Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
Brother Lugh and I are speaking of his grief at the loss of his father.
He says, “I was supposed to leave my old life behind. But it was my father who sponsored me here, when Abbott McTyre was gathering monks. And now I’ve learned that the plague was rising and my father knew of the danger to himself as a physician. He sent us two more novices who were untouched by plague. I was sure it was my father who sent them when I saw the chalice.
“Here everyone was talking about gratitude for the chalice. At the same time the community was morning a lost monk who had died in a fall. The gratitude was for my own father’s gifts, and yet he died alone on the mainland. The only grief allowed was for the brother who threw himself off the cliff. I hardly knew that brother, but the other death I am prohibited from speaking of, was my own father. So this grief is mine alone.
“Then I went to the ledge over the sea to pray but my prayer had no words. I looked down and considered the possibility of slipping off the ledge to my own death. There was no peaceful search of my soul. Yet my sins separated me from God.
“Then, what I saw below me was the edge of the sea, with the tide out and something strange among the rocks. I climbed down to see what I couldn’t understand, and I found a dead man with sea weed hair, and a glistening eye. No one else saw him even when they searched. They thought my grief set me to lying. So, I confessed it, and was absolved for lying, but now here you are that same living dead man.”
What can I say?
“Brother Lugh, it was gracious of you to bring me this cup of water. Thank you. My prayer is gratitude for your kindness and also for my own healing and life.”
“Gratitude to God?” he asks.
“May I speak aloud that Jesus prayer as gratitude for this little communion?
He prepares.
“Holy One, Heavenly Spirit of mother and father to all of Creation,”
He interrupts, “No! The words are ‘Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name’.”
Brother Lugh knows the familiar, comfortable, recitation of his own language words. My words are just a different pattern of the same prayer.
(Continues Tuesday, August 11)
Lazarus Ink 