#83.7 Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now the abbot casts accusations on Brother Lugh.

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

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

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

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

(Continues tomorrow)


#83.6 Thursday, August 13, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

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

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

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

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

It hardly feels like warm words of welcome.

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

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

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

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

         “I am a sign.”

         “You say you are Christ returned?”

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

There is a stunned silence here.

(Continues Tuesday, August 18)

#83.5 Wednesday, August 12, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time
 

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

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

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

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

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

(Continues tomorrow)

#83.4 Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

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

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

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

On it goes.

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

     “Give us this day our daily bread.”

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

     “Forgive us our debts.”

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

     “As we forgive our debtors…

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Continues tomorrow)


#83.3 Thursday, August 6, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Brother Lugh and I are speaking of his grief at the loss of his father.

     He says, “I was supposed to leave my old life behind. But it was my father who sponsored me here, when Abbott McTyre was gathering monks. And now I’ve learned that the plague was rising and my father knew of the danger to himself as a physician. He sent us two more novices who were untouched by plague. I was sure it was my father who sent them when I saw the chalice. 

   “Here everyone was talking about gratitude for the chalice. At the same time the community was morning a lost monk who had died in a fall. The gratitude was for my own father’s gifts, and yet he died alone on the mainland.  The only grief allowed was for the brother who threw himself off the cliff. I hardly knew that brother, but the other death I am prohibited from speaking of, was my own father. So this grief is mine alone.

     “Then I went to the ledge over the sea to pray but my prayer had no words. I looked down and considered the possibility of slipping off the ledge to my own death. There was no peaceful search of my soul. Yet my sins separated me from God.

“Then, what I saw below me was the edge of the sea, with the tide out and something strange among the rocks.  I climbed down to see what I couldn’t understand, and I found a dead man with sea weed hair, and a glistening eye. No one else saw him even when they searched. They thought my grief set me to lying. So, I confessed it, and was absolved for lying, but now here you are that same living dead man.”

What can I say?

     “Brother Lugh, it was gracious of you to bring me this cup of water. Thank you. My prayer is gratitude for your kindness and also for my own healing and life.”

     “Gratitude to God?” he asks.

     “May I speak aloud that Jesus prayer as gratitude for this little communion?

     He prepares.

     “Holy One, Heavenly Spirit of mother and father to all of Creation,”

      He interrupts, “No! The words are ‘Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name’.”

Brother Lugh knows the familiar, comfortable, recitation of his own language words. My words are just a different pattern of the same prayer.

(Continues Tuesday, August 11)

#83.2 Wednesday, August 5, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

     “God knows.”

(Continues tomorrow)

#83.1 Tuesday, August 4, 2026

Historical Setting: The Great Skellig in an unknown time

Sitting here on a stacked stone wall, reeling from the climb up a long path I see Sister Brigid is already across the valley. She went on back without waiting for me. I wonder if she assumed I would find a welcome among this community of monks so I would now be staying here.

She’s probably going to Timothy’s little cell. They will speak with silent fingers and Timothy will know she has sent me to Brother Lugh.

She told me the monks in this cluster of cells are fairly new inhabitants of this place, not yet here a whole year round.  She told me it is usual that monks come and go but those who die here get buried here forever and ever. Apparently, death lingers, but the living come and go.

These stone hovels have endured many seasons; yet every community that inhabits them is mortal. When a place is populated by generations of people continuance is promised through its children. To have on-going generations it requires a heterogeneous social network, more than a monastery provides. It is the simple fact of life. Continuation requires all ages and stages of humankinds, women, and these young men with their visions, and the old dreaming dreams. I assume Sister Brigid is right.  The community of this monastery will always be a narrow sliver of only one immediate generation, without any enduring legacy. Broken stone hovels and markers provide the memorial to failing human endurance.

Brother Lugh comes with a cup of water. It is refreshing.

     “Thank you. It’s thoughtful of you.”

     I ask the grieving monk, “Were you with your father when he passed away?”

Brother Lugh buries his weeping in his hands.

I lay my hand on his quivering shoulder.

     “No. I promised him I would try to always do God’s will, so we assumed this place would become my home forever and after. I wouldn’t even know of my father’s death but for two novices who were brought over from the mainland to fill out our numbers. They brought a golden chalice with them — a gift from the estate of their sponsor who recently passed. And then they named their sponsor, and he was my father.”

We sit in silence, except I know his weeping. I stare into the fired clay cup he brought me for water. Surely, this generous little cup is a chalice perfectly suited to this meager end to earth. A golden chalice will be something strange in this place.

(Continues tomorrow)

#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)

#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)

#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)