#62.6, Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024

Historical Setting, cold unknown

         There are stories of saints like Father Columbanus befriending wolves. Father Columbanus stood tall with a comforting authority but never a threatening dominance.

         Dear God, as I find new strength, may I have these saintly virtues. Amen. But…

         I doubt my circumstances and the virtues of a saint have similarity in the opinions of wolf. My presence here as a sacrifice, along with my helpless state, makes clear I’m not a saint.

         I think about rising up perhaps onto my hands and knees so that I can creep around with these beasts and in a wild imagining, share in the meat and maybe a sip of water.

         Just as I turn onto my side, the she-wolf, the matriarch, is here and with teeth barred takes hold of the hair at the back of my neck — such a wad of hair I have now. She drags me by the hair, though I am somewhat able to help, into a shallow cave which seems to be the den. I’m not sure if the dragging is a kindness or the meal preparation of me. But here I am now out of the wind and warmed by the beasts. It’s a relief from the shivers. Here a trickle of water runs down the cave wall into a pool.

         I see proper etiquette here is to use no hands. So instead of scooping up the water in my hand as Gideon choose soldiers, (Judges 7:4-16,)  here, wolves and I just go all in face down in the water, lapping, sucking up wetness however it can be done without hands or dish. It’s a long and quenching refreshment. My strength is coming back to me.

         Some of the lesser members of the pack have gone outside to gnaw the raw meats with the birds who have gathered. Frozen and raw, this is a very different kind of feast for me, gnawing and ripping at the kill, using only teeth. Having not the right facial structure for this project, I do manage to tear loose a piece of meat larger than a bite and one of the young wolves apparently takes offense at my greed. I don’t mean to be greedy. I stretch the meat held in my teeth toward him to share and we are in something of a tooth-to-tooth tug of war with the meat slab in the middle. It tears apart and we each have a good share. We gnaw our morsels together as family at a feast.

(Continues Tuesday, Nov. 19)


#62.5, Wednesday, Nov. 13, 2024

Historical Setting, cold unknown

         The pack returns from the hunt. The matriarch has food for the pups. The pups didn’t eat from the deer that was left for the wolves here in the snow. And gratefully, this human flesh wasn’t sampled either. I don’t know whether the deer meat makes it more tempting to add me to the feast, or if they will already have their fill. Maybe they aren’t hungry for any of this offering of a deer and a man.

         When the mother arrives ahead of the pack she finds the pups curled up against me – one nearly inside of the palm of my hand. At first, the pups played with my fingers, mouthing them, discovering these were nothing like their mother’s nipples. They hadn’t encountered such things before. But I can tell you, their tiny teeth are sharp. They played with my fingers until they got tired or maybe bored with these meaningless appendages of human. Then one tired puppy discovered hands are gifted with scratching a pup behind the ears. They took their turns then slept.

         Now, when the she-wolf arrives the cubs are curled up next to me, warm and soft – may I be warm for them as well. I’m not shivering anymore.

         The she-wolf explores the scene blazing eyes, ferocious, snarling, then snatching the pups by the napes of necks, one by one she scurries them off to their den. And again, I am just a shivering offering in the snow lying next to a nearly frozen deer carcass.

         Vultures make circles straight above as the rest of the wolfpack arrives dragging a fresher kill. This meat has already been torn up and divvied among the fangs. Now the investigation of me by the adults is no tender face licking. The nosing and nuzzling is rough and intentional, growls and howls that could be language. They describe the find, but I have no idea what this means. Two of the nearly grown pack wolves apparently, are settling a dispute with mouths and fangs, rising up from the pack in something that could be a dancer’s embrace, or a wrestle. Is it play or fight? The large male who is sniffing me, turns and stifles the competitive play simply with a show of his size and snarl of power.

         But what of me?  Large in size, fragrance of meat, frail like the weakest fawn left laid out here by another smelly human as a sacrifice to be devoured.

(Continues tomorrow)


#62.4, Tuesday, Nov. 12, 2024

Historical Setting, cold unknown

         Even in these new times called future there can be a madman pretending to be a ruler.

         He billows on to Oos, or Us, (does spelling even matter?)

          “Now, we can’t even return him to the bogs; he’s been brought up from the depths and he is watching me! If we would return him, he would take his awe to Hell with him and the gods would know me then as their retribution and there would be no more gods.”

         Hearing this rant, knowing that of all the stories I tell in my many years of mortality, this may be of least important when considered next to the true things of life. After all, I’ve seen beauty and empathy, laughter and warmth. I know grief and fearless love – and the great, invisible, pelt of love, covering all of Creation with new life, always rising creative. Breath — air — invisible sustenance of life — earthly metaphor of Spirit — Heaven needs no imagination of another time to be with us. Dear God, keep us in courage, always longing for beauty and finding it to be so. Amen.

         The russet raging blathers on, “There is no returning him back to the pagan gods now. Let’s go, Oos. I’ll have him sacrificed to the úlfr.”

         Now I am alone under the sky.

         The slant of winter bright on the white snow makes a nearly bright sky, as I am moving through the crisp clarity of a winter’s day on a sled laden with meat gifts for a god. Fully awake now, still hungry and thirsty – I seem to share this common lot with a carcass of deer, as we are both waiting to be eaten. The dead deer and I are hauled a long distance probably as food for a god somewhere else. Now we are left off here in some particular place in the snowfield.

         I awake with the soft tongues of miniature wolves licking my face. Of course, this god úlfr to whom is given this sacrifice of a deer and me, is wolf (úlfr). In my helpless state I was put out here in the wilds to be food for them. I’ve known of this Pagan custom. And now, here I am, wrapped in a deer carcass awaiting the feast of me.

         These are pups.  Their tiny yips and not quiet howls – still trusting the food gift without the hunt — as I myself seem to trust the life gift so easily forgetting the grace. Dear God, thank you.

(Continues tomorrow)


#62.3, Thursday, Nov. 7, 2024

Historical Setting, cold unknown

“Do you know what this is?” the raging man asks Os.

         Us doesn’t answer.

         “It’s a bog body! A pagan priest chooses a glamourous or youthful perfect specimen, and leaves the burn of the rope or the mark of the blade nearly hidden when a sacrifice is given to their gods — then it is buried in a peat bog so it may never rot and can be food for the gods forever. [Footnote] And you, detestable rat of the death pits, you have gone and dug in the bogs! The gods will be very angry! Do you see what you have done to me?”

         The other, the Oos, doesn’t answer, only cowers more deeply.

         “What do you take me for, Oos? An idiot? I am the smartest man in the world.”

         Still Us does not to answer.

         “I’d have to be a fool to think you could dig the grave of three spies and find no gold, only two skulls, and this… this nearly living man!”

         Now the raging brut slithers the circumference of the hovel to get his boot wedged for a kick to the whimpering bundle of Os; and the Us is upended spilling the dregs of the dig and exposing its tender underbelly.

         “You’ve got my gold and the third suit of mail, haven’t you?  You dug up this peat bog body and expect me to believe there were three bodies and only two byrnies. You are a thief!  The stash was supposed to be mine!”

         I have no strength. Dead as I was for a decade or a century or a thousand years, I have no voice to say ‘Os was right.’ I was buried with them but I wore no chain mail and the gold was already stolen from us while we lived.  I’m thirsty now and hungry and tired, so tired, I can’t speak. But the stinking russet giant is relentless.

         He looks this way. Maybe he saw me watching him. I close my eyes, but now he is speaking to me as though he assumes I see him.

         “So bog man, it is your good fortune to be unearthed and found among my treasures! I, a better lover than Thor, am your best hope.”

         Am I supposed to laugh?  He has no resemblance to any Pagan god or Christian saint, or even has he the lesser glow of a king. He is simply a raging braggadocious idiot.

         Dear God let me not forget trust and truth in all of this.

 [Footnote] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/europe-bog-bodies-reveal-secrets-180962770/ retrieved, 4-27-24

(Continues Tuesday, Nov. 12)


#62.2, Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024

Historical Setting, unknown

         This morning, the hides over the entrance are drawn aside for those I heard talking outside. Light spills in. Now I look up into the crossbeams and I see clearly what is hanging on the center support. Here is Greg’s familiar byrnie, rusted and rotted, clumped with soil. It has a distinctly more rusted and rotted ring where a repair was once done badly. My own grief is renewed for the generations left in another time. I can see this byrnie that was supposed to keep my son safe on earth in wars has been buried in the earth a very long time. There was no rescue.

         I know it is far future because of the aging to the chains mail and now

here are two strangers, living in the likeness of human, as do I. 

My senses aren’t yet dulled enough by life; the human stink of them fills this little space. And the heavy boot of the larger one steps back toward my arm. I draw it away — he doesn’t seem to notice me here.

         He goes on and on shouting empty orders as though he commanded an army. I hear no army clacking and rattling armor or swords outside this hovel. There is only this one whimpering bundle of fear that seems as though it may be human. It is called Oos, or Us. But the larger one is a mad man shouting orders into a void.

         “I’m asking you for the gold!  Surely you found gold!”

         The answer from Oos is mumbled.

The raging wild man—burly, russet, with trousers of leather, no shirt, howls, “the journal said there was gold with the three.”

         Again, Us answers with a human whimper.

         The hollow giant is taking a long look at the byrnie hanging in the middle here, admiring it, as though the filthy rusted metal were a treasure, and yet no one seems to notice me, a human person spread out nearly under his feet. He steps back. I draw my hand away from his foot.

         Now he takes notice of me. “What is this?” He kicks back the pelt that warms me, so I shiver.

         “Is this the third spy mentioned in the journal? Was this naked man in the pit with the deaths?”

         No one answers.

         He goes on. “Yes, I’ve heard of such a thing as this – it’s a bog body.”

(Continues tomorrow)

#62.1, Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024

Historical Setting, cold and dark, unknown

         It’s another time and a dark place. Waking happens every day to each person in a little way, but this awakening is a whole unknown future.

         What future means for those who suffer is a shinning promise hoping for something better. So, you would think that those who dread the future would be those whose lives are complete in the present. But it turns out that people who are satisfied with their lot in life in a present time don’t dread the future at all. The terror comes to those who cling relentlessly to what is past. Apparently, nostalgia makes the future seem grim. Or is nostalgia simply something made of grief and it is the grief that is grim?

         Time traveling as I do, with my strange circumstance of life and life again, I find the mystery of future is so often a bright starry path into a strange unknown world of new longing to savor familiar. Always we move from known into imagination. Those with oldness — or those restored into life, as I am — know this. Age is the folding crease of grief for what was once — the reckless abandonment — into a new adventure called future.

         Now that I am here in the future, I can only wonder what is this place and time.  Last in my memory, I’d been traveling with my son Greg, and his lover, Gaillard, soldiers and spies for the Frankish kingdom. I rode with them on their visit to the Rhine River markets. They’d been releasing birds with messages back to King Dagobert in Paris telling him, “Beware the tribes of the north that are building ships for war and also consider the Angles and the Saxons migrating from east to west.” Greg and Gaillard were preparing to buy swords and armor with the bag of gold the king had given them.        

         Now I am laid out under a pelt of some other creature in a storage hovel made of sticks and skins. I hear people talking outside. Enough is said in the language of Gaul that I am aware this dark place is a grave robber’s cache.

         “What are you doing to me, Oos?  The Wrankle Journal said there was a sack of gold with those spies! It’s mine! You give me a fake excuse and you will be investigated! Do you hear me Kings of earth? Oos is a criminal! Take her down!”

(Continues tomorrow)


 






















#61.15, Thursday, Oct. 31, 2024

Historical Setting, Samhain in an unknown time and darkness

         It is a dark hovel with an earthen floor and no fire though there is the damp smell of decay. Life before must have been long ago. My hair and beard are spread all around me, long and unruly like long dark flickers of corona such as the sun would wear in the total void of fire and light. My covering is a badly scrapped pelt of an unknown beast.        

         Stretching, looking around, I see in the dim light leaking between the covering hides and I know it is nighttime beyond this hovel. 

         I hear night sounds outside, howls of winter wolves, an owl, the critters of wilderness… I’ve probably slept in death for generations. When last I was of earth all of the arts and all of the treasures and all of the voices of people spoke of war. So now I can suppose the wars have come and gone, leaving the earth as nothing at all but a cold, dark wilderness.

         I have human pangs returning, hurts of life, thirst, tiredness, hunger, worry, and always, the Psalmist’s ancient song crying for our distant God. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me.” [Psalm 22]

         Or am I not forsaken? My prayer is silent. You are with me here, God? Even here? Even now? Please stay close. Thank you for this breath of life. Thank you.

         I am too tired to move… and were I to move, where would I go and what would I do?  I seem to be alone, here wherever here is. As my eyes adjust, I see no sleeping place and no cooking place. This hovel seems not to be a home at all, but a storage cellar. In this dark is a heap of celtic metal works with torques such as a soldier would wear on his neck when his chest is bared for battle – and golden bands for gifting.  I can catch shadows rising here in the center, like ghosts.  Something is hanging down from the center beams…

         Human voices outside, call me awake again.

         “They said you found the pit of the three spies spoken of in the Wrankle journal?”

         An inaudible answer.

         Morning light is pouring in the loose places in the hovel covering where pelts are laid one over the other.

         Now I see what is hanging here from the center poles above me. 

(Continues Tuesday, Nov 5.)

#61.14, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024

Historical Setting, 631 C.E. Alehouse near Dorestad
 

         We are at the public board at an alehouse near the marketplace where Greg and Gaillard visited the armor smiths. We are enjoying pots of ale, and now we are served bowls of stew. Gaillard left the table but hasn’t returned and it has been a long while. Greg worries. He goes to find him. Now Greg has not come back here either, and more ale has been served; the stew bowls have been taken away.

         The young man who is the collector of fees, I spoke with earlier, comes to me and tells me I am needed in the stable. I believe this is a robbery and can only hope that Greg and Gaillard are safe. What can I do?  I tell this fellow I have nothing valuable. He doesn’t answer. Now with a dagger at my chin he pushes me behind the stables where I am bound and gagged at dagger point then led on a long walk into darkness climbing the bluff edging the flood plain where a few bare trees are clinging to earth.

         I would expect to see the pagan fires of Samhain on a night such as this. But there are no fires, no ritual, no pagan gods of any kind.  I do feel the closeness though, of the one God who is present, always, with us. Wherever they have taken Greg and Gaillard may the boys feel the warm presence of Spirit this night. My prayer is silent.

         They can see I have nothing to rob. I’m sure they already have Gaillard’s bag of the king’s gold, so this probably isn’t about gold.  Now I see. They have Greg and Gaillard captured and are preparing ropes in the tree limbs. The earth was already wounded with a gapping pit to receive our deaths.  This is not something easily solved by handing over the King’s gold. There is a rope around my neck now. I see on the ground in front of Greg and Gaillard is that last bird they sent, dead, and nearly plucked clean of its feathers. It was intended to warn the Franks of the dangers from the north. Greg calls me his brother and begs for my life. He says I know nothing at all, and his “brother” should be released.

         Two men hold a barrel steady under my feet while a noose is laid around my neck and tied to a tree branch overhead. The barrel rolls from my feet.

(Continues tomorrow)


#61.13, Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024

Historical Setting, 631 C.E. A public stable at a market in Dorestad

         With the spying complete and the birds let go, we take the horses and the mule to a public stable. The stable hand here is a young fellow sitting at the far end of the first row of stalls. He sees us come in, but he doesn’t seem particularly interested in the stable customers, apparently distracted with his inks. My assignment will be easy, since all I have to do is make sure no one is watching when Gaillard retrieves the sack of the king’s gold from the oat bag on the pack mule.

         Tomorrow, Greg wants to ride directly to the swordsmith on the river, and return to Gaul only with swords from Vlfberht. He complains that the repair to his chain mail was done with an inferior iron ring and he wants a more trusted swordsmith to make the new weapons.

         I take the coins for the stable fee to the man with the inks. He drops our coins in the box by rote habit, without looking up or even counting.  I stand by the little writing bench with this young fellow, still so deep in his writing — surely it is a love letter.

         I ask the prying question, “Is she also literate, that she can read your love letters?”

         Blushing now, he looks up from his work, “It is a journal, the Wrankle Journal.” He shows me a fine book’s binding of blank pages. “Posterity is literate.”

         “So how is it that a stable hand is literate?”

         “I’m not a stable hand. I am the keeper of the count and the collector of the fees.”

         He shows me the tally sheet for the stable business, nothing at all like his finely made journal.  A quick glance, I see he has taken our coins for fees for four beasts, and has marked us as two, which is the number of stalls we are using. It seems a subtle robbery his employer endures to have a literate fee collector.

         I ask him if he was schooled by the monks.

         “My father hired tutors to live in our midst.”

         “You must, yourself, be a nobleman?”

         He doesn’t affirm my assumption.  He just looks up from his writing. He looks right at me, staring in silence — a blankness which says to me, “ask no more questions of this thief.” But it leaves me curious.

         With the beasts in for the night, Gaillard hides the king’s gold, now fastened to his belt under his cloak. We go on to the alehouse.

(Continues tomorrow)

#61.12, Thursday, Oct. 24, 2024

Historical Setting, 631 C.E. The armor markets at Dorestad

         We are at a market for armor and helmets. The overt mission of Greg and Gaillard is to purchase swords and helmets. The covert mission is to listen and learn who is outfitting armies in these times.

         Greg and Gaillard don’t work together. Greg goes to a smithy to negotiate a repair to his byrnie reenforcing a weak link in the mail. While Gaillard studies the displays of helmets available.

         I just watch the artist decorating a helmet. He pounds a thin sheet of copper over a form to make borders that look like a line of braid or a nalbinding of wool. It is as though a helmet for war could pretend to be a warm knit cap made by a mother’s own hand. I watch for hours, as a labyrinth of perfect curves becomes a pair of serpents intertwined, each gripping the other in a fanged reptilian clasp. How close must the enemy be to this helmet to see the terror in this image? I imagine any enemy warrior would need very good eyesight to appreciate these skills.

         As I think about it, I am grateful the boys brought me on this journey with them. I’ve seen things I never would have sought and I actually have learned less of the simplicity in the bleeding howls of wars I complain about ceaselessly, and more of the arts.

         Maybe these bits and pieces of trims for warriors are made to endure the rotting of the grave and are really only intended to speak to the people of the future. Maybe they are intended for the heroes’ burials to keep memories of ancient courage for the mortal earth.

         History is made of bits and pieces of wars turned up in a field by some far future ploughman. But may we not forget, that life of future isn’t just made of relics it comes with generations of loves and losses. Yes, I do still grieve for Ana. Yet, here, in Greg, is her living courage and her smile and her eyes. His whole being affirms her tender guidance. It is how a mother manages our brood is how a good captain manages his men. May a copper-trimmed helmet not be needed to mark his place in time.

         Greg and Gaillard release the bird with the feather marked in blue, to warn of wars to come from the north. The message is, “Beware the Anglos and the Saxons, and know also that the Norsemen are studying war now.”

(Continues Tuesday, Oct. 29)