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#86.5 Wednesday, November 11, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.

Scholars still wonder how a love poem became scripture. The ancient question of cannon, “does the Song of Songs belong in the scriptures?” is debated however the theology of the times suits the scholars. But the sign of the “in love,” experience in the poetry of the earthly Creation allows the carnal act itself to speak of heaven. On earth and it is in heaven — it is the awareness of basking in the fulness of love.

This jagged rock pointing straight up from the sea is a sacred nesting place for a puffinry, birds, mated for life, watching and nurturing a single egg in a season. What does a bird know of heaven?

The seals bask, the whales pass by here, the porpoises frolic and all the creatures of the sea and earth celebrate the Creator’s sign that love is all. The Skellig itself is the love bond of earth and heaven. It is a sacred island. And here we all are. I see my dear friends, Sister Brigid, and Brother Lugh keeping the monks’ vows, God above all else, and poverty and chastity, because that is what they know to do.

They share the goat’s milk and the last vegetables of autumn with everyone on their daily rounds, and they come glowing with the youthful innocence of love as yet, undefined — could be love of any variety — but love abounds. They seem to spread a joyful spirit not, it seems, quite suited to the wailing chants of dutiful and suffering monks.

This night, Lugh and I have our fleeces laid out on the floor of the cell, and we are in that state of peaceful silence, with the stones muffling the sea’s roar, and the darkness subduing the clutter of day. I expect I will soon hear my cell-mate’s snores but not so.  He seems to be of a mind that sleeping is a waste of joyful thanksgiving, so he just puts words to his smile, and yammers on and on.

“Did you know, both Brigid and I are named for ancient Pagan gods?”

“Uh.”

I was nearly asleep. He just keeps talking.

“My father named me Lugh to honor my mother’s side in their on-going argument over the ancient religion and Christianity. Some still practice the old ways, you know.”

“Uh.”

I could probably sleep while he yammers on, but the energy in his chatter is less a lullaby and more a dance. As somber as this sounds, I think I would actually prefer a dirge to sleep to.

“Goodnight, Brother Lugh.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#86.4 Tuesday, November 10, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.

Content warning rated for adults.

When all have gone into the morning darkness, I stay an extra moment in the church to look at the bible. I know what it says. I don’t need to light this candle to find this place in the scriptures — a book of poetry in the Hebrew bible — the Song of Songs. I just want to read again, these ancient verses of the earthly metaphor of love.

“a garden fountain, a well of living water,

a flowing stream from Lebanon… “[Song of Songs 4:15]

The place this poetry keeps in the scriptures has been argued for eons, and the commonly accepted “excuse” for keeping this relentlessly beautiful, but also, erotic love poem is that it is said to be a metaphor for the human-God relationship. Indeed, it is that. But even without the poetry, the human to human, sexual act is an earthly metaphor for holy love.

As sure as Jesus turned water to wine, or the multitudes were fed five fish and two loaves to be signs on earth to show abundance as it is in heaven, our human, carnal love on earth is a nature sign to show a heavenly truth.

Creation, and all the ways we experience it are God’s own poetry — the metaphor on earth as the experience, the awe of heaven — “heaven,” here, meaning the awareness of the embrace of God’s all-encompassing love, not simply a post-death alternative to Hell.

If the sexual act is a sign of all love, original sin could not be the simple equation Augustine draws and Romans 5 [Footnote], repeats — that sin came into the world through Adam (one man) by the disobedience to God’s rule not to eat of the fruit of knowledge of good and evil — i.e. human judgment of goodness and badness. And with that human so-called knowledge of good and evil so much of the nature of Creation gets the evil stamp, so that by the sex act all of humankind is thus, born in sin.

But basking as I do in God’s love, I can perceive that the sexual act is, rather, a sacred sign and symbol of love, given through the Creation by the Creator, on earth as it is in heaven. So, to deny the beauty of this becomes a rejection or a grave misunderstanding of the source of all Creation. The sin in sex is when it is used, not as love, but for theft of power. That is rape.

And I still grieve for Ana, as I long for love of all varieties.

[Footnote], Biblically, Roman 5:12-21, also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_sin (retrieved 3-6-26)

(Continues tomorrow)

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#86.3 Thursday, November 5, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.

Abbot Mactyre is annoyed with Brother Lugh and is also as anxious as Lugh is for a boat to come. Lugh wants nothing more than to become a wandering monk following a holy calling to feed the hungry and bring comfort to the grieving.

But I now see Brother Lugh empowered by a new energy. Is it that he finds some intense hope in that one day he may leave here? Or maybe he has discovered that his good hands are newly appreciated in this place.

Every morning the abbot pretends not to notice that Brother Lugh is present for matins but missing from the morning prayers and the breakfast. The abbot and I both know he isn’t just fasting long into the day. Others of the monks may have the notion that like a martyr, Lugh skips the morning gruel in order to save food for the rest of us. It appears a self-sacrificing fast. They talk of his change in heart as ignited by the Holy Spirit.

But I happen to know, Brother Lugh is sharing the morning meal with Sister Brigid before they come up here together to deliver the extra blessing of goat’s milk. Those who say it is his spiritual calling are rightfully observing holy love. But my long years of mortal life suspect that Brother Lugh and Sister Brigid are finding a sense of belonging with one another.

I agree with the other Brothers that this extra attention Lugh gives to Sister Brigid must be caused by the Holy Spirit empowering Lugh’s complete selflessness. And I know that to be true. But is his example of selfless love the perfection of the holy ordination and the keeping of the vows? Or is his fine example of a fasting, and this selfless martyrdom more of a forbidden infatuation. Love is something different for every person and every time. Sometimes it is carnal lust or sin, and sometimes it is brotherhood or friendship. But the one thing I know, that celibate brothers don’t really acknowledge, is that all loves are holy and none are changed by human judgment. Sexual love is one earthly amazement that speaks of heaven where love is all that is. And the loves among siblings, the fraternal love monastic brothers are encouraged to nurture, also speak of heaven. The parental loves and the friendships, and the longings and the grieving loves, they all speak of heaven where love is all that is.

(Continues Tuesday, November 10)

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#86.2 Wednesday, November 4, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.

I came down to the Sister’s garden expecting to step into a theological debate: does trust in God relieve us from preparing for our own daily provisions? Or does true faith mean our preparations will be sufficient with the help of God?

Thank you, God, for allowing that more than one way is righteous.

I find the sister has young Lugh milking the goats. I wonder about this relationship. Here is this young man, whose wealthy father chose him to be a monk to assure he would always be in a safe and holy place with brothers, when facing the inevitable grief of losing his only parent. And here is this young woman, Sister Brigid, who keeps as careful a watch over Lugh as she does her own brother. She wanted Brother Lugh to be the first monk I would encounter at the Monastery.

Thank you, God, for your wondrous ways of synchronicity, weaving all varieties of threads of love into every life. No one is spared the grief, but also, no one is spared the love that sometimes seems to sharpen grief.

As a friend to both, I can observe from a distance. I don’t see a grand romance secreting away capturing two young lovers. It is more subtle, extra-long looks, and a smile, turned aside… and it is true, what the goat knows and Sister Brigid knows, but what I’d never noticed of my cellmate — he does have good hands. What I see here is this Sister and this Brother, not arguing their differences in the theology of answering God’s call to feed the poor, but taking on the task despite their differences of opinion.  Of course, here the poverty is accepted as a holy choice, not as a misfortune.

Returning to the monastery, I find the abbot at our cell looking for us after we both missed the morning prayers. He probably expected to find us sleeping late.

“I was off looking for Brother Lugh also.” I tell him.

“Did you find him?”

“He is helping Sister Brigid with her morning chores.”

“The morning chore of a monk is prayer.”

“I think he’s aware of that. But he feels called by God to feed the hungry.”

“So, God called him to be a contrarian? We all suffer his antics with never a calm sea so we can send him back.”

I vouch for him, “He still actually tries to be faithful to his holy calling.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#86.1 Tuesday, November 3, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.

I can see both sides of this matter regarding winter stores. Brother Lugh worries that with no boat coming the supplies at the monastery will run out. And Sister Brigid perceives his worry as his failure of faith. Will God not provide? And it is her garden and her goats that are the only sources of food production here on this Skellig. She rules the source of any possible winter stash.

Brother Lugh spends half of his required prayer time, and all of his personal time now, down at her garden, nurturing every little late season carrot and leek to fatten the stores for the famine to come in a lean winter. Surely, this must be pestering Sister Brigid. So today I went down there to see how they are both dealing with their differing notions of resources.

I find Lugh milking the goats.

I tease, “So, your papa raised a milkmaid?”

“No. We never had goats, or cows. The farmers of Kerry filled our pitcher and traded hen’s eggs and cheese for the promise of my father calling on them in times of illness.”

“So, in your family food was bartered.”

“We said ‘gifted,’ in exchange for medical care.”

“But even if your father didn’t raise the food directly, wouldn’t you still be subject to famine if there was a drought or mishap that took the pastures and gardens of the farmers?”

“For us, it never happened. We never starved, nor was I ever a famished beggar, but I can imagine it would be horrible.”

“I think Sister Brigid knows well the suffering of winters with empty coffers. Did you know, she and her brother were left alone on the Skellig when they were young children? On the mainland, she told me, they were orphans living on the seashore with no one to take them in fear of Brother Timothy’s silence. And anyway, he preferred the hermit’s life. Sister Brigid choose not to leave her brother and now she is the one who welcomes people here.”

“So, you are saying I should trust Sister Brigid to prepare for winter, even though she seems oblivious to the need?”

“She’s not oblivious. She said God would provide.”

Just now, Sister Brigid is coming up from the garden.

“Good Sister, I just came down here to find this secret place where Brother Lugh steals away to so often. And here I find you’ve turned him into a milk maid.”

“He has good hands.”

I’d not really noticed that about him. I have to wonder…

(Continues tomorrow)

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#85.13 Thursday, October 29, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.

Lately Brother Lugh has been using his personal time after matins, not for sleep, or private prayer, but to take the trek across Christ’s saddle, then he goes on down to the hidden garden of Sister Brigid to help her with the farm chores. She does have two prongs for weeding. She is prepared to share her work.

While I know the Sister doesn’t see her garden as anything other than a way of gifting the monks with daily extras for their larder, Brother Lugh is thinking it has a purpose to enable laying up stores for the darker season to come.

He’s declared a small crevice in the rock on the cold north side of the southern peak a cellar for roots. He squirrels away the excesses of summer. He half buries root crops, and dries Swiss chard to powder for broth, and now when he accompanies Sister Brigid on her morning rounds, it isn’t just to help her carry the skins of goat’s milk, but now he makes it his mission to take up any leftovers, then use every means imaginable to preserve the excesses of this season.  He divvies the milk into the drinking cups, only offering an amount that can be consumed immediately when it is delivered, so nothing is wasted, and the skins can be returned promptly to Sister Brigit with the excess. While Sister Brigid rinses the skins in brine to prepare them for the next milking, Brother Lugh pours the leftovers into a large pottery bowl thinking it will turn itself to cheese. I’m sure the sister knows what I know. Good cheese curds aren’t made simply by molding milk.

And, yes only a few days into it, it is a smelly, disgusting project. Sister Brigid doesn’t want it in her little house, so here it is in our cell.

“Please, Brother Lugh, believe me, that rosy colored scum on the top of the soured milk is neither cream nor cheese!”

“You don’t know! You would just waste this extra milk simply because it stinks.”

“There is a reason only the farmers who butcher the goats make the curds to start the cheese.  You need something more from the beast.”

“Sister Brigid would never let me slaughter a kid just for the rennet.  This will just have to do.”

So, he already knows what is missing.

And now this is long, wakeful night for both of us, while Brother Lugh is puking up his stinky experiment in cheese making.

(Continues, Tuesday, November 3)

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#85.12 Weds., October 28, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.
 

I mention to the abbot, “Brother Lugh is planning to return to the mainland when the boat comes with the winter’s supplies.”

“The season is already turning. Even now, we have winter seas. Landing here requires the perfect sea, which is not the nature of the waters in these months, so I don’t suppose our supplies will be refreshed for the winter.”

“This whole matter of going back to Éire before winter is already moot?”

“Are you disappointed, Lazarus? Had you hoped to leave, soon too?”

“Actually, I have no wish to leave. It is Brother Lugh who is feeling the call to go back to his old land, and he was just assuming I would want to go also. Lugh will be disappointed.”

The clouds this morning are billowed and bundled, buffeted by the winds of the changing season. The sea answers the challenge with frothy crests, and I know we won’t expect a boat bringing fresh supplies ’til spring. And having no promise of a boat to take him across to the mainland, Brother Lugh’s staid plan to fulfill his new calling is a disappointment. Yet he takes this early turning of the season as his new inspiration. Brother Lugh prayerfully seeks a revised version of his calling.

Without the possibility of returning to his homeland this fall, his new way to answer God’s call to feed the hungry might be to feed all of us, left hungry without supplies. His first scheme is to preserve the abundance of Sister Brigid’s goat’s milk that she shares freely with all. But it is Sister Brigid who says we can simply trust God to provide for our needs, day-by-day. She is the one who argues against Lugh’s plan to hoard our current plenty. She claims, the implication is that hoarding for fear of a day that hasn’t come, denies faith. She believes storing excess is an act of fear while sharing the excess each day is an expression of love.

It is a disparity that will only be resolved after the fact. If the winter is hard and hungry, Brother Lugh will have the “I told you so.” But if everyone is careful to use only what is needed, a large hoard may not be necessary. I can see her side in this, though the promise of a bleak winter makes hoarding seem wise. I can see both sides.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#85.11 Tuesday, October 27, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.

One would suppose that the conversation of Abbot Mactyre would have been about the monastic rule on this rock, or about the saints that make this place holy, or about the mystical nature of Christ who wanders freely among us all here. But he is telling me the tales of Vikings and English kings.

He goes on with the story but with a most interesting Christian turn to it.

He says, “Alfred was called ‘the Great’ because he oversaw the baptism of the Danish leader, Gunthrum, as a gesture to pronounce Viking settlers Christian. So, it could be said that all of England was Christian. Even though a good part of England was under the Danelaw. What I hear in his story is the pattern of the God love, on earth as it is in heaven.”

I ask, “Do you think you see a sign of Christ in this story you tell?”

“You mean the gesture? (He makes the sign of the cross) The genuflect? 

“No. I mean the whole of the story of Jesus Peace. When facing a rising earthly power of lawless plunderers, murderers and rapists, steeling wider borders by subduing the people of the land, driving them from their homes, the true king holds onto his power by becoming a commoner and sharing with the people their common lot. As God sent his Son to dwell among us…”

“Yes, I see what you mean, ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ and yet there is always that debate — was the king a winner staying with his people, or a looser, by hiding? Yet, Alfred returned as king, and England was complete accepting the Norse people to live among them.”

“So, was the argument settled? Was Alfred a winner or a looser as a king?”

“Looking at England from Éire, still trembling with fear of the Danish invasion, obviously, Alfred yielded, but he let them build their cities and live peacefully under the Danelaw, so he was a looser.”

“And so, Jesus was murdered on the cross, as a looser on this contrived spectrum of power as violence. But what was shattered by the crucifixion and the resurrection, on earth as it is in heaven, is the whole notion of winners and losers.  

It isn’t a story about winning and losing, it is a story about all the people of Creation being beloved by God.”

“So be it.”

“Amen.”

Historical  postscript from The Chronicles and Asser —   Alfred’s grandson, Athelstan, became the first true King of England. He led an English victory over the Vikings at the Battle of Brunaburh in 937, and his kingdom for the first time included the Danelaw. In 954, Eirik Bloodaxe, the last Viking king of York, was killed and his kingdom was taken over by English earls.

(Continues tomorrow)

# Christianizing a nation, #Danelaw, #Baptism of Nordic King Gunthram, #Jesus peace,

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#85.10 Thursday, October 22, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.

Abbot Mactyre tells of a King Alfred of England though he makes it his practice to tell his monks to leave their past behind and become new in Christ here. But the irony is, he is telling me this. It is tales of royal power. Maybe it is one thing to tell the history of the world to a lost time traveler, and another to maintain personal memories. What have distant battles to do with hearing the still small voice of God?

     So, I ask him, “You are the abbot and the priest in an isolated wilderness like a desert father, and yet you hold in your heart the grief for the death of a distant and earthly king?”

     “Alfred’s death came in the year the century was turning. He fell as a saint, beloved by the people for sharing with them in their own fears and fasts and he shared in the Christian sacraments with commoners. He led his army against the Danes, and each time he had his sword at the throat of an enemy king and it was his place to make the peace, he chose to make a treaty rather than slay the enemy king. He wrote a fair law with land divisions allotting a good portion of the Anglo-Saxon lands to be under the Dane-law, but with a Christian King. So, Alfred oversaw the baptism of his enemy, the Danish King Gunthrum. Then, the Norsemen did as they always do. When they could gather an army again, they broke the treaty. Alfred had to flee for his life. He went into hiding in his own land— but where can a King hide?”

     “I’d think a king in hiding would have to abandon the throne and his people.”

     “Not so with Alfred. Stealth as a shadow he slipped into the life of a commoner. The stories spread throughout all the isles in every inn and alehouse tales were told of sightings of the king as a commoner. This was the stuff of stories and songs. Common people celebrated that the King was one like them, and also, that he lived and continued to reign. He humbled himself to save his people.”

The abbot’s stories through his own youthful witness are of a new world awakening. This king of budding legend used his power to write laws and treaties for peaceful abidance shared by Danes and English on the same island. Then the king left a written will, it was a peaceful tool for replacing warfare with the rule of law.

(Continues, Tuesday, October 27)

#king for the people, #Alfred the Great,

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#85.9 Weds., October 21, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.

The abbot is telling me of the Kings and their power struggles — things I missed through the past century. We both share the perspective that wars are made by people, not God, so, we value the acts of earthly rulers who choose not to have wars, though these human choices don’t always come with splashy monuments and remembrances kept as chronicles.

     Yet Abbot Mactyre sees all this English history from the shores of Éire.

     He explains, “It could have been a war for power between father and son, but that isn’t what happened.  Æthelwulf divided the kingdom of Wessex so father and son both reigned as Kings — at least for a very brief two years before Æthelwulf’s death, when Æthelbald again gained the full power over Wessex. In fact, Æthelbald then married, Queen Judith, that teenaged widow of his father. Maybe this continuance of the queen served the interests of both her father, Charles the Bald and his original agreement with Æthelwulf, or maybe it was just another despicable act of Æthelbald, as was the opinion of so many people at the time. ” [footnote]

     “Yet the ways of this family don’t seem nearly as brutal as the ways of the Merovingian kings. I lived through the divvying of Francia by the Merovingians, wars and murders among brothers and their queens, then I witnessed the passing of generations of kings when the broken pieces of Francia finally came together under Charlemagne.”

    “Apparently, a truly great king doesn’t arise from nothing to immediately put everything back together while embers of wars are smoldering. Unifying a people is a legacy of several kings past. Also, Æthelwulf provided the example of making agreements for ending wars rather than maintaining old disputes as embers of hatred for starting future wars. It was the foundation for Alfred to bring the divisions of England together with the Danes waiting on the doorstep to takeover the whole of England.

     “It seems any king with lots of sons can either scatter a kingdom dividing it into small pieces for each son to be a king, or it can be drawn as a powerful unity. But is strength of unity a good thing for the peaceful lives of the people?”

     “With Alfred it was a good thing, friend Laz. The deaths of father and the older brothers eventually left this youngest, the one anointed as a child by Pope Leo IV, to be the King of England. And when his time came, the Danes were already prepared to take the whole land.”

[footnote] Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred with other contemporary sources, Translated … by Simon Kenes and Michael Lapidge, 1983, The Penguin Press, Middlesex, England.  pp.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#85.8 Tuesday, October 20, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.

Mostly in these times other people don’t see history as I do. I see it all in the light of Jesus love, even in the peaceful march to the cross by Jesus among his enemies — the Romans. So, I wonder how the murderous ways of warring kings can ever be assumed a military win and at the same time, blessed by God. All that happened was one king out brutalized the other. Nothing in a war is “God’s side” unless it is caring for the refugees, and forgiving the perceived enemy.

I ask Abbot Mactyre the loaded question.

         “Did these warring kings have no thoughts of the Jesus peace, or were they not even Christian?”

The abbot knows my heart. He laughs at my bent question, as we are sitting here on a sacred rock, the Skellig, believing we are removed from these earthly woes of wars.

         He says, “You realize they claimed they were Christian back in the day, nearly a century ago.”

It is refreshing in these times to find someone else who believes as I do, about war.

         He continues, “But I have to wonder if Æthelwulf was left with a tormented conscience, because, after that win, he took his little five-year-old Prince Alfred on a pilgrimage to Rome.” [Footnote]

         “And did he return then, knowing the Jesus peace?”

         “I don’t think so. Rome is still Rome. On his return this widowed king of West Essex met with Charles the Bald of Francia.” [Footnote]

         “Was he the successor to Charlemagne?”

         “Some generations after. Æthelwulf returned from Wessex with his own child bride, Judith, the daughter of Charles the Bald. This Queen came with the political power of the universe, at least the power of Francia, to the little parceled lands of Enga land. She was twelve years old then.”

         “Really?”

         “Younger than some of Æthelwulf’s sons.  You do realize you have miss-placed more than a century of changes.” 

         “I remember Gaul when it was only healing after the Romans bruised it so badly. So, what all happened in this century when I was awash?”

         “Well, Æthelwulf returned with Queen Judith to continue the reign over Wessex. He had assigned Æthelbald to serve as King when he was gone. But on his return, Æthelbald was unwilling to relinquish the throne back to his father.

         “It sounds so Merovingian of Æthelbald.”

[Footnote] Alfred the Great: Asser’s Life of King Alfred with other contemporary sources, Translated … by Simon Kenes and Michael Lapidge, 1983, The Penguin Press, Middlesex, England.  Blogger’s note: the Asser source and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicals are contemporary to very late in Alfred’s reign, and for the most part tell the same story. Asser, more developed and flavored with his opinions or maybe reflecting popular opinions of these kings and queens. Asser malign’s Aethelbald for not relinquishing the throne here. Another minor difference is that Asser looks upon the pilgrimage to Rome as two separate journeys while the Anglo-Saxon Chronicales sees it as leaving when Alfred is 5, and returned three years later.  (This blogger of a fictional story chooses the long stay in Rome version.)

(Continues tomorrow)

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#85.7 Thursday, October 15, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.

Maybe the abbot had hoped to be rid of me when a boat comes with the winter supplies. But these winds signal an early winter and already the sea is too riled for a boat landing. On this day he has taken me aside to talk about things past, even though he forbids his own monks to nurture memories of their old lives.

         “Back in your day, Laz, was lifetimes ago you realize. It was before my grandfather, and I’m only telling you the gossip of the grandfathers now. Surely you realize things have changed everywhere.”

         “So, Vikings are no longer just plunderers and robbers of coastal lands?”

          “In these times the Danes are settling in, making these isles their own homelands. I fear what has happened in the English isle will make over Éire” also.

His news of the changes to England now, astounds me. It would be nothing like the world was when Cloother and I sailed down the wilted Roman coast.

         I ask, “So what of this king Ælfred of Wessex whose death you grieve?”

         “Ælfred was the youngest of the five sons of Æthelwulf who came to the throne in the wake of the reigns of his older brothers, Æthelbald, Æthelberht and Æthelred (the unready). The other brother, the oldest, Æthelstan who famously beat the Vikings in a sea battle, though that was the end of him.”

         “You mean the English fought the Vikings at sea?”

         “The first sea battle ever, it is said.” [Footnote1]

         “Maybe first ever for an English King, but the ancients, the Greeks and the Romans fought at sea all the time. I am just surprised at the temerity of taking on Vikings in English ships.”

         “Æthelstan defeated the Vikings. I’m telling you, this line of kings were wondrous fighters. Just after that, Æthelwulf, their father, the next oldest son, Æthelbald defeated the Vikings again at the Battle of Aclea” [Footnote 2]

         “In England I asked if Kings are born, or made on the battlefield.”

         The abbot answers, “Kings? God knows they are born. But it takes spilled blood before people recognize a king. This grandfather’s history I’ve learned, is only remembered as he remembered it, and only speaks of Kings as earthly power. These kings had to conquer the Vikings, but also battle other English tribes of pillagers. They were winning the lands and Æthelwulf doled out the newly won territories to his sons making them Kings for all to see, little by little bringing the divided lands into one family.

[Footnote1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86thelbald,_King_of_Wessex (Retreived 2-13-26)

[Footnote 2] Ibid.

(Continues, Tuesday, October 20)


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#85.6 Weds., October 14, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.

On this fair October day Abbot Mactyre and I are talking together, considering the century of change I missed while, as he says, I was “awash at sea.” He is telling me of Danish Vikings, who no longer simply fill their coffers with riches then scurry back to the Northlands. Now, they are coming to build their homes and to rule. [Footnote]

         He says, “Here on our own Éire already there is a Danish city, the hub of a settlement. I’ve visited this trade center, Dublin. I’ve seen the safe harbor on our own shore wreaking of dragon ships. The Viking ships are moored right alongside the peaceful trade ships of our good Christian lands.”

         “Maybe having them for neighbors will stop the plunder.”

         “Oh, what you don’t know, innocent Christian? They are even changing the grasses of our lands. Where once our hefty cattle grazed, now sheep nibble the grasses to the root. The trade is ripe for wools and fleeces so everyone raises sheep now. Every woman’s hand fingers a spindle, and the babes are left wanting while their mother winds a ball of yarn.”

         “Why did the Norsemen land here? And why not on the Isle of the Anglo Saxons?”

         “Oh, my man, they would own all of that island were it not for the powerful rule of King Ælfrǣd, bless his soul.”

         I ask, “Ælfred, descended from Æthelred of Northumbria?”

         “He was the youngest of King Æthelwulf of Wessex. Anglo Saxon kingdoms were in many pieces back then. But the reign of Alfred held a promise. I remember exactly the day we heard the news of his death. I was just a novice, an altar boy at Innisfallen Abbey, and I was feeling that hard rule to leave behind my childhood memories of my old life for my holy life ahead. Then, when someone came with the news that one person of earth who gave us the hope the world would soon turn Christian — the one unifying politic we could trust — had died. We feared Engla land would fall to pieces again, and the Danes would take over that land, and then Éire would soon follow. With the death of the English king my hope that the world could heal from its wicked rulers, was erased.”

         I say, “I traveled in that land before it had one name or one king. Every part was its own little kingdom, except East Anglia.  Back in the day they were under King Offa of Mercia.”

         “Back in the day, you say.”

[Footnote] This source offers an overview of the Viking, particularly the Danish settlements in Europe https://www.history.org.u3k/primary/resource/3867/the-vikings-in-britain-a-brief-history?srsltid=AfmBOoqK5zgx6Yf89vjNov_pC0Es8fB84z5PmL5_7B3x-A12nKP8QpCs   (retrieved 2-6-26)

(Continues tomorrow)

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#85.5 Tuesday, October 13, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.
 

The abbot and I are considering the changing nature of Viking attacks.

     “So,” I ask, “They chose to raid this place, as hard to approach as it is, simply to take the abbot, prisoner? No offense, but an abbot would hardly make a marketable slave.”

     “The Danes aren’t here just to steal the bounty and scurry back to the Northlands to survive a winter with a hoard of riches, Laz. This is the flexing of the political power. It is not like the old times,” Abbot Mactyre says, reminding me of my lost century. “Now the Danish attacks have changed from plundering trade items, to terrorizing just for the sake of power.”

     “So, you think the Norsemen have their ambitions set on ruling these lands?”

     “I know it. See what they’re doing? They’ve taken power everywhere while you were awash in the sea. On my own homeland of Éire there is a great trading center for the Danes now, Dublin. I’ve been there myself. Everyone around that trading center has changed from raising cattle to raising sheep. Irish farmers trade in wool and fleece with all the great kingdoms of the world. The Danes come with their whole families, to build their houses.” [Footnote]

         “You are saying that Vikings have become neighbors now?”

         “Neighbors? They are Pagans taking young Christian women for wives, and giving us in return all their carved images of snakes and monsters, trimmings for everything — ships, tools, monuments — even crosses. Everything Viking is filled with snakes and sea monsters.”

         “Oh, come now.  They aren’t to blame for the snakes. Before the attack at Lindisfarne that Gospel, which I know well, was already filled with edges and even whole pages of snakes and sea monsters. Snakes and monsters are the cusp between Christian and Pagan we share with the Norsemen and the Irish all the same before any were Christian.”

         “I know, I know, even the great book of Kells, from the scribes of Iona has snakes. Of course, I know the Danes didn’t really bring snakes to Éire. The snakes were already here with the Pagens, and t’was St. Patrick drove off the Pagan ways when he gave us Christianity. And now the Vikings brought it back.”

         “I would think if the Norsemen were making their settlements in these places they would have chosen England to make their homes, closer to their old homeland and already leaning more Pagan.”

         “And so, they have.”

[Footnote]https://www.museum.ie/en-ie/collections-research/irish-antiquities-division-collections/collections-list-(1)/viking/the-viking-age-in-Éire

(Continues tomorrow)

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#85.4 Thursday, October 8, 2026

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)

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#85.3 Weds., October 7, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.

The abbot and I are considering, again, the question of a saint’s power to protect a monastery from a Viking attack.

     “I was a lay follower of Father Columbanus also named for a dove, and then I was on a mission to deliver a message for him to a council of bishops when I was driven through with a polearm by a bishop’s guard. [Blog post #44] It was a long healing.

     “That would make you a martyr.”

     “Not really. Martyrs have to be dead, like the saints have to be dead for the Church to name them saints.”

He offers his smile, and tells me more of Iona.

      “I visited the abbey of Kells, before I was assigned here, and the terrible tales of Iona were well-known. They’d ‘suffered numerous attacks, starting in the year 795 and continuing in 802, 806, and 825. The massacre of the martyrs of Iona was the result of the raid of 806 AD, where fleets of Vikings stormed the abbey, pillaged it for riches, and killed the monks, who were largely without weapons, and thus defenseless. This was Iona’s first incidence of “red martyrdom”, or the bestowing of martyrdom as a result of violent death by religious persecution. ” [Footnote 1]

     “Had I not been shipwrecked, I would have been there then. And now here I am instead, safe on an island that would be nearly impossible for Vikings to land and then scale the cliffs. or would they climb the world’s most intimidating staircase? They would be all out in open view of any angels looking on. And then what treasure would those attackers find? A single golden chalice?”

     “You might think we’d be safe from attack, but the Great Skellig has already been famously raided, though not as recently or as often as others. It’s been said, ‘ In 823, … Skellig was plundered by the heathen and Abbot Eitgal was carried off and he died of hunger”. Again the Vikings attacked in 838, sacking this church,’ [Footnote 2] and some others on the mainland as well.”

     “So, are you prepared for more attacks?”

     “We stifle rumors of riches, and hopefully, the Norsemen keep the memories of the hard landings and daunting cliffsides for their generations to remember. And of course, our small number of monks are young and strong and agile, gifted in the climbs. They go places for their prayers all the time, where no other man would travel for an earthly purpose. Maybe that would make them safer.”  

[Footnote 1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martyrs_of_Iona (retrieved 1-31-26) This note references (1)“Iona”, Follow the Vikings, University of Stavanger, Norway”. Archived from the original on 23 July 2024. Retrieved 19 June 2024.and (2)

“Iona: A History of the Island”. electricscotland.com. Archived from the original on 28 October 2022. Retrieved 28 October 2022.

[Footnote 2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skellig_Michael  retrieved 1-30-26 and [28] /ref. to Gray, Martin. “Skellig Michael”. World Pilgrimage Sites. Retrieved 27 July 2021.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#85.2 Tuesday, October 6, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time 924 C.E.

     Speaking to the present abbot of the monastery at the Great Skellig, “My unique gift (if it is a gift and not a curse) leaves me wandering strange new times with only an infant’s knowledge of the now. So, I ask you my first most haunting question — what is this year and this century?”

The abbot answers, “The year is 924 as years have been numbered since the time of Pope Gregory the Great.”

     “Most recently, for me then, in Lindisfarne and Jarrow, more than a century ago, people still feared the Vikings.”

     “It is very much a scourge in these times. What do you know of it?”

     “After Lindisfarne, the rumors at Jarrow of the raid at the peaceful monastery of St. Cuthbert terrified laity and holy men alike. The secular powers of Engla land, ravaged the peace with fear and cluttered the land with weapons and snags.”

     “So, you saw fit to get on a boat set for Iona?”

     “That was my destination.”

     “Why, when you had found a place that was protecting itself against the raids, would you want to go to an island community of Iona as vulnerable as Lindisfarne?”

     “St. Paul at Jarrow follows the Benedictine Rule which puts so much emphasis on a pope’s earthly power and I find my longing for God is better met in the Spiritual presence — the thin places, maybe still found in Éire. That peace is what I find here.”

The abbot smiles knowingly and nods.

     I go on. “I knew nothing of this place but I wanted to see Iona because I was seeking a community like this, right on the edge of Creation — the source of all beauty.”

     “I have to tell you, in your lost century much sadness has come to Iona. Iona was attacked many times over and most of the community there moved inland to Kells. They still have their beautiful book, but the reliquary was stolen, and so much of their earthly wealth that had accumulated there was lost.”

     “Iona had earthly riches?”

     “Iona’s St. Colmcille, known as the dove of the church, seemed an easy target. There is no one to fight when the sainted abbot is a dove.”

     “How well I know. Saints named for doves aren’t known for their bloodied swords.”

     He goes on, “I’ve been listening to the tales, and keeping our own vulnerabilities in my asking prayers.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#85.1 Thursday, October 1, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

The abbot of this monastery on the Great Skellig, Abbot Mactyre, and I are meeting together at long last.  I have so many questions and I am sure he’s heard enough of the rumors and stories, along with my own declaration that I am Jesus’s friend on earth from another time, so surely, he must have questions for me.

         “Brother Lugh feels called to return to the mainland; he has assumed I want to leave also.”

         He asks, “Don’t you?”

         “I don’t know anything of these Celtic lands except what I’d heard centuries ago from Father Columbanus who was from Éire traveling to Gaul where he established monasteries.”

         “I know of St. Columbanus. And you say you not only knew our Lord Christ Jesus personally, but now you tell me you knew a saint, centuries ago, as well?”

         “Indeed, I knew Jesus as a friend when he was teaching. As the Christ, I only know the sign of the spiritual life we all know. I am an earthly metaphor for the heavenly truth. And don’t we also all know many saints among us?”

         “How could we? Saints aren’t named until they are long dead.”

         “They may not have been named by the earthly polity of the Church, but living among us we know who they are.”

         “You mean you can recognize a saint even before he is dead and way before the miracles have been attributed?”

He sits straighter, and adjusts his chasuble touching his cross to assure himself it is dangling appropriately over his heart.

         “I simply meant we all know people who exhibit the qualities of saintliness. I’m not saying I have any authority to know who will be chosen by the Church and honored with the sanctification.”

         “Of course.”

         I say, “There are so many things I don’t know about this time and place — things that have changed since last I was aware, and traveling with a merchant to Iona. The world is so much bigger.”

         “How is that possible, if you also claim to know all things.”

         “I hardly make that claim. I only remember glimpses of times and places past. I find myself waking to life as a stranger always in the future world. Maybe at our births we all are strangers to time and place.”

My metaphor that every birth, in a way, is a time travel, draws a blank nod from Abbot Mactyre.

(Continues, Tuesday, October 6)

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#84.14 Weds., September 30, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

It’s risky crossing the roiling sea in a small boat with a bible when only a minor wetting of the vellum pages would cause major damage; but then, what is a monastery without a bible?  In this place the physical dangers are always in a raucous dialogue with spiritual accessibility. It is the great dare that defines the courage of each holy person committing to this life of faith. So why wouldn’t a bible be included in the risk?

Here in the church, Brother Lugh isn’t asking the abbot to affirm my contrary notions of Roman history, as I supposed was our purpose in coming to speak with the abbot.

The abbot uses this occasion to remind brother Lugh of his personal commitment to a life of prayer on this island apart from the woes and foibles of the laity on the mainland. Did Lugh’s father not send him here to keep him safe from the grief and the poverty of the secular world? Lugh told the abbot of his spiritual call to go back to the mainland where he finds his calling to care for people as though they are his family.  I know his hours of contemplation have brought him to this divergent need.

         He says, “I can just ride back with Lazarus when the boat comes for him.”

         The abbot asks, “Brother Lugh, answer me truthfully, have you been goaded into something contrary by this stranger among us?”

If they would only listen to me, they would hear me say that I hadn’t even been thinking of leaving. I really have no other place to go. And personally, I find this Celtic monastery a spiritual blessing. Perhaps Brother Lugh is listening to a truly, holy calling. But no one is listening to his plea either.  

         Lugh argues, “I’m sure Brother Lazarus would find Éire all to his liking if he went there.  It is as sweet as the blackberries, and even the most sorrowful music sets one’s feet to dancing.”

Before I can speak for myself and mention that I am not enticed by blackberries and dancing, the abbot intrudes.

         “Brother Luke, your father knew your propensity to sin when he sent you here. I am responsible to honor his last wish.”

         “I’m sure he would want me to serve the needy as God has called me to do.”

The abbot sends Brother Lugh back to his cell, alone. He takes me aside to tell me he thinks I am a bad influence on the young monk.

(Continues Thursday, October 1)

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#84.13 Tuesday, September 29, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Brother Lugh is sorting through my description of early Christianity, which sometimes hides the hateful notions of Roman domination right in the midst of the Gospel tradition.  He turns away, starring at the ground when I say that Roman political lies infiltrated the stories we have of the execution of Jesus. The lies made the Jews appear to be the murderers of Jesus, when it was actually a Roman imperialistic reach that tortured and killed many Jews, including Jesus, with crucifixion. Brother Lugh is sorting through this confusion that I have intruded into his own foundation of faith and threatened his own traditions and beliefs. It was his Christianity that brought him to this monastery faithfully following his own father’s wishes.

     Dear God, stay close to Brother Lugh as he weighs the conspicuous rift between the Roman tainted Christianity and the teachings of Jesus.

     He asks, “What about the Jesus message to love God above all else, and to love your neighbor? Don’t the Jesus love laws explain the difference between Christian and Jew?”

     “Brother Lugh, I know this isn’t what you’ve always believed, but the love commandments are in the Hebrew Bible too; Every morning and every evening an observant Jew repeats the law to love God above all else. It is the Shema Yisrael, the most basic prayer of Judaism. And the second most important law Jesus named was the ‘love of neighbor.’ That was from Leviticus 19:18.”

The abbot suggests we take a hard look at the holy book.

     “Do you mean there is a bible here on the Great Skellig?”

     “Of course, did you think we had no bible to guide us?”

     “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.”

I know that the Irish tenacity of the monks who followed Father Columbanus carried that Holy Bible deep into the alps to set the seedling of faith in his new communities. They were hauling a bible up and down those impossible mountains and cliffsides, so why would I think bringing a large, and precious book up these cliffs would be any different?

Brother Lugh goes immediately to the church.  I follow. And sure enough, the abbot does bring out a great copy of the work of St. Jerome and places it before us on the book pedestal in the front of the worship space, just under the stone hewn cross.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#84.12 Thursday, September 24, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Brother Lugh and I are waiting now, for calmer waters so that a supply boat can deliver the winter supplies here, and the plan is made that I will be sent away then, with the boat to the mainland, which is the homeland of Lugh. Brother Lugh plans to go along also, believing his calling is to feed the hungry. His real yearning is for family.

     He asks, “Did you have brothers and sisters?”

     “I had a sister. My mother died when we were very young. So, like you, the only parent raising me was a father.  He was a Pharisee. We were Jewish and our family meticulously observed God’s law and what we knew then, as the Law of Moses.”

He already knows I am that Lazarus.

     He says, “I know Jesus was Jewish, also. But thankfully, he converted.”

     “No. He never ‘converted.’  He was always a Jew.”

     “What about his baptism?”

     “Even John the Baptist was a Jew. The repentance John was calling for was for a turning back to God, the God of Abraham and Moses. God who answered from heaven, “this is my own Son.”

     “Surely, as the cross is Christian, he was crucified and rose again, as a Christian.”

      “The cross was Roman. There were no Christians at that time. He was crucified by the Romans who were purging Jews, claiming that Jews were all criminals because we were traitors simply because we wouldn’t bow to Rome. Maybe we were traitors to Rome. The Romans were imperialists, and stole their power by creating enemies of any nation that didn’t just meld into Roman. Observant Jews would not bow to Ceasar.”

     “I thought the crime was that Jesus went around teaching love for all people.”

     “Yes, that really riled the Romans. Jesus went around teaching love even for enemies, completely contrary to the rules of political power mongering. So Romans put a disparaging banner over Jesus, ‘King of the Jews’ and they gave him a mocking and painful crown. It was political.” [blogger’s footnote]

     And I just continue my rant, “We held onto the observance of the Jewish traditions, which seemed a fly in the ointment of Roman imperialism on their march to rule the world. But God sees over the walls of division people build.”

     “What about the Jesus teachings, to love God above all else, and to love your neighbor? Don’t the love laws separate Christians from Jews?”

     “Those love laws are first in the Torah.”

[Blogger’s note] This theory about the relationship between Romans and Jews is not well supported in the gospel texts, and, in fact, the Christian bible, in no uncertain terms says “The Jews killed Jesus” [I Thessalonians 2:15].  Historical research, however, and particularly writings by early Christians outside of the cannon, and some modern bible scholars are finding a powerful Roman root to modern anti-Semitism through the early Christian repetition of Roman political lies. Authoritarianism uses the repetition of lies as a tool, and it is only now becoming obvious to some Christian scholars that some of the Roman political lies crept into Christian scriptures. May this continue to be a subject for unfettered research of the Christian History. It is well known that Romans alone, and not Jews, used the torture of crucifixion.

(Continues Tuesday, Sept. 29)

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#84.11 Weds., September 23, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
 

Apparently, it is assumed I will be leaving when a boat can land here safely; and Brother Lugh has chosen to leave also?

     Lugh explains, “I sat with the spirit of my own father who is now at one with the universal heavenly Spirit, and he told me what I can do to help others. I told the abbot that I was called to feed the poor and hungry. When I was walking with Sister Brigid, delivering the goat’s gift I knew what I was called to do. There was something very joyful in providing food for the hungry. I realized, God doesn’t just use written pages to call only an elite chosen few.  God uses our sorrows and our deepest joys to call any one of us to service. And sometimes God whispers through grief. A call is not always great pronouncements from heaven.”

    “I know. At times, I’ve felt God’s call to me. Sometimes it is clear and undeniable. Other times it is just a thoughtful wonder. And sometimes, the fulness of indescribable beauty binds together the things we know in spirit and the things we reach for on earth, and that is a calling.”

     He says, “My calling is to carry the goat’s milk every day, but in all kinds of ways — God called me to feed the hungry.  I am not called, just to go off and to pray alone with God, but to care for all the people on the mainland. You know, you yourself told me who they are: the merchants who crash their ships, the military guards who saved Jarrow, and all the people of the all the lands, God loving, and pagan alike.  I am called to actually go into the places you talk about. So, I will leave when they come for you.”

     “But I’ve never been to this mainland. And usually, when I am lost, I try to find a monastery.  So here, I’ve already found that holy place.”

     “Don’t worry. I’ll show you my homeland. You won’t be lost there.”

     I ask, “So, the abbot said I have to leave here when the boat comes?”

     “That’s how it is. My father knew he was leaving me alone, and he wanted me to have brothers when he was gone, so he sent me here to be safe, but now, with you going back to my homeland with me, I won’t be alone.”

         “You believe God called you to return to your homeland, despite your father’s plan?”

         “To fulfill my father’s plan.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#84.10 Tuesday, September 22, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Brother Lugh, my cellmate here in this monastery, had a great revelation that he is beloved by the whole universal bond of love that is God, but now, he is thinking about returning to the mainland.

Sister Brigid and Lugh, and I too, are walking back toward the monastery.

     I ask, “Are you thinking of breaking your vows here, just when God has broken into your life?”

His laugh is awkward. He’s been solemn for so long that humor with its comfortable smiles and little twinkles of joy seems ill-suited to him.

     He says, “I’ll talk to the abbot. I’m pretty sure I have a holy commission on the mainland, or maybe it’s restlessness.  I don’t know what I feel.”

     Sister Brigid chimes in, “Clearly your calling is from God. On the holy island every wonder here is holy.”

We reach Brother Lugh’s cell and Sister Brigid pours out a share from the flask of milk, as though she were serving a lady of wealth her afternoon tea. Then she starts off on her rounds.

Another day we would sit here, sharing the blessing of this milk. But today, Brother Lugh follows her. Catching up, he shoulders the skins of milk for her. Her trek always ends with the stop at the church for the abbot.

Now, when the brothers gather for noon-tide prayers they find both the abbot and Brother Lugh absent. Someone said they were seen sitting outside in the far corner of the cemetery wall, deep in a very serious conversation. 

Regardless of their absence we all join in the chanting of the psalm. One offers a prayer that mentions the abbot’s wayward absence or maybe it is envy that Lugh gets special attention.

      I offer his reason. “Don’t you suppose our shepherd is busy rescuing the one lost sheep?”

Some know the rule for reciting the psalms better than the actual gospel.

I also offer the benediction.

Returning to our cell Brother Lugh tells me of his decision.

      “Don’t worry, Brother Lazarus, I didn’t blame you for my wayward choice, even though I am considering leaving here just as you are assigned my cellmate. It was my decision to leave when the boat comes to take you back.”

     “You mean a boat is coming to take me away?”

     “Of course. We are expecting a boat any day when the sea is calmer. It will bring the winter supplies. But the abbot agrees you would probably prefer the homeland.”

     “I would?”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#84.9 Thursday, September 17, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Brother Lugh closed his prayer, and he climbed back up to where I waited.

     “Until you followed me, that ledge was my secret. Only the birds knew I came here every morning. Today I didn’t even have to look up to know you were watching; I could feel you there. And, for the first time since I was brought to this desolate haven I knew I was cared for.”

     “On earth.”

     “As it is in heaven.” Brother Lugh continues, ” I don’t know if you saw too, but my father was with me today. I could feel him with me, strong and warm, and I was child in his arms. He just held me and when the morning mist dissolved to sunlight, he dissolved away, but I know he still loves me.

     “Brother Lazarus, death isn’t a boundary between earth and heaven. I visited heaven today, and it is all made of invisible but touchable love, as though God is love, and love is what everyone is. I have seen heaven and it is love.”

     “Did you know, that was already inked on parchment, in I John 4:8?”

     “Of course, I’ve read it. It was a thin book on my papa’s gospel shelf. When I was a little child, I thought my papa read it to me, because it was a bible book for ‘the little children,’ but now I know he was reading it over and over again for himself.”

Brother Lugh and I sat on the rocky ridge in a kind of joyful silence until Sister Brigid came by on her daily trek to the monks. Brother Lugh followed along after her to help her shoulder the skins of milk.

         He said, “I asked, Sister Brigid, if we could expect a boat to come here before winter?  She said she never expects anyone to come, and yet they do.  So, I told her the next time a boat comes, Brother Lazarus will want to go back to the mainland.”

     “Let me speak that for myself. Or are you finding your cell too crowded with me there?”

     “Oh, no. Sharing space reminds me I don’t need solitude. That’s why I was thinking of going along too, if a boat should come to take you back.”

     “For me, going to that land isn’t ‘going back’. This Gaelic monastic community is more familiar to me than another strange land.”

     “You mean, you wouldn’t go even if you could?”

(Continues Tuesday, Sept. 22)

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#84.8 Wednesday, September 16, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Concerned for Brother Lugh, who has been troubled day and night with the grief for his father, I followed him again to his place for prayer which is a little ledge on the rock face with a steep climb back up, or it could be an easy leap to death. Today he climbed back up again.

His eyes are pieces of golden light; his smile is radiant. It seems like this whole patch of rocky earth is brilliant in spirit.

         “Did you ask your questions in prayer?”

         “Yes.”

         “And God spoke to your heart?”

         He says, “‘God is love’ and that is the same on earth as it is in Heaven. Neither my vows nor my father’s death separate me and my father from the bond of love, and what is more, Brother Laz, I knew you were up here, watching over me. as surely as I felt God’s presence with me.”

         “I guess I was concerned you would only hear our feeble human attempts to answer, and you were coming here in the middle of understanding without a reasonable ending, so you might make a fatal decision based on God’s unfinished answer.”

         “Maybe your concern was needed the first time I climbed down to that ledge. It was just after I heard of my father’s death. But you saved me then when I looked down into the tidal wash below, there you were — dead.”

         “I’m sorry our first meeting was grotesque.”

         “It saved me that day. I found footholds along the descent, so step-by-step I made my way to the edge of the water, thinking any death could be my father coming back for me.”

         “I’m sorry to disappoint.”

         “No, no. I had no idea, then, of the power of grief.  I wanted to see my father’s grey hair and his bright smile, and his sparkling eyes the color of the sea. I pushed aside the dark kelp weed, ready to rescue my father back to life, and that tangle of kelp weed was your dark hair, and the eye that starred at me from death was your dark eye.”

         “I’m sorry.”

         “No, I’m sorry I ran away then. I climbed back, as fast as I could, and ran shouting to the others that I had seen death.  I could have stayed there to rescue you, as the silent hermit finally did.  But I was terrified.” 

         “And yet, this same ledge is where you still come for your prayers?”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#84.7 Tuesday, September 15, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
 

The second night in with Brother Lugh, he asks me questions through all the hours of darkness.

     “Jesus spoke of a dwelling with many rooms. [John 14:2] Have you visited there in your deaths? Is my own papa there now? How will I find his room from the many when I, too, am dead?”

I have no answers. I worry he’s seeking his own death and the only answer I could draw from my own thoughts and prayers is from the ancient texts because I have no answer. I’ve never awakened in death. I’ve only returned to awaken in life.

     “There is a lesson in ancient teaching attributed to Moses, [Deut. 30:19 excerpt] ‘…I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life…'”

He is a very literate student of the bible so he didn’t find satisfaction in my simple phrases out of context. He argued.

     “Moses was addressing the issue of paganism. The Israelites had melted their gold into an idol. But my father had his gold melted into a chalice — it is our chalice that is here in this place where we share in the blood of Jesus. It isn’t a golden calf.  Now I wonder… I have to question my own righteous prayers when I drink from that golden chalice.”

     “So when you question who answers you?”

     He says, “Before, when I asked you, you had no good answer. So I asked the abbot. He reminded me it is a sin to taint my prayers thinking only of my worldly father who is no more. And I suppose that’s true. I vowed to give up my worldly ways. But when we kneel at the golden chalice, gifted by my own earthly father, I don’t know if it breaks my vow to think of my earthly father, or is it a sacred moment of heaven where I happen to find him now?”

This morning, I followed my cellmate as we dispersed from the gathered worship to our own prayer places for the morning watch. Last night his grief seemed inconsolable.  All night we lay awake while he begged me for answers about death and resurrection which I don’t have. I was concerned he was in a state of mind to choose to seek his own death.

Now this new morning, Brother Lugh climbs back from a precipice of the birds. And again, I reach out my hand to draw him back up after our prayers.

(Continues tomorrow)  

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#84.6 Thursday, September 10, 2026

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)

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#84.5 Wednesday, September 9, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
 

In this rare circumstance I’ve allowed myself the luxury of revealing the nature of my redundant healing as the intended earthly sign for the spiritual life. Probably, I mistakenly expected they would recognize the holy purpose of the sign. But no signs in the gospel of John answer the questions these youths are asking. God’s punitive judgement of sin is not affirmed in the signs in John. It may not be the nature of God at all.

The Youthful stage of life, just as in the youthful stage of all of monotheistic history, has a habit of observing everything sorted as either goodness or evil. And in another humanly twisted way, the Creator is said to perceive her own spawn as basically evil. The original biblical proof-text for this is the Genesis allegory of the first people eating from the forbidden fruit giving them the knowledge of good and evil. Then in Romans 5:12 Adam gets all the blame for original sin, so that the Christian “Christ” can deliver all goodness.

The abbot recognizes my immediate need.

         “You are probably wanting to make your way back down to the hermitage to rest.”

         “Yes, but I think Brother Timothy has had quite enough of me, now that I am healing and not depending on him for the shear breath of life. I think Sister Brigid is hoping I can find a place here, at least until St. Brenden’s boat comes by to whisk me off to Paradise.”

He smiles and rummages through a shelf of stored clothing behind the altar in the church. He finds a hooded robe to suit me. I am grateful.

         “You can stay with us here. Right now, mine is the only fleece spread at night in this larger cloche we use as our church, or we could make room for another in one of the novices’ cells.”

         “Sister Brigid had it in mind I would be a cellmate to Brother Lugh, since he is struggling with his personal grief at this time and may need the company.”

         “Grief?  We are all grieving for the monk who was among us and now is lost. And Brother Lugh shouldn’t be grieving for his father now that he has dedicated himself to God as a monk.”

         “Grief follows no rule, even a monastic rule. I’ll ask him if he wants to share his cell.”

         “You don’t have to ask him. It is his duty to welcome the stranger.”

         “Of course. But I will ask.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#84.4 Tuesday, September 8, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

The Abbot took compassion on my frailty and answered the brothers as best he could, then dismissed them to their daily tasks with a prayer. Now he sits here beside me on this step.

     I say, “These monks are so very young.”

     “Yes. Here they are, astounded by their first awakenings so maybe this community of brothers will be here for many years to come and there will always be someone here welcoming pilgrims and rescuing the shipwrecked sailors.  So many ancient stories of this place are of the bleak isolation of elders. [Footnote] But this time, what is now a new start will last long into the future.”

     “So, you are expecting the youthfulness of these current monks to insure the longevity of this community?”

     “I know they are impetuous now, but when they settle in to the patterns of this haven, becoming established here, growing wise with age, this will become a forever community.”

     “Forever is measured in generations not by one man’s lifespan, even a young man’s.”

The notion of choosing only young men for this arduous commitment in order to ensure the longevity of the community appears to me as a ludicrous and doomed plan. From the perspective of a forever man, the wonder of youth is not the guarantee of a lifelong adherence to a singular gift or commitment, though that is often assumed to be forever. With a relationship to God, and even within marriage the bond may be true throughout a lifetime, but the relationship is constantly changing and rebuilding anew.  So, expecting young monks to always value the trials of this vertical isolation, and a singular way of meeting God, as I see from the long view, may not be realistic.

It is a fallacy that youthfulness assures a long future simply by assuming it is only old age that has a shortened span of life. Of course, people die in all stages of life.  This community is already grieving for one of these young men.  It is tragic. But when the mortal promise excludes the aged and creates a youth culture, longevity still isn’t promised.  In fact, the blunders of age are often rooted in the whimsies of youth. And that rumored “wisdom” of age is often grounded in the nature of the teen’s normal penchant for rule testing.

[Footnote] This story of this community filling the ancient cloches of this monastery is fictional as are other stories of the lives of the people who lived on these particular rocks, until and unless documented or archeological history of the people who established the monastery on the Great Skellig becomes available. Geoffrey Moorhouse authors two books in one title, Sun Dancing (San Diego: Harcourt Brace & Co. 1997) Part I, The Tradition (the fictional story) and Part II, The Evidence.

Another written from research historical fiction is Haven by Emma Donoghue (New York: Back Bay Books/Little Brown and Company 2022).

 Now called Skellig Micheal, it was also made famous as the launching pad for a Star Wars sequel.

(continues tomorrow)

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#84.3 Thursday, September 3, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

We are on the steps of a monastery that nests among the peaks of rock rising straight up from the sea. The young monks gathered to ask me, and I intend to tell them that God’s love is the love of a wise and gentle parent, always forgiving, always welcoming, present with us on earth so we can see and touch, as God is always present in the spiritual, invisible of all that is real.

Taking a breather in this marathon of testing my healing bones, the abbot is stepping in, answering their persistent quandaries always about sin. I realize something about this stage, or phase of spiritual growth. It happened in my own youth when we went to hear the edgy, popular preacher, strange and interesting, shouting the starkest word in the wilderness, “repent” “turn from your old ways, and change up to a new thing.”

We went to that place because we were craving a clear set of rules. We wanted this preacher to tell us what was personally wrong with us, so we could fix ourselves over to be … to be all those things that made people look good to others. We needed to be wise and popular. When I was the age of these young monks, I was looking for some kind of personal beauty or wisdom or a do-over that would make me more good than I believed I was. I wanted good skin and good hair, I wanted to achieve wisdom and humor, and show it off when I had these glimpses of brilliance. 

It felt so good to go into the water with one who seemed to know sin well, and then be brought up drenched and gasping, but clean and new, born again like Nicodemus. How could I let popular preaching blind me from seeing God’s gracious, unearned love?

And at that time, I only knew Jesus as a good friend. He had a gentle sense of humor, always catching the irony and keeping things in perspective. My sister had a crush on him. When his turn came for the baptism, there was a shared sense of beauty all around. It was good, joyful maybe, but a shared feeling throughout the crowd. We talk about it in metaphor now, “a cloud” “a voice.”  But being stricken with the all-encompassing beauty of God with us, doesn’t answer the theological question of sin. Try as we may, we have no word to speak of this beauty. And when Jesus came up out of the water, God was everything. So where was sin?

(Continues Tuesday, Sept. 8)

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#84.2 Wednesday, September 2, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Sitting in the midst of these young monks on the stones for steps, I look at their faces — all one single expression dazed by wonder. I told them who I am, assuming their knowledge of the gospel would solve the mystery of the missing dead man now alive among them. They got caught up in the wonder of the sign and even those among them who are grieving the deaths of a brother, or a father, or their old lives are seeing only the sign and not the spiritual life that the metaphor in the sign could mean to the grieving.

If they see a sign on the refectory door telling them “today we fast,” do they examine the sign itself and wonder how the letters are formed? Or do they expect today is a fast day?

I am simply the sign Jesus posted to say that the Christ is the resurrection and the life.

I ask them.

     “Don’t you want to talk about the reason Jesus made a sign of me?”

Apparently, I’ve asked the impossible question. In the gapping unanswered space their eyes turn to the abbot, the only slightly older man who knows every word of gospel and even the epistles, by heart. The abbot understands my question, and he answers it — correctly — of course.

         “Jesus used the sign of the raising of Lazarus to speak one of his ‘I am’ Christ messages. He said, ‘I am the resurrection and the life.'”

         One asks what all seemed to wonder, “Must we be without sin, to enter into this eternal life?”

         The abbot answers, “Of course.”

         I answer, “It’s not about sin.”

The young monks listen to the abbot.  And I wonder, why is everything always about sin? Even the all-loving God’s abundant gift of life seems to have a sin lock on the door.  It is helpful for me to remember my own needs as a youth.

Jesus was there with us in the crowd of the followers of John the Baptist.  It seemed wonderfully counter-cultural to us teens at the time. Our papa, a faithful Pharisee, didn’t want us just going off after every popular movement, but the actual opposition to these baptisms was from the political power mongers under Ceasar –I’ll save my commentary for another time.

I was in the crowd with my sister, Mary, as the preacher, John, begged repentance. And here was my friend, Jesus. Like these monks, we were all young, and searching.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#84.1 Tuesday, September 1, 2026

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)

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#83.12 Thursday, August 27, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
 

About sin: I am sitting here on the wall of the steps to the monastery offering the monks a Q and A. I thought they would be asking about my friend Jesus, but I find they are most concerned about sin and holy retribution.

I intended to tell them about the seven signs, (not miracles,) that Jesus used to illustrate the gracious nature of God on earth as it is in heaven: here in the physical mortal life as it is in the eternal, holy, spiritual life.

Maybe that message isn’t as suited to these times of human wars and games of wins and losses. Or maybe God’s grace just doesn’t seem to belong in this place of winds and rocks and brute survival. Or maybe the obsession of people with sins appears to empower humankind to take control of the divine by requiring God to dole out punishments and rewards. Like the precocious child, bored in a classroom, humankind finds power over the whole of God’s love by behaving badly, always searching and sometimes creating “sin.” Even though the abundant power of the love of God surrounds us like air does for breath, constant and invisible, our personal thoughts of God only seem to gravitate to the exhale.

Jesus took issue with the human need for judgement. In John 9, the whole chapter is about the sixth sign in which Jesus gave sight to a man who was born blind.  He uses the mud of earth and spit to make the healing potion and he assigns the healing power from the traditions of healing by washing in a particular pool, using physical tools already known and present. But all the time, all around, the disciples, and then the keepers of the law, those religious leaders ever present make the discussion about sin. Jesus comes as a brilliant beam of gracious light into this eternal human search for the roots of darkness.

So. the next question from the young monks is much easier to answer because it is simply about order and sequence, not actual practicable theology. 

     “So, is the raising of Lazarus the seventh sign, or is it actually part of the fifth declaration of ‘I am’ [John 10:14]?”

This young scholar perceives the gospel as a numerical puzzle to be solved with seven of these and seven of those. He is seeking a hidden code as though it is a game with a win.

     I say, “However you come to it, it always ends the same. God is all-love, always welcoming us home. John 15:4.”

(Continues Tuesday, September 1)

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#83.11 Wednesday, August 26, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

In all my redundant healings, rising over and over again into life always into future times, I’ve never actually discussed my circumstances with anyone but my closest friends and family.  Now, I offered it as a homily on the “signs” in the gospel and the questions here aren’t about the Jesus message, they are only asking about personal sins, the kind that are confessed before a priest.

Perched as we are here, just above the nesting place for thousands of birds, our slight human glimpses of holy wisdom don’t distinguish which birds of Creation are beloved and which are doomed to eternal punishment. In birds there seems to be no sorting for punishment and no required penance. In birds, everyone has wings, not just the angels. Then, here are these earthbound monks with all the contrivances of human understanding.

     I ask, “What do you say about the birds? Do they sin? Does God measure them by their sins? Or is it only human beings who can sin?”

The monks look to the abbot for the answer, and the abbot is standing a few steps higher, observing, not participating. Pushed by his followers’ expectation he offers scripture for an answer.

     “In the Gospel of Matthew, it is said that God knows even if a nearly worthless sparrow falls. And God knows every little thing about us, even the number of hairs on our heads.” [Matthew 10:29-31]

A novice touches the bristles shaven on the fore part of his head, then he reaches his fingers back to the hairs still growing a length. It is a sign that God has less counting to do with tonsured monks. And it is a confusing bit of holy scripture here — this hair counting thing. I think the abbot was intending to use this reference to tell of God’s grace, affirming God’s love for all Creation. He means to be supportive of the metaphor I am drawing. But scripturally, the context is the Gnostic divisiveness between darkness and light, between soul and body. And in that passage part of us may be destined for hell. [In the context of the chapter Matthew 10]

The abbot’s answer doesn’t argue against my analogy but he chose to keep his answer narrow, allowing for grace, amid the more punitive context of the whole chapter.

To the abbot, I say, “thank you.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#83.10 Tuesday, August 25, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Rarely do I explain my gift, or call it an oddity, of amazing healing power. But I did speak it aloud not to an intimate family member, but to a small community of monks who are strangers to me. They have so many questions; so after Mass I find a place on a stairway wall to sit, and answer whatever they ask.

Here the summer sun is tempered by the cool breath of sea–always beautiful. Always rugged — Even more awesome in storms. 

Monks gather with their questions.

     “Is this miracle available to anyone who doesn’t sin?”

Didn’t I already say that?

     “My oddity of life on earth is a sign, not a miracle. It is an earthly metaphor of a heavenly truth. Jesus intended the dramatic illustration of a healing to life as an earthly sign to tell us, his friends, of eternal life and life again, which is spiritually available to all.”

     “Were you chosen for this because you were sinless?”

I shouldn’t be caught laughing at this question. It was a serious question in these times. But how can I answer?

     “It wasn’t about sin at all, even though the notion of sin seems to drive every spiritual message on earth in these times. Sin is of earth and doesn’t speak the poetry of heaven. In the ways of thinking in these times, it would seem we are all sinners.”

     “So, you are saying Jesus raised up a sinner?”

     “I’m just saying sin, depending on the viewpoint people take of it, is either the inevitable nature of all humankind, or it is an earthly stain on some and not others. It isn’t a factor in the relentless, unjudging, gracious love of God for us or for the eternal nature of spiritual life.”

Now they are shouting questions over one another.

     “What about Hell?”

     “Why would people choose goodness over sin if the reward of heaven is for all?”

     “How can you say sin is a ‘viewpoint?'”

     “Jesus gave us signs of God’s universal and unbreakable love. This love of God is not fractured or manipulated by human sin. When Jesus was present, teaching, walking the earth, at my first rising, no one cared about my sins. My sister was blaming Jesus for being late to my death, but other than that, sin wasn’t even considered.”

     Jesus was using something all people share — healing, which is a gracious gift to all Creation, as a sign to show the nature of the reality of God’s love as unceasing and regardless of sin.”

(Continues tomorrow)


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#83.9 Thursday, August 20, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

     Order is restored and the abbot appears to be confused by my presence here. Am I his cohort or foe? He isn’t comfortable with nuance. He wants to hate me, but for this moment anyway, I’ve captured the wonder of his followers and it seems it would only undermine his power as the leader of this community to turn them against me.

     “Please Father, continue with this Mass.”

The abbot begins the liturgy. [Footnote1]

     Celebrant (abbot): “O God come to my assistance.”

     People: “O Lord make haste to help me.”

     Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever unto ages of ages.”

The unison “amen” is the cue to kneel. Even though this is a Celtic liturgy, there are some differences between this and the services led by Father Columbanus. I was not expecting to kneel, so I’m depending on this walking stick just now. I’ve only recently healed back to standing. I’m conspicuously the last to kneel as the abbot waits before proceeding with the prayer of contrition.

“We have sinned, O Lord, we have sinned: remit our sins and save us. Hear us, O Thou Who didst guide Noah upon the waves of the Flood, and didst recall Jonah from the abyss by Thy Word; free us. O Thou Who didst offer a hand to Peter as he was sinking; bear us up, O Christ, Son of God. Thou didst perform wonders among our fathers, O Lord: stretch forth Thy hand from on high to answer our necessities.” [Footnote 2]

I am so awkward rising again to my feet, Brother Lugh feels compelled to help me up. It is a wonder I claim healing at all.

     The abbot says, “Free us, O Christ:”

The dialogue continues.

         “Hear us, O Christ.”

         “Hear us, O Christ.” 

         “Hear us.”

The chant has a new, less complicated set of notes.

         “Kyrie eleison.”

         “Christe eleison.”

         “Deo Gratias.” [Stowe Missal]

When the abbot elevates the chalice — the new chalice — the golden chalice in this place of raw rocks — this anonymously gifted chalice, is actually known to Brother Lugh by its gifter — known to him as a remembrance of a father to a son. Brother Lugh, wilts in tears of grief for his own, ever so earthly and mortal, father.

     The words of institution — “the blood shed” — “the body of Christ” —

     The release of the Spirit on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

[Footnote 1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stowe_Missal (retrieved 12-12-25) Blogger’s note: Just as I prayerfully write this blog about our spiritual oneness in God, having ancient earthly signs of this tucked into all creation, I search history on the internet looking for an 8th century Celtic Liturgy. And it is here.  It is published in these later centuries as a book.  Like the nature of color, all reflected to create the perfection of white, here is another earthly sign for that oneness of all human expression, despite the mortal little hates and foibles, may the  amalgamation of human goodness and wisdom and the search for it, reflect a spiritual truth.

[Footnote 2] ©1995 M K Dowling ORDINARY of the MASS (retrieved 12-15-25, as included in the Stowe Missal)

(Continues Tuesday, August 25)

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#83.8 Wednesday, August 19, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
 

It’s left for me, to preach to these monks of the Skellig and explain myself as I am called a “sign.”

     “All of Creation, the earth, the beauty, the love and our sacred ability to touch and to be touched are all signs — on earth to speak of heaven. The whole of touchable, visible, beautiful Creation of earth speaks the heavenly truth, ‘God is.’ Love would be unfathomable if it had no earthly sign. Friendship, familial bonds, parental obligation, even sexual passion are earthly signs to speak of the invisible, present, all-encompassing love.”

I see shocked faces gaping at me — some loves are taboo here. Original sin keeps its luster even in a world made only of a vertical rock face.

     “All beauty on earth becomes signs of the invisible, explaining the  experience of heaven. I am a sign — an earthly messenger of something more.

     “In the Gospel of John, the signs aren’t hidden to be discovered anew with each turning of a leaf or wonder at a sunrise. In John seven signs were extraordinary and performed only by Jesus. So, my dear friend and teacher made me a sign when he called me back from my first death. There was, of course, a Roman plot to start rumors that I could finally stay dead, [John 12:10] which would have made me a sign of a temporary resuscitation, and the message would be that our spiritual nature is as mortal as our earthly nature. But, not so.  The spiritual life isn’t bound by the rules of mortality. Spiritual life is immortal and abides with God as love — before our physical births and after our physical deaths, even while we live as mortals, we are also spiritual by nature. Apparently, people weren’t adept at understanding that, so Jesus made a sign to speak it.”

     “How did you arrive here?” One asks.

     I was sailing with a river merchant to Iona, when we were wrecked in a storm at sea, and both of us drown.  My bones were washed ashore here. It was Brother Lugh who found me and Brother Timothy who granted me the time and comfort for the healing.

Now, everyone is shouting questions at me. The abbot is furious; his own shouts only raise the noise level. There is no decorum, just a cacophony of each talking above the other.

     I speak what the abbot is shouting, “Please, peace, my friends, this is a solemn service of worship. I will answer questions afterwards.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#83.7 Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
 

Surely, they must know the gospel here; probably it is committed to memory many times over. For them, it wouldn’t be a strange story I have to tell. I could understand this amazement if they were Pagan and the earthly signs of Jesus were not already known to them.

     “Surely, you already know. It is as it was specifically told in John 11.”

The monks turn back to the front of the room expecting the abbot has plotted me here as a clever start for his homely on spiritual life. He could have played my interruption so well, but no. He looked to the two young novices, just learning the routines of this community.

     “Is this a prank?” the abbot asks. “You brought this stranger with you from the mainland and kept him hidden all this time just to make a joke of it?”

The young monks are mortified.  I speak on their behalf.

     “No, the new brothers had nothing at all to do with me here. I was brought from the dregs of the sea by Brother Timothy, the hermit, and for all the weeks of my healing he cared for me, as he does other wounded things clinging to life.”

Now the abbot casts accusations on Brother Lugh.

      “So, you lied, when you confessed that you’d lied, when you said you found a dead man on the shore!”

     “Your Holiness, I thought I’d seen a dead man, and then there was no one to bury, so I thought the devil had tangled my thoughts so I would think I saw what wasn’t, so I confessed that I had spoken a falsehood in reporting a dead man.”

The abbot failed his monks several times over here, blaming them, then revealing a confession, and now the missing homely is left for me to speak. I have everyone’s full attention.

      “My friend and teacher knew that his own death was eminent, murder by cross was plotted by Roman henchmen against any outspoken Jew. Jesus knew of his likely, earthly death. He wanted us, his beloved followers and friends to know that we would still have the Spirit of him with us, as he is still with us to this day. So, Jesus gave an earthly sign, raising a physical person from the dead, to gift us with an earthly simile to describe the invisible spiritual truth of heaven. And here am I, always healing in body as the sign of the heavenly truth of spiritual life unfettered by death.”

(Continues tomorrow)


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#83.6 Thursday, August 13, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

I follow the others of this community into the slightly larger, oblong cell of stacked stones where monks gather for Mass. It is not a Pagan circle, made over to be a Christian Church as are many small circular stone churches made over from ancient Pagan temples.  This seems Christian from the start. More likely it pretends to be the shape of a Roman basilica, so it has a front and a back. The abbot takes his place at the front and within the small scale of it, he alone, fills the whole apse. In a miniature structure, the earthly people seem like giants. So be it.

Brother Lugh and I, followed by the two novices were first to enter, so we are standing the farthest in the back, but how could Brother Lugh think I wouldn’t be noticed, a ninth man here, a stranger to these others, wearing this oddly made linen tunic of the very same weave as the scapulars and the body bags supplied to this monastery at the start of it. I’m grateful Brother Timothy gave me the proper Celtic tonsure. There is no thought among these people that I am not a monk — I’m just a stranger to them.

The dialogue of the ritual would be in the Roman language. But first, the abbot interrupts the expected liturgy, and speaks in the spoken language of these monks.

         “How is it possible there is a stranger among us? There has not been a boat at the cove for some weeks.”

It hardly feels like warm words of welcome.

         Brother Lugh announces, “This is Lazarus, back from the dead!”

There is a silence before the murmur of wonder.  Maybe no further explanation is needed.

         But the abbot says, “Brother Lazarus. Explain this.”

I really didn’t think I needed to explain myself to strangers. But I attempt it anyway.

         “I am a sign.”

         “You say you are Christ returned?”

         “No, no. I am a sign — My return to life is an earthly event to speak of a heavenly truth — I am just, simply, the sign on earth of spiritual resurrection as it is in heaven.  The mystical life is for all of us — it is the spiritual nature of all of our lives.”

There is a stunned silence here.

(Continues Tuesday, August 18)

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#83.5 Wednesday, August 12, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
 

Here is a fracture of earthen rock jutting out over a foreboding sea. Climbing onto it would be daunting to any creature not equipped with wings. Heaven is abundant here. But it is the things of earth that are rough and sparse.

It isn’t a Christian thing, or a Pagan thing; it is an ancient thing, forever bound in the holy space between earth and heaven where people come seeking, and maybe even trusting that which is invisible yet well known as Holy. Even in such spiritual bliss within such holiness, comes a longing for an earthly voice to be the flesh and blood human speaking for Holy One. These brothers come here longing to hear the voice of God whispering the love message.

In the earthling way of thinking, the mountain peaks would be given grand names and the cliffsides would become the paths to reach them, but here, the peaks are simply called Skellig maybe because that’s the sound of the rock rolling down the cliffside. The whole island is Skellig, and Skellig is also another rock like this one, nearby in this ocean. But in the midst of this Great Skellig, between the unnamed peaks is the one place with a name. It is a gentler slope and it links one peak to the other. I’ve heard it called Christ’s saddle. It is a perfect seat for the far-traveling mystical presence of the Christ known here on the gallop from heaven to earth with the holy message always known but never spoken, except in metaphor and parable.

Here the earthbound fringe of humanity longs for a physical presence of God. Even the priestly voice of a human can’t really fill the gapping need for the link between heaven and earth. Yet, here, a priestly abbot can give a monk a comfortable footing on earth while his own monk’s Spirit soars heavenward.

I follow Brother Lugh and a few other monks through the opening at the east facing end of the largest of this cluster of cells. These stacked stone cells look like an enclave of bald heads — but with corbels. Why have these monks, new to this Skellig, not thatched their shelters, at least with fescue and kelp as Brother Timothy has done to his cell? If these monks had lived their earthly years as my own sons, they would know the importance of thatch to keep the damp out and every little passing raincloud wouldn’t chill their sleeps.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#83.4 Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

I speak the Spirit of the familiar prayer aloud with Brother Lugh but not using the words of practiced repetitions; and he objects. Just now, I prefer thoughtful words to empty phrases so I continue in disorder.

     I say, “Guide us wandering into the thin places — the liminal space between heaven and earth.”

     He corrects, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

On it goes.

      “Give us the goat’s milk and Swiss chard we need just for this one day, on earth as we are nurtured in heaven,

     “Give us this day our daily bread.”

     “And flaunt us in the forgiveness that releases Spirit from earthly errors.”

     “Forgive us our debts.”

      “Let us truly believe in forgiveness, enabling us to release others from their indebtedness to us.”

     “As we forgive our debtors…

     “Lazarus, I don’t really blame you for making a liar of me in front of the abbot. I mean, you were dead. What could you do?  But I blame the whole Lazarus tale that fools the world into thinking dead people can just rise up and live again. And yet, death is death, and I will never see my father again. (He wails.) I took the vow. It is such a deep hurt to give up self to God. You can’t just make up your own words to a prayer.”

     “You know, Brother Lugh, the Lazarus story is a sign on earth of life as it is in heaven. Death is an earthly undeniable fact, but a sign uses an earthly fact to speak an invisible, but real, spiritual truth. Spiritually, death itself is breached — on earth as it is in heaven.”

     “In one way I like to believe that because I feel my father with me, even as I know he is dead, but, of course…”

     “You can’t just ‘like to believe’ something. You either do believe it or you don’t no matter what other people — even if they are bishops or abbots or even your own father tell you to believe. And grief is the love between you and your father that you know is true and real and present with you. You know your father’s spirit and your own parent’s love is still with you.”

     “The abbot would say it is a sin to dwell on my father. And if I say, it was my father who is dwelling with me, the abbot will say I continue to lie.”

     “So, what can I say to the abbot on your behalf?”

(Continues tomorrow)


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#83.3 Thursday, August 6, 2026

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)

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#83.2 Wednesday, August 5, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

I found a stacked stone wall for a rest before I find a place to stay here or maybe before I decide to go back.  Possibly Sister Brigid’s intention in bringing me up here was purposed with setting me free, like the healed bird; or maybe she guided me to Brother Lugh because she felt he needs me.  He was the first to find my bones, and it was Brother Lugh who told the others a dead man washed up with the tide.

He saw me there. But, when no dead man was found on the shore for burial, Brother Lugh, who was already grieving for his father, was accused of lying.  He sought absolution for the sin of lying and others thought he was obsessed with death and hallucinating about finding a dead man. And now, it is Brother Lugh who is sitting here with me, offering a cup for water, and pouring out his grief.

     He says, “When the two novices arrived with the chalice, they said their sponsor had willed the golden gift before he died. My father was a physician, and he knew the plague was spreading again and would soon likely take all who helped the sick. I doubt those novices he supported and appointed before he died even knew his own son was already here?”

     “Brother Lugh, just this simple cup of water set me to remembering when Jesus was preparing for his own death and he poured the wine into a cup, and spoke words of our belonging one to another. It was the cup we still share.”

     “But now my father sent two strangers to ‘refresh’ our community here, along with the Jesus cup. (His tears flow.) That chalice, is a sign that he is looking for me in heaven but here, I am not even allowed to think of him. The abbot demands I leave my old life — even my father’s memory. I try to pretend to forget, but saying I can forget just becomes another lie.”

     “Of course you can’t forget. Grief can never be absolved by pretending to forget. And you can’t ignore the mercy when your own father sent two new brothers and a sign of remembrance. He sent you brothers as assurance that you don’t have to bear grief alone.”

     “No, no. My father didn’t tell those brothers that his own son was here.  They have no idea their benefactor had any connection to this place. Only I know their benefactor was my father.”

     “God knows.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#83.1 Tuesday, August 4, 2026

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)

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#82.14 Thursday, July 30, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
 

The climb to the cluster of cells that on the Great Skellig was exhausting for me so Brother Lugh and I found a seat on the low wall of the cistern in the midst of the monk’s cells.

      “Brother Lugh, I also know grief too well. You have my sympathy. Tell me of your father’s life.”

      “No. I’ve taken vows. My old life of longings for what I can’t have is no more now. The abbot has heard my confessions. To claim you are like Lazarus, the Jesus miracle when he raised his best friend from the dead, really only makes a mockery of death, and in this world, death is real, and miracles are not. My father can’t just rise up from the dead. Death is real.

      “I said I saw a dead man, and then there was no dead man to bury. The abbot said I was transfixed by death so I lied that I had seen a dead man. He said my lie was a sin so I confessed, and my sin and it was absolved.”

      “But there was no lie told.”

      “The abbot said death cannot be absolved as a lie. But you, dead man, followed me in my sleeps, always staring at me with your living eye. Now, you are here like a living person, claiming to be a Jesus miracle, calling yourself Lazarus. Just leave me alone, and let the dead be dead.”

      “I just need to rest here a minute, then I’ll go back to Timothy’s hermitage. Please, sit with me here.”

Again he sits; he really does want to talk.

      “Why did Sister Brigid say you are that miracle?”

      “She just introduced me as Lazarus and Lazarus is a sign, not a miracle.”

      “No, a sign is a posting on the refectory door to remind us to fast. It isn’t the same as a miracle.”

      “You’re right. A sign is not a miracle. And the raising of Lazarus is a sign. A sign is an earthly image that points to a spiritual truth. Raising a dead man to life is one of Jesus’s earthly signs that tells a spiritual truth.  The truth is, even while you grieve an earthly death, you know the spirit of your father lives and you know you are still beloved by him.”

Silence now. I lay my hand on his shoulder intended as a small earthly comfort for him.

(Continues Tuesday, August 4)

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#82.13 Wednesday, July 29, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Sister Brigid has guided me to the monk’s cell of Brother Lugh, the young monk who found my bones in the tidewater in early spring. Maybe he recognizes me. Maybe he just always looks cautiously terrified.

      “You’ve seen me before, Brother Lugh. Then I was in a far worse state. Sister Brigid tells me it was you who sent for help and I’m grateful.”

The young, freshly shorn monk just stares at me incredulously through wide eyes of terror that I have also seen before. Maybe he always sees with wonder. He stares as though I am a visage or a ghost and not a living person, even now, nearly healed, as I stand outside his doorway very much a living person, he says nothing. Is there a difference between wonder and fear?

I say, “Brother Timothy came for me with a sledge and a shroud intending to gather up the bones of a dead man. When he saw my nearness to life I became another of his healing projects.”

Brother Lugh looks troubled.

      “What do you mean healing? He is a deaf mute. He buries the dead.”

      “Brother Timothy is indeed silent, but not deaf to God. I guess he hears of hopes and needs beyond the listening of the others of us. For your alertness, and for his awareness in the possibility of my life continuing, I am ever grateful. I thank you now for your part in my rescue. Sister Brigid brought me here, because she knew I first needed to speak my gratitude to you.”

      “I knew I saw you dead. I was not mistaken. When another of us brothers was dead, I saw death and I know death, and I saw you dead. Now I’ve had word of my own father’s death. I only wish to welcome one particular beloved ghost and he is not a stranger to me.”

So, my presence here is intruding on his grief. What can I say?

      “Might we sit down on this step? I’m not yet at my full strength,”

      “Just go on your way now. This is my time for prayers. I’ll ask penance for my sin of envy, because you live, and my father does not.”

      “I am a sign, and not an easy answer to grief. We should sit down and consider together the meaning of a sign.”

He is reluctant.  At long last I can sit down. We find a place on the wall of a cistern.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#82.12 Tuesday, July 28, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

This morning, Sister Brigid not only comes up the path with the flasks of goat’s milk that she takes to the monks each day, she also has a cloth sack over her shoulder overflowing with fresh garden greens.

Of course, I offer to help her carry all of this, though I’m not yet sure of my own strength even to walk this path. She gives me the bag of greens and I realize it is thoughtful of her not to ask me to help with the flasks.  She must have noticed my frailty.

We follow the worn path descending into the low place in the valley. She walks ahead of me, steady as a goat and waits at the bottom for my slower descent.  We cross the lower, more level part of the valley, then I look to the ascent — it seems daunting just now as I am hardly accustomed to walking at all. She takes the bag of greens onto her own shoulder.

      “Take your time.” She says, “This first time, just use your hands and knees for the climb up the stairway. What seems a hard climb today will be easy for you tomorrow.”

I know she is right. That’s the nature of healing. Healing may be a holy miracle, but it is never a magical grand pronouncement: ‘now you are strong again.’ It always demands the frail stretch into strength. So today, I make the ascent to the monastery clinging to the walking stick, nearly on my hands and knees, grateful for her patience with me.

We stop for a rest at the hillcrest, and she hands me back the bag to carry.

      “The monks will be returning from their morning prayers very soon, so we will be waiting for Brother Lugh at his cell. “

I follow the Sister to a doorway of the cells, so when Brother Lugh returns, he does find us waiting.

He is clearly startled to see me. Maybe he would be shy of any stranger, or maybe he remembers he has seen me. He keeps his gaze fixed on me, as though I were a snake at his door.

      Sister Brigid says, “Brother Lugh, this man calls himself Lazarus.”

The Sister hefts the supplies and goes on to make her delivery leaving me to explain myself to the stunned monk. We both know he’s seen me before, in a different state of life. Is that also what he is thinking in his silence?

(Continues tomorrow)

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#82.11 Thursday, July 23, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

On this new day I step outside the cell and watch for Sister Brigid to come up the rise.

I’m grateful for the walking stick. This trek, like everything in this place, requires a serious climb. Gratefully, there is a path with stair-like layers, but were it a staircase there would be more than six hundred steps. I take stops for resting all along the way. 

These monk’s cells are what account for buildings on this island and they remind me of deep forest mushrooms, but without the forest. They are built of dry stacked stone. (No mortar is used.) So the secret of this strength that stands through centuries unfazed by wind and storm lies in the dialogue among each of the layers of stone, with the pull of the earth. [Footnote]

At the base the walls are in two layers, the straight interior walls as any house or hut, and a curved outer wall that continues above the straight interior, rounding like a Roman dome, with the weight of the stones laid one against the other in a unity of strength.

Where the straight walls end, the round exterior is set with cobbles, as is any stone house prepared for a thatch roof. Apparently, there once was an expectation of thatch. But here there is so little material for a nice weave of thatch, so, some have their roofs sodded with mossy grasses.  And there seems to be plenty of dampness here to maintain mosses.

I think, with the slightly angled vertical “stalks” for stems and the round flora lay of the roof, the cells with sod look like huge mushrooms just up from a forest floor.

I gaze across the valley that makes a curve between the two peaks of this rock from this somewhat high place where Brother Timothy’s cell perches, across to the higher rock face of this Great Skellig where the rocks were stacked to be the monastery.

Sister Brigid calls this wide U-shaped valley “the Christ’s saddle.” In this season it is a green valley where the goats graze. Despite the abundance of birds that make a fertile garden place of this whole sea rock, the wind and the sea support the bleakness, and the garden patches require an intentional gardener.  No doubt Sister Brigid has worked the soil of her garden since she was a child.

[Footnote] A most interesting aspect of historical fiction is when old history has new finds. Another internet search of Skellig Micheal provided a more detailed, and a first person observation of this setting. This blogger attempted some amendments, like learning that the actual stairs were a later creation — I only assumed some sort of path was there. https://petercox.ie/blogs/a-life-in-the-landscape/the-monks-of-skellig-michael?srsltid=AfmBOoqYm2UmxaPDLdI29VUvmuE1e0WfFs9-Pj0H41rUxSBwVxdHk5ER  (retrieved 4-11-26)

  (Continues Tuesday, July 28)

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#82.10 Weds., July 22, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

The Sister understands my need to leave the care of her brother now.

      “Tomorrow follow me across the Christ’s saddle to the monastery so you can make yourself known there.”

      “I’d like to do that.”

I can see the path through the green valley (known as the “Christ’s saddle” here) and a pathway nearly like steps rising to the stone works of monks.

      “So, I should look for the abbot.”

      “No. You should go first to Brother Lugh. He was the monk who came up the climb, breathless, panicked and pale, saying that a dead man had washed up on the rocks.”

      “I must have been a grotesque find.”

      “They had just experienced the first death among them. And these monks, who only recently arrived to fill the shell of a monastery were vowing to God they would be here forever. They haven’t even been here through all the seasons around, and already one of them passed. Then, just as they were preparing for that burial, Brother Lugh reported that a dead man had washed up. Fresh on the edge of mortal fear, every tide turned with the trepidation that it might expose something more of death stalking every nightmare. They are young and mortal fears still haunt them.”

      “Then I just landed here like a piece of driftwood on an island that never had a tree. I can imagine that the sight of dead stranger would be horrifying.”

      “So, they set about preparing a second grave, but this one was beyond the monk’s cemetery where they had just prepared to bury one of their own. But making a grave in the unturned rock was daunting. Any untilled earth here is solid rock. So, they didn’t chisel a dent.”

      “So sorry to put them through that.”

      “Well, it was good there was no body to be found so they didn’t have to finish it. The abbot assumed the dead man was invented by Brother Lugh because finding death was new to them. The abbot accused Lugh of dancing with the devil in lies.”

      “I’m sorry.”

      “The abbot doesn’t easily let go of the devils he evokes so you will be a blessing of truth for Brother Lugh. You can understand why Lugh would welcome you. “

So tomorrow, when Sister Brigid delivers the goat’s milk, I will follow her across the valley and up to the monastery to the cell of Brother Lugh.

Returning now to Brother Timothy, my prayer is for strength for the long trek in this healing.

(Continues tomorrow)