Lazarus Ink

#66.8, Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Skåne

The seiðr, whose name I don’t even know, brought me to a ruin of a house with no door. We sailed here on the west wind so I could know the answers to my questions about this land.

As always, I’m wandering, just looking for the thread of love that brought everything into being. And here it seems lost from human grasp – it is a ruffian world with few women. I’ve learned that here books are only runestones, and the deep grief that rules these lands isn’t about the hours of darkness at the winter solstice. The hidden grief is for daughters turned out as infants – after a mother held them and sang to them, nurtured them and knew their human spirit — daughters were put out into the wind and cold with something to appease their hunger – a thing, a piece of cloth to stifle cries, and here, a precious pendant was used to take the place of her mother’s breast. This practice makes a linage of Norsewomen a rarity. Mostly, captives, women are thralls, slaves, concubines. Or the few women are perceived like the seiðr, oddly powerful and nearly magical.

As I watch her pondering this ruin of a house, I wonder if the seiðr brought me here, not for my questions, but to search her own life. She goaded me into speaking something of a Christian judgement against Paganism. And now, in the calm of the turning winds I asked God to give me better words to answer her argument. God sends no words. But I do have a glimpse of understanding.

My first perception of her was a docile woman with a wine skin and a walking stick, with tales to tell. Now, I see a woman, once a maiden, still grasping onto little hates and hurts that shadowed her own loss of a mother despite her own survival. I don’t even know her name.

Dear God, is my need for the words you haven’t given me, purposed to remind me that the need is not for words, but for human compassion? Are you asking me to listen to her with caring?

I go back to the seiðr still standing in the wind in the doorway that is not filled with a door. “I’ve spoken with the invisible God who is God, and I am reminded not to be so critical of the ways of others.”

(Continues tomorrow)

#66.7, Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Skåne

“So when you were an infant you were put out to die of exposure here in a ruin of a house? And that practice is why women are rare here?”

The seiðr fondles the jade pendant still at her neck. “You speak as though being rare were a problem.”

“Isn’t something askew when a whole people simply puts its girl children outside in the wind to die?”

“So, the Christian God sent you back from your own death just so you could come here and judge our Pagan rituals and wonders?”

“No! I’m not on a mission from God to judge you. I am simply a normal empathetic human being. All my years have allowed me the opportunity to hold and nurture infant daughters and infant sons. I’ve seen my children grow up as individuals – as unique and valued human beings – not valued for their rarity of gender, but for who they are.”

“I hear you judging us. It seems to be the Christian nature to come creeping into another’s land uninvited and decide if we are righteous in the eyes of some invisible unnamed loser god who hangs suffering on a cross while other gods are honored on runestones and monuments as winners.”

What can I say? Is this the time that calls for this Christian pilgrim on a mission to gather up multitudes of Pagans, pleasing God with the head count, then, like holy magic, the Paganism is vanquished and the saint scores a win for the Christians? After all, proselytizing seems to be what Christians do best.

My silence is gaping. I walk out onto the rocks in the tide to give this my best thought and I come to the edge of the sea offering God a silence in which to answer.

Dear God, what can I say? I’m waiting for your answer, God. Is she asking me to explain the value of human life? Should I mention the love command, the love source, the fearless love? Give me the good words for this sermon I need to give now.

I have nothing to say. I look back toward the doorway that isn’t a door and I see the seiðr alone there, so rare. The wind fondles her skirts, pressing her robes against her abundant woman’s form – breasts that have never nurtured an infant, a belly that has never shared the thump of life and there I see my answer to her should not come as judgement, or a win, rather it is more of a shared grief.

(Continues tomorrow)

#66.6, Thursday, March 13, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Skåne

“So, how do Christians determine winners in games and wars when the object isn’t simply to be the last man standing?”

I think the seiðr is asking a serious question of Christians. In her world, simply the fallacy of scarcity can completely upend the nature of family and turn men into marauders, ravaging villages for no good cause but blatant greed. They’ve let greed-think rule their world. In these Norsemen ways winning is everything.

In Jesus’ way, love is everything. But as long as only war heroes are welcomed to Valhalla and as long as the practices of life for people are only about attaining wealth and singular achievement, as long as art and music only honor the artist and not the choirs singing and the awe of children, these pagan ways will never understand what Jesus was teaching. So, what will Christians do when they come to this land to make it over for their own religion? I’m only left with more questions.

The seiðr asks me if I can better understand this tragedy of the Norsemen now. Shear greed and sanctity of selfishness may explain why marauders murder the men, but it doesn’t answer why the women left living here were mostly those captured to be enslaved. And here children are rare. I seem to have missed the meaning of the house without a door.

“So, what is the meaning of this ruin of a house?” I ask.

“It could have been my house. My real mother believed it was a place for putting out a girl child. And, when I was an infant to be set out for “exposure” instead of stuffing a cloth in my mouth, as was usually done, the pretend breast in my mouth to stifle cries was my mother’s own jade pendant. When the north winds came into the door place it was supposed to take my life-breath. It was how it was done. ^[Footnote]

“Likely, my father was a Norsemen raider and my mother was thrall stolen from a wealthy home in the eastern lands.

“But when I was put out, the cold winds didn’t come – they didn’t blow from the west or the north so the oarsmen came here, stopping, waiting for the change in the winds and here they found me with the precious carved stone in my mouth and believed that meant I was destined to be a magical seiðr. So, I was saved by them.

^[Footnote]^{https://www.medievalists.net/2011/08/selective-female-infanticide-as-partial-explanation-for-the-dearth-of-women-in-Norsemen-age-scandinavia/}^{retrieved 7-5-2024,}

^{Violence and Society in the Early Medieval West}^{, edited by Guy Halsall (Boydell, 1998)}

(Continues Tuesday, March 18)

#66.5, Wednesday, March 12, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Skåne

I was asking a history question. “What was the tragedy that made these Norsemen brutal?” The answer the seiðr offers is to take me to a rocky shore with a ruin of a house and tell me I don’t know human nature.

“In the far north, where the winters are dark and the summers are still frozen-over, the only people are the ones who have always been.

“But in this place, further to the south in this land, people came dreaming of rich farms and overflowing gardens. The ones who were always seeking bigger farms were the first to be unsatisfied with parceled lands in Gaul. So, they came here and found all these rocks and bad soil and they tried to make farms of it because here the fields could be as large as they could imagine. But eventually, their wide imaginations slimmed to fit reality. Each farm grazed a few cows. The pasture lands were frozen away in the winters. So, dreams of endless fields and flocks were never really fulfilled. One small farm could sustain the few cows for milking, but with the multiplications of generations came a fear of too many people. How would they divide the land small enough to make every grandchild a farmer? So, what do you suppose happened?”

“The second and third generations of the farmers found other means?”

“No, of course not. That’s not what people do. Because everyone does what they know – farmers spawn farmers – well actually, that spawning of farmers is blamed on the wives of farmers. You know how the song goes, ‘The farmer takes a wife, the wife takes a child, the wife takes a child,’ the wife takes more children,’ on and on until ‘the cheese stands alone.’” ^[Footnote]

“That’s a silly children’s game. It isn’t how people actually live their lives, dwindling away to nothing but the cheese.”

“Even if it isn’t true, if people believe it is a fallacy, it is acted on as true. And the mindset of these patriarchs was this fallacy that too many people could cause a famine in a frail world — the fear of scarcity.”

“No wonder, after all my deaths and earthly years too, I had no imagination for such a disaster. It is completely the opposite of the Christian generosity and love for neighbor and the Jesus teaching of abundance when food is shared. Jesus showed it as a sign in the feeding of the multitudes [John 6:1-14]

^[Footnote]^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Farmer_in_the_Dell}^{traditional courting game with many European versions, first find of it written was German in the 19th century. Guessing it has ancient roots.}

(Continues tomorrow)

#66.4, Tuesday, March 11, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Skåne

Sleep last night wasn’t a peaceful conclusion for day. It was only gifted me by fatigue. The fire and ruin of walls may have provided a bit of warmth and shelter from the wind, but snow fell lightly inside these walls, as though we had no shelter at all. I expect we will move toward more civilization today, but for now, I tend the fire.

The seiðr is spending these morning hours in deep contemplation. She seems not the least bit concerned about food or roof or any of the earth things we should probably think about.

I’ve been collecting snow and melting it in an iron pot left with this hearthstone where I keep the fire going.

“You should have some water here before we move on.”

Saying nothing, she pours the water from the pot into her empty wineskin, and sloshes it around before drinking it. Apparently, she prefers the flavor of old wineskin to the flavor of the old cooking pot. I drink the water, rusty, as it is.

Finally, I ask her, “Should we prepare to continue our journey, soon?”

“Our journey to where?”

“I don’t know this land. Where are we going?”

“You know all this perfectly well. Does it not answer the question you had that brought us here?”

All along this way I’ve been asking about the people here. What was the tragedy that befell this land and made it a whole world of men and only a few women so that raiding communities on other lands, slaughtering its men and capturing the women becomes the way of life. When I asked for answers possibly buried in the writings of their history, Marian, the slave child led me to this seiðr. And the seiðr showed me no stories of tragedy, only the etched stones telling of gods and heroes. So, what is the root of all this cruelty and suffering? Why is brutality a way of life here? Grief hangs heavy on this land, yet it seems no one knows of the reason for sorrow. Their gods are loveless. The wives are slaves. Children are a rarity. And seeing one ruin of a cottage by the sea doesn’t explain all this pain to me.

The seiðr asks how I see this.

“What I see are walls left of something that may have been a cottage – a home – maybe for a family once. Was this your home?”

“How is it you can live all those years and still be so ignorant of human nature?”

(Continues tomorrow)

#66.3, Thursday, March 6, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Skåne

The stiff West wind would bring the fragrances of spring thaw to my lost homeland in Gaul, but here it only ushers in more winter days as it fills the sails and scurries our ship across the sea. Sun is low behind us over the waters; and ahead of us, foreboding rocks and cliffs are washed by the sea. But the ship makes its way into an inlet, into a tranquil bay laid among rocky islands and across a sea. Frosty rocks and winter weeds of seashore surround an outcropping of land. Far ahead of us is a bay where other ships are moored. The oarsmen are rowing this part. The dinghy, or a “fearing,” takes us two passengers onto the empty part of the shore stretched out ahead of the harbor.

The seiðr is silent, studying the shoreline ever more intensely, with her eyes glinting with the steel-color of the eastern sky and her teeth clenched sculpting a jawline of stone. I understand this place where she‘s brought me is her own homeland. But there seems to be no homecoming here — no joyful reunion.

She finds us a night shelter not far back from the shore. It is a ruin of a cottage, white washed walls of mudbrick, standing naked in a thorny thicket. The thatch of roof, and shutters are long-gone. There is nothing here that is really a house but the four corners and the crumbling walls. She considers a gapping open space on the sea side to be a door, though there is no sign of anything that could ever be hinged for closure – no wood – no sill – to bar – no knocker – yet she says we must leave our shoes outside the “door.” So, we do. If the cottage had a roof we would see the blackened smoke hole center at the peak, because there is a hearthstone here, and it is indeed blackened from once having a fire.

Maybe it is good we took off our shoes. Clearly this is a home.

Her jaw is quivering now and she turns to hide her human tears. I offer to gather some kindling and some wood and make us a fire.

In the bleakness of the winter rocks, I find an abundance of kindling and wood, as though the earth had been preparing for life to return, waiting centuries, maybe, for me to come, gathering up the dry tender again.

(Continues Tuesday, March 11)

#66.2, Wednesday, March 5, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Jutland

Maybe it was after a snooze, or another day and night altogether when I awoke to hear the seiðr bargaining with the sailors to give us passage for the journey to sail across the sea. And so, we are sailing now. We two passengers are just riding along when the sail is all that is needed and even the oarsmen seem to have little to do. Only the tiller needs a man, and that is because we are human, and we think we know better than the wind how to choose a direction for our wanderings.

The seiðr speaks softly, under the sounds of sea and wind creaking the mast and rope lines of this little boat. She tells me something of this journey.

“I’ve not been back to my homeland since I was carried off so many years ago.”

“You were carried from your home as a young woman — all alone?”

“I was an infant. But of course, even Jesus was rejected in his own land.”

“You know that of the Christian story?” [Mark 6:1-13]

“I know that is true for seers, prophets, truthtellers, maybe even time-traveling rune signs. People fear knowledge from a distant source that just comes to one who is common among them. Older generations only want the children to know what they, themselves, have to teach. If there is a mystery to be found from another source it is perceived as fearsome.”

I understand what she’s saying. My thoughts are unspoken. The invisible God with no name has so many ways to speak through Creation to all humankinds and maybe even to critters too and once in a while someone listens. Then the voice of God becomes known. It is human nature to grab the tiller of that wind driven craft and create a religion, or a cult of ritual, or a system of obedience, to allow some to be included and some to be excluded. It becomes smaller than the mystery, smaller than the universe, smaller than the flames of the gathering fire, until it is small enough to be all in human control.

What can I say to her?

“How is it that you know the Christian stories?”

“I don’t know all the Christian stories. And if I ever came upon a great binding of bible, which I’ve heard tell of, I wouldn’t even know how to read it.”

“How is it you know the Christian stories?”

“They are all around us always being told.”

(Continues tomorrow)

#66.1, Tuesday, March 4, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Jutland

“Don’t you have to be back soon? It seems we’ve already come a long way and you must have obligations.”

She takes a long swallow from the skin of wine strung across her shoulder, and answers, “no.”

This village seiðr has brought me to a land that would end here at the sea, but she tells me she can’t answer my questions about the love loss here until I understand the sorrow that has come to all these places; and for that, we need to travel on.

“The sailors will come soon and take us across to the other lands.”

I don’t see sailors or these “other lands.” Looking across the water it seems open sea all the way to the horizon. I wonder if her trust in sailors showing up is a seer’s mystical vision or if she knows something earthly.

She answers my unspoken question.

“It is the west wind that carries these ships back to their home ports. It takes oarsmen to bring them over to this shore, against this wind. So, if the ships from the lands to the east are here, it’s only because there are oarsmen who brought them over rowing against the prevailing winds and very soon, they will sail back on a more reliable wind.”

Of course. Ships sailing on westerlies is nothing mystical. And engravings on rocks are barely mythical. I think it is this magical presence of her that gives mystery to the hero stories, as well prophecies of ships which empowers everything she says with omniscience. She even has power over time, so that the now, where we are, is always wrapped in a rune that she can call forth into a story of once upon a time. That same timeless now is this waiting time for the inevitable to unfold and make her prediction of a ship true. Her magical powers then, are wrought in the waiting, the silence, the spreading of time beyond its boundaries. The magic here is simply created out of patience.

So it isn’t really magic. It is dependable and normal, like catching a west wind. In Christian, the waiting in silence is the stillness where prayers are unstrung and heard. The timelessness is God’s own answering space.

Dear God, thank you for offering the brilliance of cold sunshine on the seas and shores of this land. But why are the people of this wondrous place so deeply grieving and raging? Please guide me to see through the hurt to the love. Amen.

(Continues tomorrow)

#65.12, Thursday, February 27, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Jutland

I still have questions. Why are these people, already empowered by the magnificent nature of being human — already rich with power — setting their hearts on taking the riches of others? There must have been a disaster that skewed the human values. Love, in all its varieties seems taboo. Here is a world of men and where women are few. The few women who aren’t slaves are powerful oddities. Maybe this void of women is filled by capturing thrall. It seems a people always striving become lost from the simple peace of goodness.

I ask, “Why are women so few here and mostly they are women captured in raids?”

“If I attempt to answer you in your own language, I know what you will ask me next. And before I tell you about myself you have an obligation to explain who you are. How is it that you are a young man with an ancient memory?”

Over and over again, I’ve clearly failed to explain my oddity of life and life again to a pagan seer who really has no interest in a gospel story and surely not a Christian sermon on resurrection. So, what can I say?

“Once I was a Jewish kid living with my family near Jerusalem. I was best friends with an artisan, a builder, a smiðr. He was a teacher with a radically simple message about an intangible spiritual life — living in a world apparently made only of earthly works – tables, benches, walls, ships. So, in his teaching he used metaphors of tangible things to help people understand the invisible goodness. He built the fishing boats and set them on the seas to gather food for the hungry and bring comfort for the sorrowing – it was the opposite of Viking raids.

“He used things of earth as signs – using the visible to explain the invisible. He was looking for a physical sign to explain the notion that even death has no power to destroy this invisible nature of love. And it happened that he came back to my family when they were mourning my death. And then he called me back into life and I became a physical metaphor for a spiritual truth. I was bestowed with the same healing every living being has, but in the extreme – healing — even from death. So, here I am a forever sign of life.”

“So, you are telling me Jesus carved a rune and you are that rune?”

“Indeed. And now you will tell me who you are.”

(Continues Tuesday, March 4)

#65.11, Wednesday, February 26, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Jutland

The seiðr has chosen to teach me things of this new world where I find myself now. We’ve walked miles along a shore, and now we are in a larger village where rune stones are placed as monuments to heroes. But learning the names of Norsemen who died as heroes for a king, doesn’t make me yearn for this life. It doesn’t even appease my curiosity. Apparently, writing is not really a thing here. Carving art and story into stone or metal or wood for keeps becomes the sacred scrolls of these people.

She asks me, guessing at my long life, “So why do you keep asking about writing? Touchstones with names give credence to our stories. So why do Christians need the full gospels all laid out in letters?”

“You make it sound as though written stories are simply a failure of memory. But in Christianity, gospels and writings about saints (hagiography) tell the stories over and over again with one foot on earth and the other in heaven. The written word seems empowered to speak beyond the tangible earth. Even with a good memory, I can only tell the stories of Christians from a mortal, earthly point of view.”

“Thank you, I’m glad to know you don’t mean to speak for Christian heaven.”

“Well actually the unseen things of Spirit are the very things that all of us who are skin and bones, and all of the touches and senses of the physical creation, speak for. The Creator makes all of earth its rune stone.”

“If that were so, then Creation would speak of courage and honor and power. And that is not so. The powers of nature may seem great, but they fail us, so people have to fight through adversity.”

“Well, maybe in nature, the virtues of heroism aren’t limited to people. Where is there any fledgling bird on the edge of a nest that isn’t also showing courage and honor? Is not flying, its power? And what of the wolf cubs exploring the hunt. And surely, a sapling oak just up from the acorn, breaking through the earth is heroic.”

“That’s nothing like human heroism, risking one’s life for honor’s sake. – winning a battle.”

Dear God, I fear maybe honor and courage have become euphemisms for brutal force — gaining the win at any cost. Now I’ve awakened in this strange world made of the same familiar stuff of old kings, driving these people to become senseless, brutal monsters of themselves. What could have led them to this?

(Continues tomorrow)