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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)

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#82.9 Tuesday, July 21, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Sister Brigid affirms my concern that Timothy only perceives me as a creature in his care. If I were a bird, I would be released into the sky. But as a human being, my release poses a problem. Am I seeking his friendship and expecting belonging? I’m finding all Brother Timothy chooses to offer me is his relentless care and maybe some pity for my brokenness.

      “This isn’t like the bird’s healing, where one day I just fly off.”

      His sister says, “This is something to talk with him about.”

      “How can I do that?  It can’t just be explained in pointing to some simple metaphor or guiding him in the recipe for steaming the Swiss chard.”

She shows me a sign they use with their fingers that means “sibling.”

      “You need to use this sign of grasping hands, then pointing from one to the other to say to him, I am your brother.”

      “And I also need to thank him. How do I sign ‘thank you’?”

      “I don’t know.  We never say that to one another.”

I interrupt the introspective silence she sets between us in this moment.

      “I’ve seen that the others he rescues know how to speak gratitude. The hound sits with him in the storms, the bird returns and always knows who he is. So maybe my gratitude to him isn’t a simple sign for a spoken word but a commitment.”

      “Indeed, Lazarus, but I’d guess the real communication challenge you have isn’t to thank one who doesn’t hear, but it is how you will explain your presence at the monastery. Last they saw you, you were dead.”

         “I’ll just tell them I’m Lazarus, risen again.  They’ve read the gospel. They’ll know the story.”

She laughs.

      “You probably don’t want to take that news to the abbot. In fact, I will suggest you follow me tomorrow when I deliver the goat’s milk up there, and we will go first to Brother Lugh. It was he who claimed he saw a dead man in the tidal wash, and he may be glad to know he wasn’t imagining that. The abbot assumed he had invented a lie. But maybe you should introduce yourself with your real name, then say, ‘like Lazarus.’ who returned from the dead.”

      “So, I shouldn’t say I am Lazarus?”

      “I think not.  Brother Lugh actually does have fits of fantasy and he would be one to believe you.”

      Apparently, she doesn’t believe me.  What can I say?

(Continues tomorrow)

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#82.8 Thursday, July 16, 2026

Art notes The [Irish text] text as edited by Stokes 1888,  is here shown alongside the literal translation [English]  due to Todd. (Footnote)

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Sister Brigid offers the human conversation I’ve been craving.

      I ask, “How is it possible that a Brother in a community of faith, such as a monastery on a remote rock, could be excluded from the monastery as you suggest.”

      “Timothy and I are not excluded.”

      “You aren’t?”

      “No, we belong to God the same as they do, but we don’t belong with them. It happens here that bands of monks come and go. They show up for a season as though they are here forever, but then they’re gone. They come here to belong to God alone. But they always keep a boat for the return or they arrange for a boat to show up from time to time. Timothy and I don’t have a boat.” [footnote]

      “How did you get here?”

      “We were delivered here as children by the ‘holy person’ God sent to rescue us when we were discovered to be homeless orphans living by the sea.”

      “You mean, you were just abandoned all alone on this bleak rock?

      “We are never alone, of course. God is with us.”

      “Of course, I know that. I too feel God’s presence here in the silence and the sounds of this place.”

       “The holy person taught us the breastplate of St. Patrick, “Christ before me, Christ beside me, …”

         Interrupting, “I know it well.”

She continues speaking it with her hands. Then she folds her hands in a silence at the end and tells me more of their deliverance here.

      “We could have survived on the land over there, fine enough, but people misunderstood Timothy and cruelty is the human nature of misunderstanding. We were in danger so it was a blessing that we were delivered to a place.

      “It has always been known that this Skellig is a holy rock where only the most God-fearing come for solitude. It is the dessert place, for the sacrificial commitment to God alone by the living martyrs.  Here, we found the birds and sea creatures and the life we had known living by the sea. But we also found the little gifts left behind by the past people, the stone stackers: hounds and goats and gardens, their little cells and a cell for worship. Some have even left their graves up there in the cemetery. When my brother knows of a death, he chips a marking stone for them. The stone-stackers left their tools for Timothy — the mallet, chisel, sledge and rod.”

Art Footnote — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Patrick%27s_Breastplate

retrieved 1-17-26

Footnote The Great Skellig has long been known for the ruins of an ancient monastery. It was the launching pad for Star Wars. and the speculative source for many other fictional tales, like Sun Dancing by Geoffery Moorhouse, and recently Haven by Emma Donohogh.

(Continues Tuesday, July 21)

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#82.7 Wednesday, July 15, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
 

Things are different now. I’m not needy and helpless and Brother Timothy is not the caregiver. One healing changes us both, and just as the stretches of healing are painful for me, the new stretches of relationship for Brother Timothy challenge his power over me. Healing is miraculous, but also, it is a severance of care. He will have to rescue another broken bird, and I will have to find my own way here.

On this new day Sister Brigid delivers the more abundant flask of goat’s milk and now she goes on her way with her other deliveries as she does daily. I step out of the cell, and watch her cross the deep, green divide and up the stone stairway to a higher place. Now that she knows of me, here, she has filled her brother’s flask more fully, so sharing with me isn’t his personal sacrifice.

I’m hoping he sends me back this morning to return the empty flask so I can thank her with words; but the little monk goes off as he always did until yesterday and returns it himself. So today, after he comes back, when he settles into his routine of silent prayers, before he begins his daily task of chipping stones, I go back again, down the path to the Sister’s cell.

I see her pouring fresh water into the goat trough.

      “Good morning, Sister Brigid.”

      “Good morning, Laz. Did my brother send you back down? He was just here.”

      “I know. I just wanted to thank you for adding extra milk today, now that my presence isn’t a secret anymore.”

      “Not a secret now, from me anyway; I am pretty sure the others haven’t a thought he’d rescue a man among all his saved birds and critters. But if you wander up to the monastery, you may find that you, just showing up on the Skellig, will be very hard to explain.”

      “I see that Brother Timothy finds joy in the healing power as he released a bird from his care. And he probably needs to release me as well, so I need to go on my way to find myself useful.  I’m not needy anymore, but I’m not needed either. And I don’t know how to speak to Timothy so I could be a brother for him.”

She laughs.

      “Even the brothers aren’t brothers for him.”

         (Continues tomorrow)

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#82.6 Tuesday, July 14, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
 

Sister Brigid sends me with a sack of Swiss chard which she promises will be a treat for Brother Timothy when it is cooked properly.

      She says, “Brother Timothy has no idea how to prepare this. I’ve tried to instruct him on this method for steaming it, but he insists on boiling it down in brine like sea kelp and it just blackens into slime proving to him that sea stuff is better than garden greens. Now he will be amazed to find how good this garden thing can be.”

The climb back up around the rock from Sister Brigid’s cell is a good stretch for me — not unbearable pain, but the stretch of healing pain. Trinity is waiting at the hillcrest as a hound does when one from his own abode is returning.

I’m reminded of the Sister’s story of Saint Brendan, who was greeted on this Skellig by a hound. The wonder of the story is that the hound was expecting the Saint and his monks, as though all of Creation welcomed them home to a place where they had never been before. Whenever I hear these stories of saints, the awe is supposed to be in the oddity of miracle, but to my ears, the message of God’s love is hidden in the mundane details of the story. There is an obligation to the storyteller to include the details, even though they seem usual but that is where the signs are hidden.

Brother Timothy takes the gift of chard with a scowl, as he prepares to untie it from the cloth and drop it into his boiling pot of sea stuff. But I take it from him and re-tie it to the stick to lay across the top of the pot, dangling  in the rising steam. He keeps his stubborn scowl.

When the chard softens in the cloth and the drops from the cloth redden the water, I remove it from the steam and open the cloth. I touch the reed stick to the wilted leaves, dangling the morsal which I try first. It is excellent. So, the next bite I capture on the stick, I offer to Brother Timothy. He hesitates before he takes it, like a baby bird receiving the first worm, then I see his grinning gratitude. We share all of the chard before the stewpot of rosy stewed sea stuff is thoroughly cooked. The brother will have to admit sometimes his sister has a good idea.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#82.5 Thursday, July 9, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Brother Timothy’s sister tells me of Saint Brendan here on this Great Skellig. Discussing signs and miracles and we discover a twinkle of humor in the distinction between a saintly miracle and a simple sign of God’s gracious abundance. Apparently, a miracle has furniture. Her humor is gratifying. A miracle requires a great hall with tables, and an earthly sign is just a picnic with an abundance of food.

From my viewpoint though, as one who was rescued to be a redundant mortal as a sign, I too, find it better to be a sign than a saint. I tell her my name is Eleazor. It has more clarity than “Lazarus” just now. 

She tells me how she was charged at birth to always care for her twin, Brother Timothy.

      “Then I was named Brigid after a goddess, but the old woman who kept infant orphans wanted to call me Eunice to pledge my care for Timothy, as though giving me the name of a mother would provide him with a mother. But when we were cast out no longer infants, to live by the sea, God was with us and sent a ‘holy person’ to watch over us, who always called me Sister Brigid so that’s who I am.”

      “Very well, Sister Brigid, may you know me as Lazarus.”

      “Lazarus, who rose from the dead in John’s gospel?”

      “One in the same.”

She laughs. She thinks that’s funny.

Returning to her cell she ties some hands full of chard in bundles to take to Brother Timothy.

      She asks, “Do you know how to cook chard?”

      “I’ve always prepared it with the roots or beets boiling in the pot first, then when the skins are loose, I add the chard; it softens quickly and it is all good to eat. But here you leave the roots in the garden.”

      “Set in your old ways, Eleazor who calls yourself “Lazarus” you don’t need beets to redden the stew, the chard will grow again from the root left in the ground.”

She wraps a bundle of chard in a swath of cheese cloth.

      “When the pot is boiling take a stick and hold this bundle in the rising steam.  When it softens, and the blood-red drops redden the frothy boil the chard will be sweet and soft and warm to eat, and the water will be a very fine broth as well. And in the garden chard will grow again from the beet. It is a sign.”

 (Continues Tuesday, July 14)

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#82.4 Wednesday, July 8, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Gardening with the Sister, I can ask my questions about the people who come here.

      “Why is Brenden a saint and Brother Timothy simply a good man with a dog? Or does it matter?”

      “Oh, it matters. When the stories that the monks tell are of the saint, they are filled with amazing wonders and miracles, where earthly us would see only signs.”

      “Signs? Signs can be holy.”

      “Signs are everyday things, like the leaves of the Swiss chard that grow back from the root when harvested. It is a sign of God’s gifts of abundance. A holy gift isn’t used up, but comes back again and again. Like goat’s milk. That is the sign in nature, but it is no miracle or wonder. It only speaks of the miracle of God’s gracious abundance. So, it is a sign.”

      “So, when the Saint and the monks were sent to this great rock soaring from the sea…”

      “…This Skilleg, God did not simply give them a path onto the rock. First, they struggled, they circled the wrong rock, then they circled around this for three days, prayerfully, of course, then the miracle. It is told for all the generations, exactly in this way:”

‘…and they saw a great rock of stone appear above all the water, and three days they sailed about it ere they could get into the place.

         But at the last, by the purveyance of God, they found a little haven, and there went a-land everyone. And then suddenly came a fair hound, and fell down at the feet of Saint Brendan and made him good cheer in his manner.

         And then he bade his brethren, ‘Be of good cheer for our Lord hath sent to us his messenger, to lead us into some good place.

         And the hound brought them into a fair hall, where they found tables spread ready, set full of good food and drink. ‘ [Footnote]”

      She adds, “So this is a story of a saint, because the hound led them to a miraculous feast, in a hall with tables and an abundance of food.”

      “Isn’t that also how Brother Timothy makes the relentless climbs, guided by the creatures, and he also finds the most needed things — the eggs and sea plants for food, and the rain water in the clefts of rock — is this not the sign of a saint, also?”

      “No. To be a saint, requires the miracle of finding the gracious feast served in a great hall with tables.”

[Footnote] Caxton, William, Modern Spelling Version The Voyage of Saint Bredan (Published by Langley Press, Copyrght 2016, Simon Webb, noted as the author.) The introduction to this hagiography is informative, and sets this publication in its historical context 1470’s, hundreds of years after the life of the saint, but even in that later time it was not in the English words we would expect to read in our century. Author, Simon Webb, made it accessible. Caxton was producing the first ever English language printed books.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#82.3 Tuesday, July 7, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

I’m gardening with the sister. Here she sets the weed sprouts aside for the birds, lecturing me on the human numbness to the gracious gifts of Creation. And she takes from the garden only the leaves of the chard, letting the root stay in the soil. It’s been my tradition to pull and use the beets to redden the pot.

      I ask, “Do you not find the beets would be good to keep for your winter stores?”

      We don’t store up for days that may never come. We are gifted each day according to our need.”

      “Of course.” I recite the prayer words she’s considering, “Give us this day, our daily bread, or Swiss chard, or beets, or whatever this day may bring without worry for the next.” I can agree with her frugality; it just isn’t of the world I’ve ever known.

      She says, “It is the wisdom of Saint Brendan that is left in the place, to grow and grow again. When we have need of the roots, I will come for them, but here, from that root the leaves will grow back soon enough and they will keep on giving back to us for the whole season.”

      “So, tell me more of this Saint Brendan.”

      “It is said that he was an abbot with monks and they prepared hides, oiled to endure the sea water. Then they framed a little currach with high sides for sea tides and covered the oaken boat frame with well-oiled skins. Then they set out to release themselves onto the sea, following only the will of God. If God sent them to the little Skellig and there was no place to go ashore, they circled it three times, ‘father, son and holy ghost,’ and then by the will of God they laid eyes on the Great Skellig, which is this place.” [Footnote]

      I ask,   “So, they landed on this rugged rock, by the grace of God?”

She nods and smiles.

      She says, “Saints don’t beg for ease. Here the saint could hear God speaking to him in the voices of the birds.”

      “So, if a saint is gifted with listening to creatures, then surely Brother Timothy is a saint.”

      She stifles her laugh — being the good sister she is.

      She says, “Whatever that hound tells him isn’t for me to question. My task in life is only to tell him what people say.”

[Footnote]  Caxton, William, Modern Spelling Version The Voyage of Saint Bredan (Published by Langley Press, Copyrght 2016, Simon Webb, noted as the author.)

(Continues tomorrow)

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#82.2 Thursday, July 2, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
 

This Sister is the actual sister to the little monk she tells me. Her twin is Brother Timothy.

She takes the weeding prongs and a garden bag and we follow a well-trodden path that descends then turns steeply. She’s promises to tell me the tales of St. Brendan.

We slide down toward this wider green space on a ledge, rich with grasses already forming seed heads. It isn’t a long way, but it does tax my nearly healing bones and I wonder if I am even fit for this. My walking stick is of little use downward but I cling to it, because I suppose I will be able to use it for the climb back up. Here are rows of chard growing in a sunny spot between the rising rocks.

The sister kneels down on the earth at the chard rows and gestures for me to do the same. Kneeling is a good stretch for my stiff knees, and we are perfectly situated either for gardening or for prayer. Why did I assume we were kneeling for gardening? She folds her hands together, and casts her gaze skyward.

      “Oh, Holy three, let us not profane your sacred soil with human greed. Let us borrow only our merest sustenance. Amen.”

      “The earth is sacred here?” I ask.

She scratches up some fresh shoots of weeds from among the chard and sets them aside on a particular flat rock near-by. 

      “Of course, the earth is Creation, and all that it yields is gifted to us from God. It is by our human frailty that we cast away any of these gracious gifts simply because they don’t serve people. People can be so narrow to save only the things we plant ourselves as though we are better gardeners than angels or nature itself. The birds, with the wiser palate, will find a use for these weed sprouts.”

      “I see.”

      “And furthermore, this particular land is specifically sacred, because here, in this very place, it is said that Saint Brendan and his monks once trod. When this place was pure, with no rock or grass turned by human labor it was said that the Saint and his little band of monks were welcomed by the sea birds and the creatures.” [Footnote]

The sister takes her gardener’s blade and trims the leaves of chard leaving the root tops standing in the garden rows.  She collects these leaves, allowing the wounded root to stand in the soil. 

Footnote: Wikipedia offers an overview of this Saint. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_the_Navigator (retrieved 2-20-26)

(Continues Tuesday, July 7)

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#82.1 Wednesday, July 1, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

The little monk’s sister asks me if I am a merchant or a Viking.

         “Doesn’t anyone else travel the sea?”

         “Of course, but you don’t have the glow of a saint, so I assumed you weren’t among the blessed.”

         “Indeed, I wasn’t glowing of sainthood when the brother dragged my broken body up this cliff. He told no one I was here until I found healing. Today he gave me this walking stick and he sent me here to return the flask.”

         “He probably doesn’t want the abbot involved. If my brother could have his way, he would choose to live across on the Little Skellig with no people at all. He only wants the company of God, and the creatures of the skies and sea.  So” she asks again, “what are you? Why do you travel the seas?”

         “I’m no Viking, nor am I a merchant, though I was sailing with a merchant. And maybe that was the cause that my saintly glow is dimmed.”

She laughs.

         I explain, “We were on a journey in a currach, only made for river travel, bound for Iona, when our craft was devoured by the sea in a storm. I held the empty chest and floated on the sea for a moment, but the merchant held the chest of coins and sunk down straight away.  It was only by God’s grace that I was delivered here.”

         “At sea in a currach, adrift on a journey to Iona — how like Saint Brendan you must have seemed to the angels.”

         “So, who is Saint Brendan?”

         “You don’t even know?”

         “I don’t know anything about this time or place.”

         “He isn’t of this time. Saint Brendan is a known throughout all the world — an abbot in his little currach filled with monks. They were seeking Paradise.” [Footnote]

         “And they found it?”

         “Of course.  He’s a saint.”

         “So where is Paradise?”

         “It is said to be far to the north on the easterly side of the wind.”

         “Really, I hadn’t heard of that.”

         “I am oh so busy today, with the weather so fair. So, if you expect me to tell you the truths of the whole realm of God you will have to follow me on my chores.”

         “Fair enough.”

And so, the little monk’s sister goes back inside her hovel and is back in an instant with weed picks for both of us, and a harvester’s bag.

Footnote: Brendan of Clonfert (c. AD 484 – c. 577) is one of the early Irish monastic saints and one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland.  .https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_the_Navigator

(Continues tomorrow)


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#81.13 Tuesday, June 30, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

I try to explain.

   “I didn’t mean to startle you. The little monk who rescued me from the sea sent me here to return the flask and to thank you for the goats milk… every day… thank you — and for the straw and the oats — all the sustenance for healing.”

   “Do you mean, my brother rescued a man, and he told no one, not even me?”

    “I’m pretty sure he mentioned my neediness in his prayers. He seems to make a practice of rescuing the broken.”

    “Of course, he has always cared for every little needy creature anyone brings to his door. And it isn’t unusual when the birds return here for their nesting season that one or several will go higher on this Skellig to his cell, just for a grateful glimpse, remembering him. Even the seals in the cove know him as a friend for all his kindness. But I hadn’t imagined he would rescue a man.”

    “I’m no different then, from the birds and seals and the dog — I am also grateful. My healing has been slow. This is the first I’ve seen of this land. I’m supposing this place where my bones have washed up is a monastery and there are others here.”

         “If you go down through the Christ’s saddle and up the climb you will find the others.”

         I say, “But here you are, also, on this rocky precipice.”

         “It is a Skellig, set apart from shores and lands — just a rock rising from the sea.”

         “It seems a rugged place to make a garden.”

         “It is where we are. It’s our holy assignment. From our birth together, Tim has the gift of silence, so my gift is simply to voice our faithfulness. If my brother goes to the ends of the earth to be close to God for his careful listening, then I go to the ends of the earth to be the voice for the silent brother.  And in his silence, he searches for the farthest edges to be near the creatures and to live in the thin places nearest to God, alone, without the intervention of a priest or any man. That’s why it is so surprising that he would choose to rescue a man.  Where did you come from? How did you even get here?”

         “It was a shipwreck; I washed ashore here.”

         “So, are you a Viking or a merchant?”     

(Continues Wednesday, July 1, 2026)


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#81.12 Thursday, June 25, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Trinity hobbles close behind as the little monk arrives on the beaten path with the daily supplies. Every morning someone brings this to our door, or, like this morning, he goes and gets it then he shares the goats’ milk and oats with me and Trinity.

Neither dog nor man is concerned with leaving me alone anymore, now that I have risen in this healing.

I speak to him, though I know he doesn’t hear my voice. Surely something in my face or gesture or soul can speak of my gratitude.

         “Thank you.”

After the dog, the monk and I have had the goats’ milk and the flask is empty, today, the little monk hands me the empty skin and points to that particularly worn path to the southeast. Without words I know he is sending me on this mission to return the flask. It is nothing like the steep path I see rising to the pinnacle. But even on this smoother path I stumble, and regain my footing relying on the walking stick. For someone strong and with steady steps this would be easy. But healing is tenuous.

The path follows the crest of this rill around and just ahead it dips into a green place on a more southward facing slope with a walled garden and a pasture. Goats graze there and some of these sea birds strut around like roosters. Here, the path leads to another little mound of carefully stacked stone with a thatched top, looking like a fairytale acorn, where I might expect to see a little orange beetle keeping house in a fantastically tiny world.

A little cast metal bell is mounted by the door, so I ring that bell to announce my presence here.  The little door, woven of sea-washed vines, opens, and a small woman is startled by the sight of me, and she closes the door immediately, surely surprised to see a stranger at her door. Then she opens the door slowly, peaking out.

         “I was expecting Brother Tim.”

Like the little hermit she has round rosy cheeks shining from the hood of her robe. She wears a linen scapular, very much like my make-do tunic, only she also has a woolen monk’s robe beneath the linen. She keeps her curious gaze on me, as she takes the flask from my hand.

         I say, “He sent me to return the flask this morning.”

(Continues Tuesday, June 30, 2026)


 

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#81.11 Wednesday, June 24, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

The little hermit, no doubt, went out this morning knowing that I might also venture out today. He left the sledge that usually blocks the door laying aside, maybe to welcome me outside, or maybe it is in wait to drag me back up from the edges of these rocks again, as he did that first day.

Outside, I see this little stone hovel is a rounded dome with a thatched roof, that makes the inside space dark, and it also keeps the rain out. It is only the smoke hole that reveals the brilliance of day sky.  [Footnote]

But today the sky is blank and pale. The sun doesn’t really shine and there are no shadows or bright glare for my innocent eyes. Darker smudges of weightier clouds shadow the pale firmament threatening rain, but there is no rain.  It is the perfectly blank page for my attempt at wandering.

The monasteries I’ve visited in forested places construct their buildings with timber; even as the lands become sparse with trees, the tradition in Francia is for timber. Queried stones only offer an outer Roman likeness to buildings in Francia and Anglia. But here, there are no trees so I suppose there was never a thought of anything but rocks for these dwellings. There are no beams for the thatching, so rock corbels support the thatch. Everything is made from rock or the thatched reeds up from the salt marshes.

Guessing or knowing — I knew I would look off toward the north and see the ocean with a steep grade down, because it was such a climb up here for the little fellow dragging me here that first day. Now I see a pathway with stone steps ascending from the sea. Everything here is a climb or a long slide down. This whole rock world demands more strength than I have just to follow the monk-made paths.

I see several paths from this doorway. One well marked toward the east disappears into the valley then rises up with steps into the shadows of the lifting fog.  In that direction, at some distance, stones are stacked for a wall, and maybe other little cloches of rock are on that peak just now hidden in fog.

The drear turns to rain, and I see the little monk coming up from the foot-worn path to southeast and he brings the daily flask of goats’ milk a carrot, and a small sack of oats.

Footnote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skellig_Michael  Retrieved 10-17-25

(Continues tomorrow)

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#81.10 Tuesday, June 23, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

It is a miracle indeed, though it never appears in an instant of shining like a lightning bolt. Healing is more of a memory of how it was, to know that now it is better.  Healing is a rare opportunity — a hope that drives a spirit beyond where a body can go.  Healing is a ceaseless driver through failures and falls, and of course, that horrific dependency on a caregiver who seems relentless in his giving, though maybe only for pity’s sake. And in these times, it seems the whole sake of me is only for pity.

The little monk never knew anything of me except my neediness.  What will he do with his pity for me when I have my strength and the power to rise up as I choose, and to walk, and move, and go out in the day whenever it is convenient? Will my simple gratitude be enough?

Thank you, God. Thank you, little monk.

I will soon be an intruder here. Though I hope I can be useful.

On this new morning the little monk brings in the flask of goat’s milk to share as always, but today he also brings me a stout stick washed in the sea, smooth and clean to be a walking stick. He must believe that I will be walking soon. He seems to welcome my new freedom — maybe it is his freedom from me, also.

I’ve pierced arm holes in the linen grave cloth he once lent me as a blanket, so that I can wear it as a simple tunic. I’m sure he notices that I have this plan to clothe myself with the linen grave cloth he assigned to me when he thought I was a dead man. I removed the draw cord at the hem opening and it serves as a cinch at my waste to draw the new tunic up to a walking length. So now I have something of earth to cover my wounded nakedness. If I should take up this walking stick and rise up and leave this hovel, at least my healing wounds will be hidden.

So, I choose this overcast day to venture outside for the first time because the bright sun would be blinding after so much time in near darkness.  I’ve seen very little of the outside but a blur of light on the most beautiful days and the circle of gray, or night’s darkness in the smoke hole at the top.

(Continues tomorrow)


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#81.9 Thursday, June 18, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Dear God, thank you for this life gift. Give me strength and resilience to learn to make use of this broken body again.

In these few days since I begged for the branch to stay in our midst, with the new freedom of stretching my limbs and sitting here on the straw, I find I am already able to grasp onto the branch. I begin to find power in my once useless arms. I can reach up and hold onto the branch, and at least support my imaginary plan to pull myself up and walk again.

Morning by morning in my imagination I rise up, and with each thought and prayer of it, I make a bit more progress. But mostly, it is about falling back exhausted. The monk prays, the dog keeps watch, and when my shaking knees fail the dog yelps and nudges the monk from his prayers. I crawl back to my place. And all we can think of is the failure. But really, morning by morning, though it goes unnoticed, I actually am becoming stronger and steadier.

Some days into this project now, I am nearly standing, leaning on the straight walls, bending my excessive height under the curves of the roof. Trinity is simply in awe of my stature.  At first, she shied back and bowed her head down to her front paw and offered a little testing-teasing kind of growl.  She is the one who can stand taller than the little monk if she would rise up on her hind legs. And I know she is wondering who is the tallest of us all now, and it appears it might be me – the useless one. 

With this revelation we all have to reevaluate relationships anew. The canine is trying to accept this with a tentative wagging tail and a few submissive nudges. I guess that makes this healing official.  In this little place I am the giant. The hound had considered herself to be the largest of beasts, and now, here I am as tall as this house, and I have to bend to fit the ceiling. Of course, as houses go, this is a very small dome of rocks.

Today, the little monk goes outside, and he takes Trinity with him. Maybe he needs his time alone, or perhaps, he is offering me the space to practice putting my legs back into usefulness. He understands the increments of healing. 

We all know healing, miraculous as it is,  is never a single magical moment of painless wonder.

(Continues Tuesday, June 23, 2026)

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#81.8 Wednesday, June 17, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

The little monk surely notices my strength is returning. He sits by me, and with a serious face points to the hole in the middle of the dome that gives light and today, the place of release for the bird back into the sky. Then he starts to remove the branch. I spoke my objection, and Trinity heard me and caught the monk’s attention. I would like to say to the monk that I wish to keep that branch. But I fail in my attempt to rise up and demonstrate my need for the branch.

Now here I am lying flat. I haven’t even a feeble gesture for rising up.  My clumsy attempt to draw myself up to standing only belies my helplessness in rising. And sitting requires my hands for balance, and in using my hands for balance I have no way to say I imagine pulling myself up with that branch in case a day comes when I actually can grasp onto the branch for rising to standing.

Seeing only my frailty, the monk offers his silent language in a more exaggerated and simplified sign and his smile to let me know that he was pleased that I am becoming more able. But rising will be many falls and fumbles and he will pity all my tries.

I think I should practice standing while he is away because his empathy pains him so much. And falling is always the first part of standing. Yet when one of us who is rescued actually can stand or stretch or fly his joy is so grand that I only wish he would see nothing but the successes and never share in the hurt for my struggles. So, the bird and the dog, and now I too, try to keep secret our failings.

At least he understands my wish to leave the branch in the midst, but I’m not sure if he believes in my plan to pull myself to my feet. For now, it stays here, crowding the hearth stone under the smoke hole. If only I ever did make use of it keeping it here would no longer seem a silly whim. So today, when the little monk is deep in his morning prayers, and this little round house is filled with holiness, I move as stealthily as any torn and healing person can move, to reach for the branch. Even my arms lack their one-time strength, and I can only wonder if wobbly legs will ever hold my weight, such as it is, again.

(Continues tomorrow)


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#81.7 Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

I know something of healing. It doesn’t always appear with the fanfare of instant restored flight. Sometimes it is only discovered in the remembrance of the hurt, then it is simply taking notice of the painlessness of the healing scar. A new freedom from the pain and the limitation must be imagined and searched for then discovered anew. It requires one to discover what was thought to be damaged. Healing is just present to be found, not earned. It is grace.

Thank you, God.

I know prayers here begin as they do in all Christian places, with a separate name for each of the three legs of the monk’s dog. The names are Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. And it is the fully accepted theology that if one leg isn’t spoken the dog will fall down — a three-legged stool would tumble with only two or one leg.  Standing requires balance. And balance requires three, so if God is invented from human understanding, a tripod is required. But if God is, with or without the pull of the earth, if God created the earth as a beloved work of art, and God created the downward pull that clings all things to earth, then the larger than visible God, possibly also stands on three prongs, or maybe none at all, and in that way is all around us and yet everywhere else at the same time also.

Thank you, God, by no name, by three names, by any name, the beginning and the end, or perhaps no end. And in your namelessness, may healing be noticed even as it is unspoken.

Today, the little monk celebrates the departure of the bird. He grins, and prays, and takes the pail of sea-stuff back to the sea, then returns and starts to remove the branch which takes up precious space in our midst. I object, and he doesn’t hear me. I want to use that branch to pull myself up as I continue healing.

Trinity hears me and argues to him to keep the branch, barring her teeth, and clasping onto the branch when the monk tries to remove it. Frail though I am, I reach for the branch, and draw myself up with it, and finally the monk understands it is my need that the canine begs for.

Thank you, God.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#81.6 Thursday, June 11, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

The shag spreads fine healed wings out in the sunlight on the higher perch of the rim into morning mist-rising; the huge bird’s pulsing red veins show translucent through the pitch of its feathers in this great wingspan that covers the sky hole. Just now, everything in the world shares an amazing, awed stillness up from the depths of joy itself.  The bird is a totem to the victory of healing over pain.

As softly as the shag had hopped up to the outside to spread its wings, it hops back to the inside again, and folds back onto its branch as the little hermit draws the sledge over the door again and so everything here will seem normal when the woman arrives with goat’s milk and greens.

But nothing is the same now. Here, a healing is complete and a bird is prepared to return back to the sky. Frail hope has changed to a powerful, driving joy. The daily duties – the sweeping – the spreading of fresh straw — the receiving of supplies are all different now.

She must have noticed the great wide bird spread out at our peak as she was arriving.  Does she just assume this is the place of the healing miracles? Or did she imagine the hulking black shag just flew up here from the sea? Maybe all of us mending here are just assumed to be the usual work project assigned to this monk. But I have to wonder if this little monk’s collection of us needy is his own secret, and the daily visitor doesn’t even know this fellow, assigned as the keeper of the dead, is really gifted with the task of the overseer of life.

As for me, I am able to move and stretch my healing limbs. A long complete stretch surges energy through me from my toes to my fingertips. So now, if the shag flies off to perch on the rocks at the rim of the sea, I will use that inside branch left here to pull myself up little by little until I am standing. Whenever the hermit leaves the stillness of this little place, I will be the one making this a hive of healing. Like a nesting parent, I’d encourage this bird to just fly off into the vastness of sky with all the birds, and leave this branch for me.

I know something of healing.

(Continues Tuesday, June 16, 2026)


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#81.5 Wednesday, June 10, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Thunder frightens Trinity.  As night comes so does the distant rumbling and flashes of light in the dark circle of sky. The little monk sleeps but I’m awake and very still as the canine would have me be.  In the storm, she’s paces nervously. The shag sees. Then there is a sudden light that fills the eye and the whole inside of our hovel, followed by the boom. Trinity is terrified — she looks hard at the sleeping monk.  Surely, she must know this is just another storm and storms come and go with night noises; but her whole boney frame quivers.

I would speak my worn out mantra, “I can’t help you.” But now I have something new to say aloud, “I can help you, sweat Trinity; come over here to me. I can help you.” And the three-legged boney canine immediately flops onto my own boney frame, her heart pounding, her breath is pacing into panting faster and faster gulps of fear. I find I can wrap her in the safety of my arms. I sing her a soulful lullaby in my own odd Hebrew words; the dog and bird know I’m singing and the psalm blankets us in peace. 

It is all about the healing now. I thank God for these creatures, and for my own healing amid the quivering breaths and the song.  “I can help you to the calming place of the song. I can help you.” I say again and again aloud for my own hearing. “I can help you dear faithful Trinity.”

***

On this fresh new day, I find I am able to move as I haven’t stretched my limbs in a very long time and realize I am on the mend. It is slow, and uneventful, hard to notice. But slow is good.  It is still the opposite of dead.

Then this morning while the little hermit is deep in prayer, the shag silently, without any fanfare or grand overture, hops from the top perch onto the rock rim of the hole for the sky.  It perches on the opening. Trinity paces her concern then nudges the little hermit away from his meditation.

His prayer doesn’t end but becomes a full-on dance of joy. He looks at the nearly healed shag from inside then he goes outside followed closely by Trinity. Dear God, you are celebrating with us this moment, are you not?

(Continues tomorrow)


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#81.4 Tuesday, June 9, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

And here we are, his little collection of life’s leftovers together only because we are each needy of healing. Trinity can take herself outside and return again. She and the hermit have their own sign language together so she can be obedient to him. She always lets him know if anything is amiss in here or out there. When the hermit is exhausted and sits down to rest on the rock at the doorway, she sits by him and slides her big wooly head under his hand, resting her head on his lap.  In so many ways she gives him a warm comfort neither the shag above us clinging to the branch, nor I, can offer.

Now, every day at low tide the little fellow takes his prod and pail and goes off. He returns with an assortment of the things left between the rocks by the tide: the wriggling fish, an eel, or a sea blob. And he brings the stinking stew up here to give the shag a daily feast.  He sweeps up the soiled straw beneath the bird’s perch again and all around, and heaps the straw outside. In the evenings he makes a night fire outside. Maybe the fire wards off monsters of the night, or maybe he is just marking our place in darkness. It is not far beyond our doorway that he turns the soiled straw of the day to spark and ash and with some added peat, the night fire leaves new embers for the next day’s fires.

Each morning the woman whose voice I first heard interpreting for him comes with the sacks and flasks, and Trinity alerts the little hermit so he moves the sledge from the doorway. She never enters or even bends down to look in. I’ve never seen her and she hasn’t seen me. It is all very regular and very silent. All of these daily patterns and routines are faithfully attended so as dark, and small as this space is, it always smells of clean earth and fresh straw. It is always sparse with just a mere promise of enough.

Since it was the canine that can hear my shouting nightmares and senseless sounds in my sleep she knows I have a voice and she knows my single chant is always woefully, “I can’t help you.”

Dear God, may I heal to usefulness here in this place of slow and gentle restoration.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#81.3 Thursday, June 4, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

This darkness has a cruel waking. The dream left me floundering in the hot dark sea, and Cloothar is calling me to save him, but I can’t move. He is sinking down, and I can’t reach him. I just let him go. Deep, dark, lost…

The nightmare that left me dead in the tidal wash took Cloothar and his little craft into the depths. He was clutching his chest of gold coins begging me to help him. Now, here in this place of healing, the canine, with three legs, I call her Trinity, hoovers over me, then goes and awakens the little monk.

He comes to my side in the dark and lights a candle from the embers – sets it on the small rock near my head. He gives me a sip of cool water and he washes my face with a wet cloth; he places the cool cloth on my head exactly in the place he has shaven my hair back in this celtic tonsure.  The candle is pooling light, pretending there is no more darkness. Light is illusion of comfort amid the darkness. A candle is a smattering of imagination for hope, even when I know darkness is all. 

The monk takes my hand in both of his hands and closes his eyes — a gesture to say that you are still with us here, Dear God, in this tiny orb of light. It is safe and quiet.

But in this fevered moment, my thoughts are captive to grief.  I wanted to help Cloothar.  I wanted to reach out and pull us together back into the boat. The boat was broken. I couldn’t help! Dear God, forgive my frail failing! Forgive me for letting go of him.

***

The day birds announce the light and the little monk is still by my side after what must have been a most uncomfortable night for him. He is asleep seated on the ground resting his head on the rock that also supports the spent wax of the candlestick — the candle burned to its nub, then out. There is nothing of it now but the fray of wick in wax. When he rises in the day on stiff knees, he takes a hold of his walking stick by the door to pull himself to his full stature, such as it is, and begins a new day.

(Continues Tuesday, June 9, 2026)

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#81.2 Wednesday, June 3, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

It is afternoon when others come to drag the chipped tombstone away, probably to a service for the burial of the dead. The hermit and the three of us broken beings wait quietly inside while people are talking outside this cell. First, crunching footsteps, now a solemn hum of chanting — a familiar psalm in the language of St. Jerome. In the language of these people comes shared grief because it seems the one who has passed on was one of their own.

The first man who had come here arrives to assess the project of moving the stone. He must be the abbot or maybe a bishop here. He seems unctuous, always praying aloud.

I hear his prayers in the Roman language, the familiar words repeated over the cut stone, “In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.” And now the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is repeated again, spoken in the local language.

“an tAthair

an Mac

an Spiorad Naomh”

It is a little old yet familiar to me, having been a follower of the Celtic missionary called peregrinus — Father Columbanus.

Maybe this failed journey to Iona found its destination anyway. Maybe I have found what I was seeking — a community where prayer is usual, and the rule is Celtic – putting obedience to God first before the demand for obedience to the hierarchy of bishops and the pope.

It’s my gift alone, or call it my oddity, that keeps me in a time warp – too often hoping for things long passed in newer times. I am always awakening into a far future world from wherever I was. And in my last wakings I’ve often feared humankind had become godless and crude, following men who rule but ignore the silent, constant presence of Spirit.

I see our little circle of sky has turned from afternoon to dusk. The little monk is still outside with the others, and the canine who was quivering in fear of the voices outside, has turned herself around three times, and settled into a little circle of warmth on my feet. Sleep now sweet Trinity.

***

         “I can’t help you! I can’t help you!” I hear myself screaming as I wake from the dream.

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#81.1 Tuesday, June 2, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Inside a stacked stone cell, its eye’s pupil opens at the top to the morning sky’s brightness. Here is also the doorway opened allowing in some light and sound from the outside while the little monk is just outside chipping on a stone. I ache with the ringing of each hammer blow on the iron chisel. A church bell rings a dirge. The voices of people talking just outside frightens the canine who now thinks I’m her refuge.

I am lying here, tattered, hurting, hardly able to imagine I will ever move an arm or a leg again — in fact — I’m hardly sure if I have an arm or a leg, and the canine has chosen me as her bed, her safe place with people talking near-by.

They are speaking in an ancient language — it could be old Galatian — ancient — but discernable. The familiarity takes me to that by-gone place of early Christians, but then, I recognize this is also the native language of Father Columbanus and the brothers he came with to Gaul; though I rarely heard it spoken because he learned our tribal tongue so easily. People in their tribes are always on journeys pretending themselves strangers to one another, but there is a shared belonging among humankinds — a oneness among people in all human language sometimes familiar, sometimes buried deep in time.

Outside I hear a woman’s voice answering for the silent little monk. And now he comes back in here with a skin of fresh goat’s milk. He pours milk into two bowls and sets one for the canine and another he brings to me, and tips it so that I can also have a taste. It is delicious and still warm. He fills the bowl again and drinks from it himself.

The people outside are wondering why he has only prepared one grave marker. He returns to the visitors now, with the empty flask. After a pause the woman answers, “He says there is only one burial.”

The man says, “Ask him, what of the dead man found at the edge of the sea?”  

“He said Brother Lugh was mistaken. There was no dead man; it only looked like a drowned man. What looked like a black beard was just a clump of tidal debris.”

Now I realize I am this little fellow’s secret.  I wonder if the shag and the canine are unknown as well.  And does he feed us all with his own portion?

(Continues tomorrow)

,

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#80.12 Thursday, May 28, 2026

Historical Setting: A stone hovel in an unknown time

We once had a direction to sail. But surely these rocks rising here from the sea are not what we intended.  We were following around the southern coastline of the English island, then we planned to go a good distance to the north expecting to one day to arrive at the community of Iona.

It was said to be an island with wide tidal beaches, and only soft sand would greet us. This place has no beach and this monk wears rough wool, woven with sticks and burrs as though it was uncarded straight off the sheep.

Here this little fellow who brought me up the rock side is shorn in the Celtic way, shaven across the front, from ear to ear, with his mane let down and flowing from the middle of the top of his head down his back. I wore this style myself in another age in Gaul. It is banned now, by the pope. The papalist tonsure is a crown, meant to show loyalty to Jesus with his crown of thorns. But it wears on earth, without the Jesus humility, so a crown to me, always seems a pretending to be king. I prefer the Celtic tonsure.

This morning the little monk is outside. I hear him at work nearby, chipping a stone. Maybe he is making a tombstone as I saw chipped in sandstone at Lindisfarne. Maybe he is honoring a burial.

The canine is watching me carefully for any breath or movement or sound.  I will continue to be very still.

I’m sure it wouldn’t be a tombstone for any of us here.  We are a tattered threesome of housemates: the bird the dog and the man. But all of us are more about healing than finding a grave right now. So, probably he isn’t preparing a grave marker for us.

***

The ears of the canine prick and twitch, and now I, too, hear human voices in the distance.  She growls softly then moves cautiously to my side of the cave.  This time her fangs are not directed at me.  She seems more afraid than vicious. She climbs onto my bedcover quivering with fear as though, I, in some skewed way, represent the safest place to be in the strange circumstance of hearing human voices.

As people draw nearer, I can sort the voices as two who are coming toward this place talking between themselves.

(Continues Tuesday, June 2)

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#80.11 Wednesday, May 27, 2026

Historical Setting: A stone hovel in an unknown time

On this new day I linger in the straw thinking I’ll move but thinking doesn’t make it so.  I’m watching the nearly dawn sky, then a fog through the eyelet of the stones at what is surely the eastern arc of this hovel.  My clarity of mind today only muddles the memory of the circumstances that brought our boat to this tragic end. I’m haunted, but I know in my head there was nothing I could do to save Cloothar.

         Forgive me God.

And here I am, myself needy, but this little monk doesn’t fail me.

My ponderings terrify these nights.

In these glimpses of memory, I am with Cloothar in the little leather currach in that storm rising from the west. The wind was against the oars, as we were trying to make our way to a safe harbor. But before we could find any mooring, we turned broadside to the wind and the sea rose up and tumbled our craft in froth, churning and washing over us again and again. At first, I was floating free clinging to the empty coin chest until the sea filled it and it was gone. Then I drown too.

Neither Cloothar nor I survived. His coin chest he clung to was filled and heavy and sunk straight away.

Being as I am with this persistent healing, even from death to life, for me, rescue didn’t depend on capturing something left afloat. I’m always gifted back in some version of tedious but reliable healing, back into life. It is better explained with a “why” than a “how.” But here I am a captive of pain in this stone eye staring always into the eastern sky.

***

This morning, I’m awakened by two tiny birds outside the wall singing a loud dialogue of carnal love and probably preparing a nest. I believe these birds are planning for an egg and whatever may become of that.  Their raucous song of creature courting began the moment the sun broke into the darkness — and now there is so much loud singing. 

Spring is wrapped in the smell of fresh earth –clay or moss — laying hold of scent even inside this place that might otherwise stink of stable. Springtime hangs loud and heavy today.

I can only guess where this is.  At night I watch our tiny glimpse of sky for a familiar star, but to know a star one has to find its pattern with other stars. What I can see from here is very little use.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#80.10 Tuesday, May 26, 2026

Historical Setting: a stone hovel in an unknown time

I’m laid out inside a cavern of neatly stacked stone with a large, boney canine guarding my every move while the little monk, who rescued me is away. When the wooly little man comes in the canine hobbles on her three legs into the dark to her own straw bed.

Also, inside this shared shadow, nearly as high up as the sky hole is a large black bird with a dangling, loosened wing. It is perched on a broken driftwood limb leaned against the wall nearly at the apex of sky. Surely this bird was recalled from the skies just as I was recalled from the sea. Just as I am broken in many pieces, this bird has dangling and disheveled bones amid the leftover feathers of its wing. It clings to a branch placed near the sky hole, safe from the canine this bird longs for the full sky. It appears to be a shag, like the many who wait on the rocks for the glint of a fish at the turning of the tide.

The little monk returns with a pail of sea stuff and so the bird feasts. Like the canine and me, also, the bird seems relentlessly tethered to life itself; incessantly testing that broken wing, faltering on a frail leg shifting, then catching balance again. 

The little wooly monk pours a bowl with oats from a small grain sack for the canine. He is boiling a cooking kettle on the center fire, while the thread of smoke wends out through the pupil of this stoney eyeball where we dwell. He adds several hands full of oats to the pot, and makes a fine gruel which he now spoons into a bowl.

He sees my famished need and comes to me and lifts my head onto a small bundle of woven rags and spoons the soft warm cereal into my mouth. It is a great kindness. 

I find I’m able to make a sound intended as a word of thanks for this human kindness, though he seems not to notice. I know I’ve made a sound because the canine rushes quickly over, intruding in my breathing space, watching me to maintain her guard protecting our little master from any possible annoyance I could cause.

This bit of food gives me a new strength and, in some way, affirms the possibility for healing though this part of healing seems like a lengthening of pain. It could be a good end.

         Dear God, thank you.

         A day of peaceful sleeps and wakings…

(Continues tomorrow)


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#80.9 Thursday, May 21, 2026

Historical Setting: Yet unknown

How long had I been thrashing in the sea – days – nights – years – eons?  It is the same moon that comes and goes repeating its phases like old language prayers, void of first meaning but savored in reliable repetition. 

My shiver was noticed.  He looks my way and stops his groveling. He has with him a woven linen funeral bag tied up in the ropes of this sledge. He unfurls it, and spreads it over me as though it is a blanket.

Thank you, God, for such a shiver to speak life to us both. He clearly answers your empathy with his own. Thank you, God, for sending this little wooly man.

We move slowly up the incline away from the sea — it is a steep climb — the little man in his cumbersome wool towing the sledge with the rope and my useless weight.  I imagine myself to be twice his height.  He retrieves the log rolling toward the water and hauls it back to the place where he left me, angled and nearly sliding back down.  He lifts the rope end of the sledge and struggles to roll the log under once again, then tows forward and upward, until again the sledge drops back onto the rocks while the loosed log rolls back toward the sea.  Again and again, he takes me rolling and crashing as though the rocks were waves and the sledge an unworthy skiff.  I don’t know if it is the hurt or the shock or just the raw…

***

I awaken in a dark place with a circle of sky beyond rock — a hole left open in the top of this dome, as though I am inside a monstrous eyeball roof with squared-up sides. I struggle for a full view of that porthole of day sky because the warm breath that is only a foot’s length from my face, blocking my view is issued from the fangs of a silver beast seething and growling, drooling onto my face apparently hungry for a nice dinner of a man’s flesh — maybe mine.

A finger of daylight amid the dark probes from one side of this hovel, surrounds the little wooly monk, just come in from the outside. He closes off the light that follows him in the doorway from the outside, by leaning the sledge over the opening.  Now it is dark again, except for the sky hole.

The little monk makes a grunting sound and his guardian beast looks away from me.

(Continues Tuesday, May 26)


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#80.8 Wednesday, May 20, 2026

Historical Setting: Rocky tidal waters, another time

Dawn casts light though I don’t remember sleeping. 

I must have been mentioned by the person who glimpsed at the leftovers of me, even with all the shudders and shrieks of his own fears of death, because now someone is looking for me.

He comes with a prodding pole and a threshing sledge, with a rope and a rolling log for heavy loads. May I be such a heavy load? All I know is my sense, my eye and the sounds and smells of sea. Maybe that is all I am now.

He finds my hand. He doesn’t seem afraid of this place that I am between life and death.  He holds my hand in his hands as though mine is a precious find. His hands are warm. Mine must be very cold. There should be speaking now. But there are no words.

He is a stout little fellow, smells of wool. Seems to be made in three rough round orbs stacked one on the next like rocks turned into a cairn or an altar. The hood of his head encircles the rosy orbs of his face — circle within circle — broad pink cheeks, separated by a red ball of a nose.  His little bright eyes glint steely blue from the deep tuck between his cheeks and the fold of his forehead. He grunts and pants with the work of pulling all of me onto the boards of the sledge, but he doesn’t offer any words. Even though we both look at one another exploring our likeness of species, one to the other, there is no word between us.

I mean to cry out with the pain of it all but I seem not to make a sound.

He takes his prod and returns to the edge of the water.  He turns over one clump after another of slippery black weed and drops them back into the tide pools.  Could it be he is searching for some mislaid toe or limb I hadn’t even realized was lost?  Or possibly he has a hope that others have washed up as well.  He is likely searching for another heap of bones and flesh leftover from the wreck.

But I know, I alone survived. Cloothar was clinging to his treasure, sinking fast, surely lost. I know no one will find him on this shore.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#80.7 Tuesday, May 19, 2026

Historical Setting: washing on rocks in an unknown time

Dear God, how long must I be of earth? How long must I cling to tattered memories of human sounds? Dull, aching, cold — I know this healing hurt too well. Thank you, God, for the healing and hope and strength for the hurt.

The tide comes rolled tight and unfurls onto the rocks, then draws back over the sea-edge lying flat on the water, a hushed shroud on the sea to wrap what is left of me to be torn and beaten with the next slam onto the rocks.

Thrust of tidewater now against the tower of rock – a heartbeat then breath as sea fills the hollows of hard earth with ocean stuff. Splayed, I am on these rocks, broken between the impervious and the translucence of turbulence.

***

Waking on a wall of stone now, a loosened pebble leaps by me bouncing down this rock wall on a mad frolic to the sea. Yet a bigger stone is set loose from above, now bouncing down, down sending one vibration after another through the solid rockface.

It’s a human foot that loosens these rocks.  Someone is climbing down here from above. I nearly see him.  I’m sure my eye doesn’t suit his collecting basket of sea things.  He takes a look and hurries off.

***

In this waking a black bird swoops near, perhaps to pluck my staring eye from… from whatever else is left of me, living now, not carrion.

More rocks are rolling down all around me. Someone comes so cautiously as though I could possibly rise up as a roaring leviathan. I can’t rise up just now, nor can I even make a whimpering human sound.

I open my eye just as he is bending toward me — then a gasp and a curdling scream — the kind of howl of a man crying out in sleep with a bad dream.  Loosened rocks now are leaping down the rock face driven by the full might of human terror, howling horrors in wordless baying, fading in the distance and gone.

***

Silence again belies the void. The quiet would be complete except for the lapping of sea moving with moon pull, higher and higher water rising up.

Incoming tide surrounds me again, this opulence of seawater is intruding on my vision of sky. The wave rolls are upside-down, and I am rolling in a rub of rocks at the tidal edge here deepening into another night in darkness.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#80.6 Thursday, May 14, 2026

Historical Setting: At sea, around Anglia, 794 C.E.

We are sailing on a northeast wind straight into a storm this night, and neither of us has traveled this way to recognize if this shadow of a distant land is the turning place, or just a dark cloud over this very wide bay. Cloothar finds this the best time to empty the keg. 

As dawn is rising red, the wind is roiling the sea, and we are already baling to keep ahead of the waves breaking on us with the rains only beginning. Baling may be futile, but we’ve finished the keg of ale so what else can we do.  I am seasick, which is mostly all I can think of, pucking in the bale bucket, since the edges of the boat are rollicking with the surf.

Now the roaring sea tosses us nearly over, then another rising wave breaks over us, and fills the boat, until finally a huge swell comes at us from the north, peaking and breaking and the little boat is sucked deep.

Now we are nothing but merciless twigs in the mountains of sea. The shadow we thought could be a land refuge, was mirage, or maybe debris loosened in the storm. There was never a safe mooring place there. The little craft of sticks and hides didn’t even offer a worthy wreck in this storm. I’m clinging to the empty chest we used for the rower’s seat which is filling with water, soon to sink. Cloothar was reaching for the hidden chest when last I saw him and he was sinking down after it. The empty keg floats beyond my reach. So, this is my drowning.

***

My heartbeat remembers rhythm. But I know nothing of the passing of time.  Glimpses of days and nights, come and go in this slow rising to life. Everywhere is the sea.

I have an eye for peering up from the waters into the blue and the darker dark.  My mind makes a frail lapse of memory trying to gather familiar fragments of the human core — touch — or sound — something.

I have only thoughts and prayers no flailing or calling out, nothing is left of me to touch or be touched.

But God is present here.

(Continues Tuesday, May 19)

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#80.5 Wednesday, May 13, 2026

Historical Setting: At sea, 794 C.E.

Following the shoreline, we seem to have reached either a wide bay or open sea. Cloothar believes it a bay and we will shorten our journey to cut across. I’m on this rower’s seat, the empty chest with Cloothar’s dream to fill it with the trade of the stinky wools, now soaked in spring showers because the tarp doesn’t cover the stuff added from our stop at Ludonwec.

This is a mission of greed. This little boat is always a hefty row but now we sit ever lower in the water. Woe be to us if we should meet a storm at sea. And neither of us knows anything of these waters or even which skies will gather the storm clouds.

All through the night we are at sea with no view of land since Cloothar became impatient and chose to let go of the view of the coastline to cut across a supposed mouth of a bay. He tells me Iona should be straight up the shoreline, but when he saw the land curve to the North, he assumed it was only the inside curve of this bay. I fear we’ve strayed.  He probably does too, but he says he is sure we are making better time this way.

He takes a short shift at the oars, as darkness comes down on us. And now in a stillness in the winds, the row to the west is a bit easier for him. I see we have only four dried fish for food left — enough for two meals, maybe. But then, we still have a half a keg of ale.  I could eat and drink all of it and still have hunger pangs. But I’ll wait to share.

The wind rises again, lightly from the Northeast, so he raises the sail, and I can sleep for a few moments with Cloother at the tiller tacking us ever westward.

I awake to lightning flashes in the Western sky. Cloothar is scouring every illumination for the revelation of land. The flashes glimpse nothing but sea and the wide horizon.

Dear God, thank you for staying close with us on this journey.  I know you recognize the danger we are in, two men at sea in a heavily loaded little river boat. I know you know of the storm rising in the western skies. Thank you for keeping a close watch and may my next silence be in gratitude for a safe journey. Amen.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#80.4 Tuesday, May 12, 2026

Historical Setting: At sea, 794 C.E.

I’m staying with the boat at the Ludonwec market port while Cloothar explores the city. While waiting here, I’ve discovered he keeps a chest of coins under the heap of black moldy monk’s robes he intends to sell in Iona. But I think he meant to keep me from knowing that we are carrying this abundance of wealth. It is probably his whole life’s treasure. So, instead of airing the robes just now, I put them back as they were so he won’t have to worry that his secret was revealed. Indeed, moldy black monk’s robes do make a fine deterrent against thieves. This also explains why, this little boat rides so low in the water.

It’s late in the day when Cloothar returns with a heavy load of goods, having made trades all day. The nearly warn out heap of linen tunics he took with him were all traded off for dresses and aprons in cotton fabrics. Some are dyed in colors. Cottons are not often available in the northern markets so he feels he has done well for himself.  He also has a keg of ale strapped on his back, and a basket of fruits and dried fish for the journey to come. 

He’s been asking around of others who travel this coastline and he’s learned that we are not even halfway to Iona by the way we are traveling.  When we sail on, probably tomorrow, we will come to the turning place where this part of the journey ends, and following the shoreline will take us westward for a short while before we turn north.  Then that journey northward is longer than the distance we’ve already come.

If we had possibly formed any bonds of friendship, they will be strained. The stories of our lives we never shared as friends would be old and worn from too much telling, if we ever just chatted — which we have not. And this keg of ale looks small compared to our need.

But thank you God, for Creation of days with the tender touch of springtime. May we endure the drone of sameness, as well as any storms that may threaten this hollow craft we sail.

It’s a good night’s sleep, moored as we are in the calm of a cove. Calm is good.  I would be rowing against the west wind today, if it weren’t for the calm. These are long days at the oars, and damp bug-bitten, itchy nights of sleeping on the beaches.

(Continues tomorrow)


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#80.3 Thursday, May 7, 2026

Historical Setting: sailing at the mouth of a river, 794 C.E.

We are following a wide river from its mouth at the sea, upstream to a place Cloothar believes will be an established market in an old Roman city — Ludenwic — it has a name. This river does seem more marked with houses and all the other vestiges of human dwelling.  We pass by a church in clear view of the river. He notices my interest. Did I let my loneliness show? How does one, always focused on fabrics and markets, possibly notice what interests me?

         “Eleazor, there are churches all along this way.  You should be so happy to find that Ludenwic has turned Christian.  I’ve heard from others on the river who know, and this place has a grand church.  In Ludenwic there is a palace for bishops. You will love the Christian nature of this city!”

I answer his advertisement with a grunt.  I know he’s trying to sell me on this side-trip where we are. And I know we are only further from our intended destination on the Celtic Island of Mull.  For me, finding a palace of bishops is completely the opposite of finding humble monks inhabiting the thin places of nature.

We come to a wide bend in the river and here is a mooring bay with other small river craft. I row to the pier, and Cloother climbs ashore taking with him some samples to sell. He instructs me to stay with the boat, since he hasn’t secured a safe mooring here.  So much for my visit to this new city.  He trudges down the path toward the city markets. 

To make good use of the time I string a line from the mast to the prow to hang up the black wool robes in the sun and air them out before he tries to market them. It is a perfect day for airing fabrics. Cloothar will be pleased I’m only airing them and not soaking them in lye water as I would prefer.

Now I find, under all the monk’s robes, is another chest just like the empty chest I’ve been using for a rower’s seat.  But this chest is locked and weighty, apparently already filled with coins. Of course. This is why Cloothar protects this spot with the heap of moldy fabrics, never sorting or airing them while he continually cares for the commoner’s rags. He’s been guarding this chest from my sight.

(Continues Tuesday, May 12)


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#80.2 Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Historical Setting: London, 794 C.E.

 These weeks are mostly spent rowing, rarely sailing along the wooded coast of Anglia. This journey seems to yield little in new markets for Cloothar. Yet we make our stops on land wherever he catches a glimpse of fishing buoys or a whaft of smoke rising, marking the presence of people. He trades fabrics for firs and perhaps a meal of whatever was hunted that day. And if the hunt failed, we join people in sharing a pot of thinned stew. [footnote]

Cloothar is good at finding us food and shelter, but he is no brother — neither by family or monk’s vows. I would like to call him a friend, but he has trouble quantifying friendship in his way of understanding. He doesn’t expect me to be a source of comradery and he assumes that any friendly chatter must be purposed with some material ending. Yet I yammer on.

         “Did you learn your merchant’s trade from your father?”

         “What matter is that to you, Eleazor?”

         “I was just wondering the source of your gift.”

         “Knowing things of a person gives you power over them. Do you hammer me with questions because you think it will make you the captain of this ship?”

         “No, of course not. I was just…”

In this silence between us now, I can only enjoy the humor of his miss-understanding, imagining myself taking over control as this so-called ship’s “captain.” That would only mean I would be privileged to tell him when to draw the oars.

Since I am longing for conversation, I find our stopping places a reprieve. I’m already comfortable with the language of the Saxons and we share stories.

One would think my prayers without ceasing would satisfy my need for conversation, but neither does the merchant offer me his own company nor does he yield the tranquility of sanctuary. When I put my complaint in a prayer I ask God for solitary time, and also, to retool Cloothar into a friend. I believe that prayer was answered, but not by changing Cloothar. Rather, God answered by changing me to accept him as he is.

After this long journey following the shoreline south, the rivers flow into the sea with the fresh water mixing with the brine, and each river entices Cloothar to follow it in search of a market.  Rumors among merchants tell of a town rising from the old Roman walls of a city, now a thriving marketplace. [Footnote]

[footnote] https://www.thehistoryoflondon.co.uk/ (retrieved 9-2-25) organizes the history of the rise of settlements and urbanization in Southeastern England broadly by periods of occupancy. The late eighth century after the Roman occupancy crumbled, and before the Vikings made their lasting settlements in the mid-ninth century and on, this area was under Saxon rule.

(Continues tomorrow) 

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#80.1 Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Historical Setting: The Eastern Coast of Anglia, 794 C.E.

Setting out with Cloothar, I know this fellow’s purpose is the market yield. Always used clothing needs airing, not cleaning.

I planned to travel to Iona on the other side of this island of Anglia. Like Lindisfarne, Iona is an island monastery. Most would travel between Jarrow and Iona on land, but I have no horse, or purse or coin, and Cloothar offers me this journey and a silver penny for my help at sea. He deals in gold and silver in the major markets, so I am pretty sure I won’t have to take my due this time, simply by trading up my own cloak for a better one.

Neither of us has taken this sea journey along the eastern then southern shores of Anglia and north again to Iona. But he has choosen this route hoping to find new markets along the way. Today, on the first leg, we find long forested stretches sparsely inhabited. The clusters of houses are at the mouths of rivers. In these villages Cloothar trades in simply spun fibers, with no tailor’s touch to any of the garments. Most of his bounty is in the center of this little craft as heaps of moldy rags.

But he knows his customers well. At first glance he can see if someone is a buyer or a gawker. He recognizes people by their wants and takes account of their station and wealth even before a word is spoken. All he really notices of people is the bulge and brim of their pockets. His guise of empathy is always purposed with making a deal. As Cloothar’s traveling companion, I should simply consider myself alone. He spins no stories that don’t end in a deal for him. He sheds no tid-bits of wisdom of life and love… And he sails south when he means to go west.

I guess I shouldn’t expect him to fill my need for a companion. All he needs of me is help in rowing when the winds are calm. I suppose I just have to let him be as he is. And in the silence, I have my prayers.

Dear God, thank you for all these new wonders of the lands and sea. For the tender season, newly green and flowering simply by nature I am grateful always, I know you are near in the beauty of new places. 

(Continues tomorrow)

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#79.14 Thursday, April 30, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.
 

I’m not sure I need a merchant to fill my emptiness. My spiritual need isn’t like a cloak or a hat. I am missing the thin places, or the beautiful window where I meet God.

It’s Cloothar who tells me of Iona, a monastery founded by the Irish that is set apart from the politics of kings.

         He says, “Iona is a place that needs these black monks robes I’ve collected. Some brothers on this side no longer find refuge with the saints, and are shedding their holy ways as well you understand.”

         “And Iona needs you to supply them with monk’s robes?”

         “Just come with me to Iona.  You will like it.  It was the school that sent the first Celtic fellow, Aiden, to establish Lindisfarne.” [Footnote]

     “And you need an extra hand to sail that far?”

     “You read me too well, Eleazor. I’ve never sailed that far west. I don’t know what it will be. I may need a hand at the oars.”

     “You would think a monastery as old as Iona would already have a trunk of old monk’s robes.”

     “Ah, but they aren’t the newer standard of black. Their robes are just anything. You see how it is, Eleazor, they have the Celtic Rule still to this day, and it doesn’t follow the rigors of the papal communities.”

     “You mean it doesn’t follow the Benedictine rule.”

     “And oh, how I’ve heard you argue against that rule.”

     “I didn’t know I’d been so vocal about it.”

     “Don’t you remember how you were wound so tight on our little trek from Lindisfarne when you wanted to wash the old robes in lye water, and shrink them up into useless rags, when all they needed was a good airing?”

     “I remember our arguments over new monks in old robes. And now you want to go to Iona and trade the black robes for whatever the novices happened to have on when they took their vows?”

      “Not exactly. The rumor among the markets in the north lands is that Iona has riches.  I will meet with the abbot and make one good trade and sell all these black robes for gold coins.”

Cloothar has an empty coin chest just waiting. I can use it as a rower’s seat. He said he learned of Iona’s riches in the north lands. So, apparently Iona is already a target for a Viking raid.

      Dear God, watch over Iona. Amen.

[Footnote] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iona retrieved 8-27-25

(Continues Tuesday May 5)

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#79.13 Wednesday, April 29, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

Weaponry and wars make no happy endings, because there are no endings, just changes in populations and power structures. But, of course, mortals, by the very nature of mortality, draw conclusions, set goals of completion, grope after legacy and prepare for whatever afterlife their religion dictates. No mortal person has touched an angel strutting among the clouds; but even I, in my persistence in earthly life, often experience being touched by the Creator love that surrounds us. Thank you, God for being present with us.

So, now, as a repetitious mortal, I imagine a destination. It is a place where the earth ends and heaven begins. It is a thin place shared in the Irish way of mysticism. I know of thin places, and I once knew an Irish mystic who established monasteries across the land of Gaul to offer the tranquility of thin places far and wide. Now, again, I am looking for this veil of heaven as I do in these spiritually needy times. It feels like the vision of mortal life has come to a solidly opaque barrier — an ending, as though there is nothing more. Then I find a spiritual place, and this seems to be the translucency of mystery allowing me a contemplative passage through. What is thin in a thin place is the barrier between me and God, not between life and death, or good and bad, or any of those other mortal walls.

I didn’t find it in the library of Jarrow. So, I come now, down to the little harbor where boats await the rising tide to access the river. And as I’d hoped, Cloothar’s little craft is still moored here.

He seems welcoming, as though he thinks he knows my need. Maybe I am allowing myself to fall into the snare of this professional profiteer. But Cloothar, the merchant of used dry goods, first told me of that distant place I’d never been.

         “Eleazor, my friend, what do you know of Iona?”

         “What is there to know?”

         “It is an Irish monastery on the other side of this island, a long haul by donkey on land, but with the right wind, it can be reached by sea, in days counted on fingers.”

         “More simply, you mean ten days.”

         “But you like the obtuse do you not? It is my business to read the minds of men, and know their naked need. Afterall, I am a highly successful merchant.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#79.12 Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

The Viking raid on Jarrow was swift and the tragedy was mostly on the Vikings’ side. All of the preparations for attack worked: the rocks across the river at the place of the tidal rise; the guards hidden in monk’s clothes; the swords and daggers sprinkled throughout Jarrow.  Lindisfarne’s painful warning served Jarrow well. In the stillness of aftermath, Ousbert is in his glory, and by his very nature he is well rehearsed in glory. He rallies his men for a headcount. He stops the killing of the last of the captured Vikings, holding them back from the Halls of Valhalla, this time, because he has an earthly use for them.

These prisoners are bound and waiting with the beached longboats. Ousbert’s soldiers disarm the dead, collecting up the swords and shields, stripping the bodies of helmets and chains. Then the last living dregs of these marauders are set loose to dispose of the corpses at sea.

Even among these Christians ordained as holy monks, there are no bodies anointed and no prayers needed for these dead. The prayers are only of gratitude. The deaths are bleak and unforgiven. The survivors take the oars of their burdened boats and slip away into the deep. Ousbert glories.

         Dear God, may my own prayer not begin with my usual gratitude because just now, the thanksgivings I hear around me, maybe rising for you to hear, seem to be about saving the treasures of the monastery and sending the dead Vikings away for burial at sea. I’m not grateful for a win for one side or the other. I’ve seen enough crucifixion, warring, marauding, angry spears and deaths at human hands to know violence is no different from any other plague or mishap, except that this hurt is by the hands of the very species that also suffers the grief of it — your own beloved humankinds. Guide us in your wide loving way, Amen.

It is still an intimate secret that God is the Creator and the love force that set the stars in place and moves the planets. God’s judgment lifts up the beauty, the life and the love; it does not diminish it with punitive measures. It isn’t the nature of an omniscient God to sort people into teams of righteous winners and wicked losers.  In this euphoria of release from fear, the prayers rising thank God for the win. But in all the lifetimes and deaths I’ve known, God’s compassion doesn’t choose sides.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#79.11 Thursday, April 23, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.
 

At matins I chanted with the monks. Now in the full light of dawn, I walk with the monk-clad guards from the river to their posts at the sea. The tide is high and the river into the sea is roiling and deep. The heap of rocks that become the footpath at low-tide are deep under the tidal waters that will soon surge against the river’s flow. On the sea, the swells from the depths heap into shore — waves, peaking, breaking, foaming then rising again, churning up from the depths to again break on the shore. At first, I think the dark lines on the sea are debris from a distant storm, then I realize what we are seeing.

The guards shed their monks’ robes and draw swords. I turn and run back to warn the people in the monastery and the woods and the villagers of Jarrow, but faster than I can run the longboats are slipping up the river past me.

I shout it at the monastery, and the monks are going into hiding, except one nimble young novice who joins me in alerting others in the countryside. Our warning was meant to give people a chance to hide, or run, but everyone along the way is drawing swords and taking up knives.  When we hear the bell ringing from the tower alerting all of the danger, the warning is complete and we return to the monastery.

Some of the Viking ships are abandoned on the shore at the place where the Don runs into the Tyne. The tide is receding carrying ships sparse of men at the oars smashing them against the rocks laid across the river exposed in the ebbing of the tide. [Footnote] At the monastery, it was said thirty swords greeted the marauders and now many are dead.

The watchman posted at the sea this hour killed the Viking leader as the marauders came ashore, leaving the attackers driven by nothing more than personal greed. As one, who is a stubborn pacifist, I would think that lives on both sides could be spared with letting go of earthly treasures for the sake of saving lives. Maybe there is the necessity of taking prisoners and holding trials. But fear offered no place for conversation. Any kind of reconciliation did not happen, and now Jarrow celebrates keeping some of its treasure.

Prayers of thanksgiving rise over the bodies of dead Vikings. I have no understanding of warfare on either side.

[Footnote] https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=1579441&resourceID=19191

(Retrieved 5-28-25)

Only one footnote is needed here, because the noted source analyses a variety of theories about this attack. This blogger, being a fiction writer, considered the discrepancies among the later written accounts, and the lack of archeological evidence of storm battered ship wrecks, based this telling of the story on the likely preparedness of Jarrow, after Lindisfarne, and the excellence of the ships and the seamanship of the Vikings, inventing the notion they were snagged on a low-tide rock wall used as a walkway to Monkwearmouth. 

(Continues Tuesday April 28)

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#79.10 Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

I’ve been listening to the talk of the old fellows who gather here in the mornings to consider the state of all things.  Some come disgruntled, regardless of the events of life. But Tam comes with a resilient, joyful spirit despite his losses. It is the simple allegory of Job.

Here in this place where people gather, the murmurs and gossip are not about Job and the trials intended to threaten his faith. Here the talk is of Tam. Here it is Tam’s friends and neighbors who envy his good life and expect his faith to be tested when he faces difficulties and grief. But, Like Job, Tam is persistent in faith. And Like Job, his neighbors don’t fully understand the source of his gratitude.

The real tragedy that visited this deposed ealdorman’s house, or call this a “castle,” was the abuse of a young pauper and then the death of her infant. Apparently, the ealdorman who served here made it his task to sit in this place and measure the wealth of the neighbors, accepting bribes in place of fair judgement, leaving him envious of achievement that seemed beyond his reach — made more conspicuous with the simple joyful spirit of Tam. Envy set the ealdorman searching, and he thought he could name his emptiness “legacy.”

It is some weeks now, when we are well into Springtime.  Ousbert returns with the ealdorman, judged innocent and now restored to his place here. Ousbert and the ealdorman will find the coffers empty, because I’m not very good at collecting tithes, and I don’t make judgments based on bribes.  I suppose I’m not a worthy ealdorman. So, it is probably a good thing all around that I won’t be doing this task any longer. The ealdorman returns to an empty, but clean house.

Now, I am weighing a plan to visit another monastery that is rumored to continue in the Irish rule — Iona.  One of the regular merchants visiting Jarrow is Cloothar, with his traveling market for used garments. He brought me down here from Lindisfarne in his little boat, as he often trades among monasteries. He knows of my appreciation for the Christian communities rooted in mystical Ireland, and he came here to Jarrow making a plan for that long sea journey to Celtic Iona. He is inviting me to go along with him.

While we prepare for the journey, I’m staying again in the guest quarters of St. Paul.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#79.9 Tuesday, April 21, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

Comparing the things in our lives with others is always a false gauge for happiness. Envy and greed are closely linked to each other. It seems all these seven dwarves of “deadly sins” are false paths to love for self and neighbor, and these things leave us spiritually hollow, not hallowed. That is because envy and greed are always reaching, never grasping. Greed is always chasing after more, never with enough to fill the hollow space, and envy also sets an unreachable, ever-shifting goal based on what someone else has. Envy and greed are moving targets — a mythical leaping stag always escaping into the woods just ahead of the arrow released.

Defining one’s own actual needs and goals is a completely different way of thinking than these motives of persistent emptiness. Jesus explained the respite from this endless chase simply as the Kingdom of Heaven. [Matthew 5:1-13] But then frailties of greed words and envy words moved this kingdom from available here and now to a far distant place in the clouds. To assure it would always be distant and unreachable the Kingdom of Heaven morphed into the folklore of an after-death reward, like Valhalla.

The variety of happiness Jesus spoke of starts simply with gratitude — noticing the goodness of what is already. It is based on abundance, not emptiness.

         “Thank you God, for…” Like the child’s prayers.

         “For mother, father, family, home, enough food…”

Pretty soon all this thankfulness widens to cows and friends and trees and birds, and on and on, until all of Creation can be named, then the asking prayer is simple.

         “Give us what we need to live today.” (our daily bread)

         “Take away the worry so that enough is complete.”

The asking prayer becomes the opposite of envy and greed. The hollow space that isn’t envy is compassion and that becomes the healing power.

So, in the mornings the old men gather on the benches, some with hollowness, loneliness, hopelessness, anger at what is not in their control — like the tithes and taxes and the people who mandate them. They come to the benches to complain. But if Tam shows up with his gratitude in-tact for his sons and daughters, for his cows, and for the grass that feeds them in the spring after a bare-bones winter that left him grieving for a calf that failed, and of course his own father passed this winter. Even in his grief he comes with a sense of joy for his neighbors and friends, who are these other men gathered here.

         Thank you, God.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#79.8 Thursday, April 16, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.
 

He asked about the infant, and I asked the question back to the three old fellows gathered on the benches here. 

         “Why would an ealdorman keep a baby here?”

The man with no teeth answers first.

         “He thaid it were hith own thun.”

The owner of cows, Tam, still smelling of fresh milk from his morning chores has an explanation.

         “He envied those of us with children, and said he also needed a ‘legacy.’

         Toothless said, “He took one look at Tam’th richeth — cowth and five thunth and nary a tithe needed pay for them and he envied.”

         Tam said, “He’d collect the king’s tithe from me in churned butter and straw bales, but my sons are a value far better than land or riches. Children are better than all the riches of earth. They promise a future. I think he saw I was rich in legacy and not even paying the taxes of a rich man.”

         “Let me guess” I added, “without the ealdorman here now, you’ve delivered the butter to the monastery.”

         Tam answers, “The monks came for it themselves.”

         The other says, “The ealdorman’s envy ate him up. He told everyone he thuffered from luthting for legathy.

         Tam added, “He weren’t seeing the value in the wife or daughters, just the legacy of sons.”

         I ask, “Didn’t he expect a son would come with a mother?”

Toothless belts a laugh.

Maybe they know what I know. The ealdorman had no comprehension of family. The tiny infant that was conceived, not in love, and most likely not even in lust, was the object of greed. Legacy through sons wasn’t a taxable treasure, and the ealdorman took this tax loop-hole very personally when his greedy eyes fell on Tam with three cows and five sons, and apparently, he decided the inescapable emptiness of his life could be filled by legacy. He had no notion of his own need for love.

Envy miss-leads us so easily.  We see simple happiness in another and we give our envy the name of whatever it is that person has.  Tam pays the king’s due for his land, and yet the ealdorman saw Tam was happier than others. And he wanted what Tam had. Tam had a legacy. Tam had sons.  But envy is always a flawed map to happiness.

Dear God, release us from the measure of the neighbor’s stuff, that we may see beyond the treasures and find the happiness in the love itself, for neighbors and selves, and for family.

(Continues Tuesday April 21)


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#79.7 Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.
 

At the ealdorman’s house, Ousbert left the desk and the chair, the empty shelves and the sleeping mat which I have washed in lye soap and refilled with fresh straw. And in the first room are also some benches lining the outer wall.  I thought the benches were for people waiting to make their required payments — but then, why would they come here and sit and wait to do that?

Now I find the benches are a gathering place each morning for the town elders. It was the baker yesterday with his bread bribe. Today some old men come in and sit and talk chewing long stems of green grasses. They tell their old stories to this new ealdorman, complaining over the power structures, and they fill me in on all the history and happenings in a whole different way than Bede told it, but with the same variety of bias. Here history comes as gossip.

The real work of this ealdorman’s post is supposed to be collecting the tithe for the king, while the Church manages collecting the tithe for the Church. It is all called a tithe, from the old land divisions naming the worth of these lands in terms of “hides.” [Footnotes]

How do I, a stranger to this land know of this? It is because these benches seat the tradition of the old men of the morning gathered and telling all there is to know of this place, truth or gossip, whatever.

Ousbert told me some things: that the ealdorman receives a third of these fees for the king; and that is how he’s paid. And I can see, that since the military and the monastery are exempt, this post thrives more on bribes for justice than on the portions of payments, since this doesn’t happen to be a wealthy corner of the earth for collecting a lot in tithes — and with the king and the church each expecting a cut, paying up the taxes is no simple inconvenience for these people.

I’m still waiting to talk with Ousbert again so that I can report to him the thuggish behavior of the soldiers he posted. Now I can also understand the tension between the abbot and the posted guards there. It is why Ousbert did not ask to have a monk temporarily assigned to this ealdorman’s post.

So, the first question these old men perching here have for me is, “Whatever happened to that other fellow’s little-un?”

Footnote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithing — retrieved 8-17-25

(Continues tomorrow)


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#79.6 Tuesday, April 14, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.
 

The baker came here with the sheer terror of Hell. I thought the issue was simply a matter of a miss-understanding about payment for bread. The abbot affirms the monastery doesn’t requisition their bread from local merchants.

So, who is it that shows up every week and demands an abundance of fresh loaves, then offers only a blessing?

         “Which blessing is it?” the abbot asks.

         “I don’t know one blessing from another. It is all in the — magical incantation–holy and unsuited to a simple layman’s understanding.”

         The abbot asks, “So what do these monks look like?”

         “Of course they look like monks. Monks always just look like monks, except the particular monks that order the bread don’t have shorn beards.”

         “Eureka!” The witness identifies these blessing giving, sword bearing monks as the monks with beards.

         I answer, “I will speak to Ousbert regarding the behavior of his men.”

I leave the baker with the abbot to make his confession.  I don’t find Ousbert in the monastery today. But I do find my holiday drinking partners. They aren’t disturbing the sacred halls with carols right now. In fact, they are slathering fresh bread with butter. They have a big pot of butter and their dagger tips are slimed in the oily sweetness.  The bread is common, though I know it’s source.  But the butter…the butter is nothing that is served in this place, even to the guests. And I’ve seen no monks at the churns with this rendering of butter from cream for this fine feast. 

Here is all this butter and only a few days ago I was hearing a poor man arguing with nuns over the availability of a fresh cow to be milked to feed the infant of a needy family. In the gapping chasm of miss-understanding between the rich and the poor, the nuns assumed borrowing a cow from a neighbor was a simple solution to nurture an infant, but the poor man knew of no neighbor from whom he could borrow a cow. And now, butter is wasted for the mere pleasure of soldiers.

(Continues tomorrow)


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#79.5 Thursday, April 9, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

         To the abbot I say, “Assigned as I am to temporarily fill the place of the ealdorman, this man has a concern that needs to be settled. He is the village baker and every week he brings bread to this place, and the monks receive it, offering him only a blessing, but no earthly payment. Yet the bread is of earth.”

The baker gave me bread as a bribe, of course, so he expects I will take his side in this dispute. But I don’t need to take his side just because I was gifted bread. This has a simply a matter of justice, regardless of the bribe. 

He presents his complaint to the abbot. I expected he will tell the abbot that he delivers bread to monks with swords at this monastery each week and that he is not paid for it. Then, I expect the abbot will know what has happened here, and will summons those so-called “monks” with swords to pay for the bread.

But the baker amends my simple plan to solve this.

         “It isn’t that I don’t need a blessing. In all your holiness you know I am a sinner. And that is why you’ve sent your monks to judge me and taunt me. Of course, the bread is my humble retribution for my sins. I know it is my required payment if I am ever to enter into heaven.  I should be glad in the opportunity to give all the bread I ever bake, freely to God as required for my sins.”

         “Have you come here to make a confession?”

         I say, “We came to discuss the marketing of bread?”

The baker is not simply awed by the holy, he is terrified. It is as though I brought him to the gates of Hell. To a layman looking at the church from the outside, the distinction may be blurred.  No wonder the abbot is confused, and my assessment of the problem is far too simple. 

I suggest we talk first, about the payment for bread, then I will leave and give the baker his privacy to confess his sins if that is what is needed.

         The abbot says, “It would be a simple issue, as Eleazor suggests, but for the fact that we raise and mill the wheat and bake all the bread we use. We neither buy nor beg bread from local merchants.”

(Continues Tuesday April 14)

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#79.4 Wednesday, April 8, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

The baker and I are waiting to meet with the abbot in the monk’s chapel of St. Paul. Here the window is leaded with pieces of colored glass. The places in this room where shadows would nestle are not shadows at all, but little patches of dancing light, though the room seems shaded in a solemnity and placid, like the cool depths of a summer forest.

Here the windows don’t reveal the awesome grandeur of vast panorama of Creation, rather the sun comes as a kind of inner light — a Spiritual presence. While I find it peaceful, the baker does not.

         “He sees us, doesn’t he?” The baker says. “God is watching. He sees us when we’re sleeping, he knows when we’re awake, and he knows every sin! There is no hiding from God.”

I let the baker reminisce over Psalm 139 finding God everywhere, even in the depths of Scheol. While my own prayer of thanksgiving is silent.

         Dear God, when I feel you near, I have a sense of peace. Thank you for your nearness in times of trouble, always present with comfort and assurance. But I am in here in your sacred presence with a man who has been harrowed with the rumors of Hell. I know that some people who represent you are known to find power in punitive abuse. So called, holy men threaten retribution for innumerable sins heaped onto a poor soul with mere human guesses threatening an afterlife filled with horrific punishments, though it has never actually been witnessed by any living person. He suffers an inescapable guilt gnawing at his conscience. Maybe he is only a victim of human power-plays and rumors. May your truth-filled judgment bring forgiveness and…

         “What? Are you praying? Are you bringing the Holy wrath down on us?”

         “Has ‘holy wrath’ come down, or is it mercy that surrounds us here?”

         “Devils lurk.”

         “God listens.”

         “God knows we are all born in sin.”

         “God set the land and the sea and the sky with life, and said ‘It is good.’ God didn’t create sin.”

         “Then, by one man, Adam, sin came into the world.”

         “Adam is only everyman. Original sin came into the world on the lips and the quills and inks of early church fathers — The once pagan Augustine remembered it and wrote it to be copied over and again.”

         “The Church Fathers were Christian Saints.”

         “They were also people — wise men, maybe, but people.”

The monk who showed us to this room comes to tell us the abbot will see us now.

(Continues tomorrow)