh comes with a cup of water. It is refreshing.
“Thank you. It’s thoughtful of you.”
I ask the grieving monk, “Were you with your father when he passed away?”
Brother Lugh buries his weeping in his hands.
I lay my hand on his quivering shoulder.
“No. I promised him I would try to always do God’s will, so we assumed this place would become my home forever and after. I wouldn’t even know of my father’s death but for two novices who were brought over from the mainland to fill out our numbers. They brought a golden chalice with them — a gift from the estate of their sponsor who recently passed. And then they named their sponsor, and he was my father.”
We sit in silence, except I know his weeping. I stare into the fired clay cup he brought me for water. Surely, this generous little cup is a chalice perfectly suited to this meager end to earth. A golden chalice will be something strange in this place.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 