Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
Brother Lugh is glad to take me in. Maybe he was longing for a snoring mate. We begin this new day with the specified psalms then disperse from the church for private prayers.
I follow Brother Lugh through the early morning mist, to a high place with a crevasse hardly wide enough for a man to fit into. I stay behind, and watch as he uses the split to slide down onto a ledge below.
To our human eyes the birds all seem the same — fledglings and elders all feathered in their brilliant black and pure white. But those who sit here watching them for hours see they still court their one chosen mate. They take great care of their precious one egg. And, when a monk scales these cliffs for an omelet, they grieve the loss.
Today the birds are rising up, flocking, maybe leaving for a season and soon they will shed the bright orange beaks — losing their puffin magic in a season where it is no longer needed for enticing a mate — and they are off on the breeze across the sea.
I watch from above, as Lugh, slithers down to his own prayer place — on a bird’s ledge high above the sea.
Dear God, thank you for this new healing and thank you for the jagged rock, always pointing toward the heavens. [Footnote] Though I am bound to the mortal shell of earth, may I always serve you as a sign of your all-encompassing, invisible presence on earth as it is in heaven. Let me be your wide arms, opened to receiving another’s grief, as I am also well practiced in earthly grief. Amen.
Brother Lugh is folded in his prayers at this rising of the sun into the brightening. I watch him, as he stands, balanced on the precipice. He looks up and sees me here. He waves, and smiles. He draws up the fabric of his robe and ties it up with a rope as sash, to enable his climb back. This must be where he comes every morning. He knows ever foothold and handhold in this rock. Why did I worry over his purpose in finding the beautiful place for prayer? I had assumed his plan was to take his grief and plumet into the sea. But here he is strong and energized by the morning prayers. I reach my hand to draw him up to this highest place. Why did I think…
[Footnote] The Great Skellig, or as it is known now Skellig Micheal is described in the author’s notes of Geoffrey Moorhouse ( Sun Dancing) “on a day of newly rinsed clarity” and later told he had “seen the Skelligs… and would be forever restless until he set foot on them” because they were “holy ground.” (p. ix)
(Continues Tuesday, Sept. 15)
Lazarus Ink 