Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
Sitting on the outer wall between sea and rock the young monks gather with their questions. My recent healing still feels tenuous, and here these young monks dutifully bring concerns regarding sin. Sin is either too personal or too hypothetical. I would rather answer questions about the message Jesus had of God’s love for all people. That isn’t what they want to hear. They want assurance of personal righteousness. Even in a new time it is the same old sin all wound up in a tiresome rope. I need a moment alone.
It is a dizzy silence that the young monks allow me. I move down from the wall, onto the steps to put my head against the cool stone wall.
Dear God, I am tired and aching just now. Fill me with the Creative Spirit, the fervor of the love message. Open these young fellows to the pure joy of Spirit. Please break in with healing. Amen.
And here is Brother Lugh, bringing me a cup of cold water.
Maybe the better understanding I begged for is here now, in the silent young faces of these monks. And the shift from obligations of sin to the resurrection of joy doesn’t happen by fixing over youth’s same old ancient questions about sin. Maybe the repentance that is needed is for me to remember my own youthful quest to attain a personal goodness.
I can remember my need to please others and God too, all wrapped up in repentance. So why do young seekers still reach for the hard rule and punitive correction? These nearly pure youth have committed themselves to the monastic rule, grasping for a single righteousness for turning from the guilt of sin, toward an affirmation — not of joy — but a solid list of rules.
And I thought surely, they would want to know the good news of the resurrection.
When I remember my own youth, my sister and I didn’t tell our Pharisee father that we were going out to that place on the river to hear the new preacher. We were following the voice in the wilderness, baptizing, in the Jordan. There was a huge crowd; it was the place to be. The carpenter’s son, Jesus, was there in the crowd so we made our way in his direction.
We knew him. His father was the master carpenter who remodeled our house. Jesus and I had carried the beams for the new portico that summer.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 