Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.
The abbot and I are sitting out here on the cistern wall protected from the northwest October winds by the peak of the Skellig. On these cooler days we benefit from the late season sun. At this moment, it is comfortable and beautiful. Thank you, God.
We are considering the vulnerabilities of coastal monasteries even including this one and I have to wonder why such a place as this would be a target for attack.
The abbot says, “Here, the youthfulness and the physical agility of the monks is a shield against attacks.”
Abbot Mactyre is barely beyond his thirties himself, and he seems old among his monks. He has a streak of silver through his Celtic tonsure. But like the others here, he is fit and agile. Here every person scales these cliffs to find their own tranquility for prayer among the rugged and isolated ledges of this rock.
Maybe he doesn’t realize youthfulness is a temporary life stage and not a permanent condition. I know my own children once looked upon people of age as “others” as though an old person has always been old, and a young person will be young forever.
I say, “But the fact of the matter is, regardless of what well we drink from, everyone, with the rare exception of a fictional time traveler, passes through life stages. Norsemen, like monks, become older and raids that may have begun as a means of meeting brute survival needs, leave a taste for treasure that becomes greed. And the disease of greed, when not healed with the practice of generosity, becomes an obsession of collecting more and more until old age is nothing more than becoming overrun with unnecessary abundance. Greed leaves its victim overwhelmed and powerless and alone. The thrashing in the painful emptiness leaves the victim famished for power. And power becomes another obsession.”
The abbot agrees, “So the elder Vikings hand the swords of greed to the next younger generations, and the attacks are no longer about their need, but more purposed to snatch a meaningless win. The attackers scale the cliffs of the Skellig just for the challenge of the win. And that is the thing about all wars — they are wrought in a generational tradition of enemies, then fought only by the young.”
(Continues, Tuesday, October 13)
