#63.4, Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024

Historical Setting: An unknown time in a cold land

         Considering the chain — The chain is undoubtedly more valuable to my captors than am I. It’s simply the only proof they had that I’d been captured. Maybe the chain was a prize in a raid. Or maybe it was made by their own smiths, a valued possession, or the anchor chain for some large galley rowing an army of marauders to a foreign shore to kill its men and market its women.

         I wasn’t conscious when I was wrapped in this. I’m sure if I were, it would have been dizzying. Maybe they stretched out the chain on the beach, then I was rolled up in it, like a hidden dagger rolled up in a fleece. I do have sand in my beard.

         This chain isn’t fastened, it’s just wrapped. It seems if I had the power to move, I could eventually unroll myself and be free of it. At least I can see the value in my strength returning. And as I can move a little despite the chain, I must always remember only to turn in the direction opposite the winding which seems to be to the right. Maybe in that way, little-by-little, I can loosen the chain. The more uncomfortable it is to lay on the chain, the more I muster the strength to move, and the more I move, the more the chain is loosened.

         This is a worthy project.

         Mara says what we both know.

         “The men have made their camp near-by. They keep watch on everything here.”

          We can hear them, talking, arguing, gathering wood and undoubtedly eating spoiled meat also. We can hear they are also sickened from the meat. Mara is terrified now. If this one still starving man wrapped in chain is fearsome to her, how much more dangerous are two who are free and angry and have already killed her family and captured her?

         We hear them moaning and groaning and puking. It is a long night with no tender sleeping for anyone – no whispers of consolation – only isolated fears. Everyone is alone in wakefulness, pretending sleep.

         For me, it is lots of slow turns with chains bruising. I turn the last, to release myself from the chain. When it is a formless heap of links under me, these steel links still keep the coldness of night.  But now, this chain is a limp nothing without purpose or connection.  So, what will I do with my freedom?

(Continues tomorrow)

#63.3, Thurs., Dec. 5, 2024

Historical Setting: An unknown time in a cold land

         This woman in shackles speaks in the comfortable language of Frankish Gaul. She tells me men are most often killed when they are captured and the women are taken as slaves. So, she says, I should be fortunate they only wrapped me in heavy chains. I guess I am fortunate but the chains are cold and debilitating. It is better than death. I know. I’ve tried both death and life and I choose life. Her only shackles are on her ankles. Dirty and bruised, her long, colorless strings of hair are tangled and matted with a patch of black dried blood. Her bruises tell of a violent capture.

         “My sons and my husband were slaughtered.”

         So, in her tears and howls I hear the unfairness of the grace that these captors let me, a man, live. I ask her name.

         “That is only for my husband to know and now he’s gone.”

         “So, I will call you Mara, the name in Ruth Naomi gave herself in her sorrow. [Ruth 1:20]”

         “So, you are Christian?” Mara asks.

         “Yes. Are you?”

         “I’m guessing there are better gods. I only asked because you mentioned a Christian story.”

         “It is older than Christian. Ruth is an old Jewish story.” And I ask her, how long she’s been here.

         “Longer than the others, because I was wailing and I couldn’t be sold. No one wanted to buy a weeping slave? I don’t know if I am better off here but here is where I am.  The good thing is when they dropped you here, they came with firewood.”

         So, I guess for her, I have some sort of goodness. But she’s too frail to lift the log into the embers.

         “I can help you if you release my chains.”

         “Why would I do that?”

         “So, I can lift the logs and help you cook this venison.”

         “You would just eat all the meat yourself and then rape me.”

         “No, Mara. I won’t hurt you.”

         She succeeds at placing the log without my help. And she lays the meat next to the new flame. I’ve been having it raw in these times. And here it will be burnt all through, a hard greasy crust of meat it will be. But now, cooking, it stinks of rot.

         “We shouldn’t eat that, Mara.”

         She doesn’t answer me because she is devouring the char of meat and she is immediately sick.

         I can’t even offer her comfort while wrapped up in chains.

(Continues Tuesday, December 10, 2024)

#63.2, Weds., Dec. 4, 2024

Historical Setting: An unknown time in a cold land

         An apprehension shadows me as I walk toward the sunset unprepared for nightfall. I feel like I’m being stalked.  I no longer fear wolves or any sort of wild thing seeking prey. And how often is this feeling of another presence discovered to be the comfort of answered prayer for God’s closeness?

         But maybe this isn’t a feeling of someone near so much as it is little hints I can sense – a waft of a human scent — a vibration of footsteps through the snow coated sand — a little stirring among leaves caught side-sighted. But why would a person hide from me? I’m nothing to fear. I have no weapons. I’m dressed only in deer skins. I have no torque or breastplate, no armor.

         “Hello? Is someone out there?”

         I Catch a glint of steel shining orange in reflection of the sinking sun.

         “Who’s there?”

         I awaken in the dark, chained on a sled along with supplies of firewood, venison and hides. We are sliding through the darkness, leaving that sled trail I had hoped would take me to humankind. Men are shouting in a language I don’t know. It sounds like grunts and curses more than growls or words. Every syllable has a hard edge. These words start with a breath but end with a cough.  Not knowing of this language, it seems wise not to call out in my own. So, I am silent for a long ride.  We end at a hovel made with boards laid on arches of saplings, with hides laid over for a roof to cover a  door. It takes both hefty men to toss me into this place while I’m still bound in heavy chains, then the men leave with the sled.

         Here, there’s a rock hardly a hearthstone, but on it, a fire burning with only a few glowing ashes. The smoke rising is released through gaps between the boards. In the smokey cold of this little space I see someone else also here.

         “You are a thrall?” a voice of woman asks me in my own language, but I don’t know what that means.

         “Thrall?”

         “Trael is their word for it. You are a slave?”

         “Judging by these chains I can guess that is so.”

         “Mostly they kill the men when they capture a people. They sack the cities and kill the men, and make the women thrall.”

         “Who are they?” I ask.

(Continues tomorrow)

#63.1, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024

Historical Setting: An unknown time in a cold land

         Dear God, thank you for life and breath and time alone… but I find myself now on a blank slate of winter earth that seems endless. I’ve seen signs of other mortals and I know your invisible presence is here too. Thank you for staying close. But I’m one who lives into life longing for people’s warmth, singing, laughing, eating, drinking… I’m thirsty just now. Forgive my kvetching. But I really am thirsty. Amen.

         I believe in hope that I will find people by following these sled tracks that veer from the sea’s edge into the woods and back again.

         I find a place in the sled tracks where others have stopped and here is a spring of water rising up from the rocks. Thank you, God, for this water and this resting place. Grateful also, I am to the unknown people who led me here.

         Water flowing — That is just what I needed.  And now lifting my gaze from the intensity of sled tracks is the whole beautiful nature of earth in sight and scents and silence –the fragrance of pine, the scent of snow at sea’s edge, the patterns of branches, delicate laces of treetops nestling blue sky patches and so intensely shines the sea to dancing in the white of wind-frothed waves, clean and unblemished.

         Here beautiful comes in all different ways. It’s more than gloss on earth to sweeten our vision like drips of honey spilled on burnt bread. Here beauty is all there is, metaphor for God with us. Why does it seem Christian to require suffering as the true vision of holiness, when beauty simply overwhelms? Why does Christian imagine heaven as a blank space in sky, when even the tangible earth has all of this? Does the image of suffering on the cross taint our Christian vision with grief until we have no imagination left for the metaphors of love spread so richly?

         Refreshed, I walk on as the sun tips west and I have to wonder if I will reach these people with the sled while there is yet daylight. I have neither a fire start nor a warm wolf to save me from freezing in sleep.

         Here is a place where the forest was harvested by human need, and here I see the marks on the earth of moving the logs to the sea. They could have floated them anywhere, and I have no way to follow.  So, I just continue walking in the sled tracks.

(Continues tomorrow)

#62.12, Thursday, Nov. 28, 2024

Historical Setting, cold unknown

         Today, I’m walking alone, or I would be, except for my persistent trust that God is with me.  It’s like the air of breath that seems always everywhere, yet invisible, like water for sea creatures. Air allows me to live as I do, a mortal, tangible creature of earth. Air as metaphor for God, invisible, yet always present — life giving.  In coldness when air seems hardest to believe in, it becomes visible for a moment as the breath in exhale.  Thank you, God, for staying close.

         Following the sled trail of hunters who camped on this beach I am walking north up the coast.  I’ve seen nothing of Little Brother today. It’s good he’s found his new family. May they understand his teasing nature and take him in to become beloved in their pack.

         The sled path I follow will at least take me a good part of the day walking, since people probably wouldn’t have made the camp I found, had their day not ended for them.

         Once again, I’m in wilderness solitude for an unknown time – days, hours – years? The desert fathers/mothers could spend all the unnumbered hours of their lives alone in wilderness without a pack of accumulated human stuff and without even a need to count hours and days.  But I’m still longing for human companionship. Maybe I never appreciated being with people enough when it was so normal that I wasn’t prepared for loneliness.

         Now, I must be near people!  To my left where the forest rises, edging this beach, I see a clear sign! The large trees at the edge of this forests have been felled. The canopy of winter branches is disrupted with holes of sky. The eternal stalks of trees are plundered to stumps. Having been human for so many centuries, on one hand, I know it’s a great accomplishment of power and strength to fell such large trees and take a swath of forest. It requires strength and skill. And I’m happy to be near people. 

         Yet, on the other hand these tree stumps are something lost. Generations, sprouted from seed, soaring sunward always reaching, gently defying winds and storms, sheltering birds and critters of all sorts, solid, ever more silently an untouched forest is an edifice to awe the imagination of the builders of cathedrals and castles.

This first sign that people are here, is that the trees were taken.

(Continues Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024)

#62.11, Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2024

Historical Setting, unknown

         All along this walk I share the winter peace, solitude by the sea with only the birds and critters. I’ve seen seals on some rocks – probably every strange creature imaginable is lurking in this vacancy of humankind. And here are all the birds that linger on the rocks, spread-winged, or soaring on the winds over the waters, roosting on rocks, shouting their roughened expletives, fearless against the vacant skies of winter.

         Dear God, thank you for this first life, Eden—blank wilderness — clean slate for Creation. May I take the human part into it gifting and giving, knowing and understanding the full texture of the weave where I am also a part.  Little Brother comes by, maybe to make sure I’m still on my straight trek in case he would want to find me again — and now he is gone, back into the wood.

         The sun is tilting west now –sending corpuscular rays of its parting above the forests.

         I come to that place where only last night there were people on this beach, leaving this ashen ring of once a fire. Scent of smoke, warm sand, I turn the ash whitened log – here are embers! Blow on the embers, add the grasses and the dry leaves, add some twigs and now some sticks, enough and here is flame.  I search for more wood and I find wood, and another log. It is all I can carry –more and more wood I gather. Always I collect stuff – it is the way of mice and squirrels, crows and humans. 

         “Hey Little Brother!  I have fire!  Now you can see what being human is all about.  While you are off in the woods looking for community, here I am, making a heap of burn-ables.”

         He doesn’t hear me. He hasn’t come back tonight to enjoy the warmth of my fire. I fold the extra deer skin I’ve been carrying on my back to make a shelter open on the side of fire for a warm night’s rest. I expect the cold winds might send him back to me again tonight.

         But now, with the winter moon and the wolf gone away I hear his lonely song. He knows where I am.  It is his choice to be alone tonight. But now, in the distance his howl is answered with wolves. So, he has found his community. For me, all I’ve found are the ashes leftover from people who aren’t here anymore. Tomorrow, I will follow the tracks of their sled.

(Continues tomorrow)


#62.10, Tuesday, Nov. 26, 2024

Historical Setting, unknown

         Waking in a tiny shelter made with one deer hide folded this wolf companion, I call Little Brother, is still here and he has chewed our water skin to pieces.  It’s just the kind of thing an adolescent wolf would do. He has no imagination for any future need we would have for water. Maybe critters have no imagination for future needs at all.  They just go on with no plan or preparation. Maybe imagination is only human. It’s frustrating right now.  I prepared as best as I could, I cleaned a skin just to carry water, and now it’s been torn up in pieces just for what – polishing a wolf’s teeth – keeping the youth occupied, while I slept?

         People plan. They make stuff and gather what they need. Then they pack up all the stuff and carry it with them on their backs.

         So, what else did Little Brother ruin while I was sleeping? I know he could smell the scent of the meat slab I stashed behind our shelter. Oh, here it is. He watches me find it here, anxious to share it with me. What a good boy he is.  He didn’t take it all for himself. Maybe he knows the importance of sharing or maybe he is just in the habit of having a higher-ranking wolf telling him when it is his turn to eat. I have no understanding of the mind of a wolf. But this morning we both share the half-frozen meat, and it is a very fine way to start the day.

         I’m hoping that today I will be able to find a human family where I can get my bearings and learn what this time and place is into which I have awakened to life.

         Last night I saw a fire and some threads of smoke that speak to me of a human gathering. So today I will walk north along the sea between waterfront and forest. The short daylight in this region will only allow me to walk the far distance I can see ahead of me, maybe that is about ten miles. Starting off, I walk a consistent line while Little Brother runs his frantic circles in and out of the forest.  I suppose he is looking for wolves or maybe small animals for food that he can hunt alone, but whatever it is, he isn’t finding it, so he keeps returning to me.

(Continues tomorrow)


#62.9, Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024

Historical Setting, cold unknown

         I’m thinking of the family of wolves that chose to take me in, assuming I needed food and rest and warmth. They shared their den and their food and water with this human being, even though, among wolves, humans are probably known to be greedy, stinky and violent.

         The howling on this moonlit night is one wolf, alone. That’s odd, when wolf families are so welcoming. Does he choose to be alone? In his adolescence does he find himself searching now for a new pack to join where the she-wolves aren’t his own sisters? I think of that one who ranked the same as I among the wolves of the pack. I called him “little brother.” Even though I found him the hardest to get along with sometimes, always watching me, circling around me, snarling to let me know we competed for rank, he’s the one I miss most now. This howling I hear is so much like Little Brother.

         I step out of the shelter to stuff my empty water flask skin with snow for melting. My thought is that if I could possibly make warmth in this shelter, I would have water from melted snow in the morning.

         Then, outside in my continuing neediness, I answer that howling with human words, “I miss you little brother.”

         Now, here I am in my little shelter alone on this snow-swept beach, cold and exhausted, fearing sleep without warmth, and I hear an animal outside my shelter – and in an instant — I’m not being mauled by a bear, instead I am nuzzled by my own wolf friend, Little Brother.  He followed me! It’s a happy reunion. His broad tail whipping the full width of this shelter, thumping enough joy for both of us. He was just waiting for me to answer his howl with my human voice. Cold and tired, alone, sharing the shelter we can both sleep warm now.

         It seemed a brief night when sleeping into this bright new morning. The wedge of raw meat we can share today was kept cold on the snow side of shelter hide, and I grope around inside for the water skin. Little Brother is stretched out sleeping, but my poking and prodding for the flask can’t be ignored, he wakes and I find it. He’s chewed it into bits! So, we have no water. He knows me as a brother, not his master. He is not a pet for me to scold and train. What can I say?

(Continues Tuesday, Nov. 26)


#62.8, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024

Historical Setting, unknown

         By now, whenever now is, I’ve learned a few gestures of wolves, but the fullness of language still eludes me. Humankinds have named them for the tender word they say that accompanies an asking nudge – ulfr, or wolf. [footnote]

         As much as I appreciate this gracious, unjudgmental hospitality, I do need to make my way into the human world whatever that may be in this new time.

         I speak my good-byes in the human language and the wise elders of this pack understand that this is all about the limitations of my species, so I will have to be leaving.  The largest of these beasts stands with his forepaws on my shoulders and reminds me, eye-to-eye, as tall as I think I am, I am still only human. The young male, my teasing little brother makes impatient circles, knowing his own place in this pack is not to be its patriarch. The she-wolves here are his sisters. He will need to leave soon also. He watches me walk away as I do, taller now, on two legs, not crouching.

         This is a wintery day– trees etched in foggy silver –winter daylight is brief. I choose to skirt the forests where we hunt and walk toward the north, imagining I will come to the sea so if other people are here, I will likely find them. I’ve brought a skin of water, and a wedge of meat but no fire. The pelts I’ve collected may offer a bit of shelter if I’m still alone at nightfall. I walk on and on, into the early sunset. The lands flatten to meet the sea, and still, I’ve come to no people or houses.  I can see many miles of beaches in both directions. Nearly at the end of sight to the north I see the glow of a fire and at moonrise a few threads of smoke in that direction. That is where I will go when I’ve rested.

         I find no way to be warm, even though I have extra hides. It is wise not to sleep.  I listen to the night sounds, shivering now. A wolf howls in the distance, and I think of that pack, warm and safe together simply because they are family. Maybe I’m homesick. Maybe I’m grieving for the human families where I’ve found belonging. As human being I really had no place with the wolves.

         A wolf howls closer, and I think of the one I called ‘little brother’ who shared meat with me. Thank you, God.

[footnote] In this video and many sources on wolves, animosity toward wolves is recent to human history, since only about the 10th century. This video blames the twist of good wolf to “big bad wolf” on Christians. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQTcz3qKdys

(Continues tomorrow)

#62.7, Tuesday, Nov. 19, 2024

Historical Setting, unknown

         Warm wolves need no extra firs or fire. Any fir I may have, is sparse so I depend on these others for warmth. But just outside the den are the two frozen deer carcasses left for the vultures and now the crows, picking at the last of the meats. I crawl out onto the sunlit snows, staying low, not to become tall or threatening to the young male with whom I’ve shared a feast. He follows me.

         The hoof and leg bone of this deer can be a tool for one with hands, such as I have, to scrape the bones and sinew from the hides. My little brother wolf is pleased to find I’m not taking all the best bones. In fact, I am just giving them to him without a tussle. He drags the treasures into the den for sharing. It becomes all about the sharing.  No one seems to imagine that I would want to keep the deerskins for my human need for clothing.

         Little brother wolf splits a bone to retrieve the marrow, and then he wonders why I would choose the broken piece leftover, and not so much the tasty inside. It must be that humans are ignorant of good flavors. But I take the split of bone with a long, jagged edge and use it as a blade to clean the hides.  It is a major project and apparently boring to watch. So, these wolves spend their fattened winter days curled in the den, giving the cave a musky fragrance of home — warm and safe.

         Before we are again hungry enough for the hunt, I’ve made myself something akin to clothing and a pair of rough sinew-stitched shoes to cover my soft and useless human feet. I can keep up now, when we hunt again. I have that scrapping blade to carry as a knife, but really, I am not much use in taking down a deer on the run. I do help with the chore of dragging it back to the den and the actual divvying up of the meats.

         Discovering the nature of wolves isn’t hard in a world where the mysteries of human seem completely without reason. Wolves have all they need. I have lots of stuff – a blade, shoes, trousers, a hood – the longer the winter, the more stuff I accumulate. And none of my collection is even meat.

         At least I’m not greedy with the meats.  Wolves are very generous and patient with me. Thank you, God.

(Continues tomorrow)