#56.7, Weds., May 15, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. Vosges Mts.

         The birth of the baby is eminent. So now, I’m heading back to the castle fields to get Will. It’s his own thoughtfulness now to bring along the baby blanket and the ceramic feeder. Of course, everything is already prepared by the women at the cottage so nothing is needed. Dear God, but thank you for Will’s new thoughts of caring for a child.

         Will is impatient with the donkey’s pace, and yet it is his own weight that slows the cart.  Now, while we are yet two miles away, he chooses get off the cart and run ahead.

         Brandell meets him in the doorway of the creek cottage and tells him to stay outside. As I arrive with the donkey cart, there is Will, with the little blanket and the ceramic spoon in one hand, panting, breathless, at the doorway with a slow rage burning at his wife’s brother who is blocking him from his most important ever, duty. Maybe Brandell deserved the black eye.

         But now Will is confronted with Gaia. He simply picks her up and sets her aside. Does anyone else understand he isn’t really a monster? He is a father. He is perfectly sober, and there is nothing that can stand between him and caring for his infant just now, except that the baby has yet to be born. 

         Ana invites him to Layla’s side. Even I’m surprised that he seems patient and tender now when it matters most. Thank you, God.

         In this moment of gentleness, he tells Layla that he has planted a field of oats for the baby and already there are little sprouts of green showing on the soil. He shows her the blanket and the little ceramic baby feeder and tells her everything is ready for the baby now. Layla is smiling, Will is wrapping his huge hand around both of her hands, and now she is screaming, and Will is helpless again.

         Hannah tells Will, “Papa will wait with you outside, now.” Hannah is skilled at ordering useless men outside at a time like this. And so, Will and I wait outside.  I call Brandell over, now holding a cold cloth on his eye.

         “Brandell, one day may you also understand the fears and frustrations of this moment.”

         Nearly civil now, Will adds, “Sorry about my quick fist, Little Fellow.”

         “Little fellow?” That’s how mammoth Will perceives us normal statured men? Maybe we still have a way to go in taming this monster.

(Continues tomorrow)

#56.6, Tues., May 14, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. Vosges Mts.

         I’m glad I came. God answered my casual prayer that I may love my enemy, Will, with this obligation to persist in unearthing his kindness.

         Dear God, may Layla and the baby find his huge hands gentle.

         I can, in a strange way of empathy, understand Layla’s dream for this man as a husband and a father for her children. I only hope he, too, can see that man in himself. Could anyone ever trust him with gentleness for the needs of an infant? That is yet to be learned.

         Today I return the empty donkey cart to the farm shed at home, and walk on to that little thatched house of secrets behind the church in the woods. Gaia has no idea there is a house for her. And now Ana and her daughters have brought all the things of home into this place. Brandell comes up every chance he gets, always imagining Gaia’s surprise when she follows the yarn that she herself strung through the wood to border the dancing space. And when her fingers lead her to this place where she will expect her guests to be waiting for her, instead, here will be a house, now with a proper table, and a bed and a bench.

         Here, Layla and I sit down to talk at this table about Layla’s own needs and plans. Hannah insists Layla stay here until the baby is born, which is the same expectation I left with Will. It is the safest way for this baby to be born in a proper house with two midwives right here. But now, I am starting to see the important part for including Will in this, and not simply thinking of him a distant fearsome monster. So, I think we need to take Layla to the creek cottage for this birth. We are not only keeping this house a secret from Gaia for a surprise, but also from Will in case it will be needed again for safety’s sake.

         What I am demanding of Will may be unfathomable, but I know with the help of God, it is possible. Yet Layla has to be prepared for his attempts at gentleness to fail.

         I told Layla not to wait for his angry fists, simply to leave if he gets drunk. She has a way to leave now, and we will come for her.

(Continues tomorrow)

#56.5, Thurs., May 9, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. Vosges Mts.

         When this donkey and I have helped a neighbor here plow a strip for planting, I ask a deep favor of this neighbor.

         “We have Will’s wife hidden away with her family because Will can have a cruel hand.”

         The neighbor has a knowing smirk. I guess Will has a reputation. 

         I ask, “If Will is raging and crazy with ale, could Layla and their baby find safety here, at least until she can make her way to the castle?”

         Of course, the neighbor is hesitant, knowing the danger.

         I explain, “Our family has a dove cote. She will have a bird to send home to us, and we will come immediately. Maybe Will won’t come here looking for her at all. He won’t expect her to have a place to come.

         The woman answers, “We can see her to the castle for safety if need be.”

         The man scolds her for speaking up and agreeing.

         “I will let Layla know she has trusted neighbors here.”

         When I return to Will’s home shelter he has a cooking fire ablaze, and has a spit with some kind of rodent meat cooking.  He is so proud to offer me a “feast in gratitude” for my help. Now, I hope he hears my simple thanks as magnanimously as it is spoken.

         Will and I sow the oat seed today and the edge that is left without enough of the oats, we plant the moldy barely seed, just in case it might yet germinate.

         He is looking through the family treasures in the cart, the cradle and the blanket … and what is this little jar?

         “That is a special thing just for a good father.  We needed that when Ana had the twins, because it allowed me to help with the feeding.  The midwives have these things to help give a baby drops of water or milk if the mother is too busy or tired or just needs help in feeding the baby.  I bunch up the blanket to be baby sized, and hold it in my arm, as though it were an infant, and show him how it would be used. He tries the baby hold with the blanket also.

         “See, Will, this blanket is really nothing like a baby, even though it is small and soft.  A baby will look at you, when you do this. The baby will trust you to be the full gentleness of a strong father. Practice the tender part while you wait for them to return.”

(Continues, Tuesday, May 14, 2024)

#56.4, Weds., May 8, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. Vosges Mts.

         Our donkey is old and not trained to work the fields, but if I walk him, and Will holds the plow steady we can plow this unturned earth much more easily than one man could do it simply by hand.  These new fields are a great consternation to all of these new farmers here at the foot of the Waldalenus Castle.

         Will is slow in starting his work and all around us others either have finished their first plowing and are already planting, or maybe, like Will, they have just given up. In one day, we are able to plow the strip for the field and turn a tiny little patch behind the house for vegetables.  Vegetables will be a luxury here and Layla knows how to do vegetables, so I don’t suppose it will be a waste of the little space they have. Now, Will still has to put the hoe to the ground to break up the newly turned earth to prepare for the seeds. 

         This third day I’m here we have a gentle rain falling so we will put off the hoeing for tomorrow, and maybe the rain will soften the clods to make that task easier or else it will just be mud to make another day to wait before the planting. 

         Will and I trek back to the castle storage barns to see if he can receive more seed now. And I hope they will give him oats. Layla knows all the steps in winnowing and preparing oats. Oats can be a crop abundant enough to pay the fee for the land due at harvest, if it is a good year for crops that is. They do have a few fists full of seed-oats for him. I try to coax him to gratitude, just for the sake of civility. I’m not asking him to show Christian love or empathy to this master of the serfs, just a simple, “thanks for the extra seed,” is good enough.

         He reduces it to, “Thanks.” But from him, that sounds magnanimous.

         The fourth day of my visit here we are both getting tired, hungry and annoyed with one another and I still haven’t emptied the cart of family gifts for him yet. I’m waiting for Will to be in a better mood to receive a gift.

         While he hoes his own field, I take the donkey, Jack, to a needy neighbor, so that someone else can have the advantage of a donkey to help with the first plowing.

(Continues tomorrow)

#56.3, Tues., May 7, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. Vosges Mts.

         Tenderness, father love, turning all will’s frustrated fervor to lullaby is a task no man can teach another. Dear God, give the patience of parent love to this house. Let the baby teach this father gentleness.

         We pull the cart into the lean-too house and together we walk the donkey and the spoiled seed bag to the castle gate where we are directed to the shed where seed is given out.

         Before we go in to make our request I instruct Will in the use of utilitarian civility, “You will need to explain to the man who distributes the seed that you had received barely seed, but now you have to prepare for a baby so oats will be more useful.”

         “You tell him that!”

         “I’m not the one who needs the good seed. You are.”

         We go in and Will opens the moldy bag, showing the spoiled barely seed. “I need oats now.”

         The man tells him, “You already have barely, and you let the seed rot in the bag.”

         “I need oats now.”

         “Okay, okay, don’t get riled.  I’ll check on that. Come back tomorrow and ask again.”

         As we walk away, he blames me for a bad plan and reminds me he doesn’t even like oats. He only likes the fermented barely beverage.

         “Whatever seed you get, it will have to be planted, so before we come back tomorrow let’s prepare your field for planting.”

         If we get barely, it will already be barely seed and it won’t need planting.

         “May you one day find the humor in this, Will, but making barely seed into your beverage of choice requires something more than leaving it in the bottom of the bag and letting it spoil. Even if you wish to eat a wild pig, you still have to hunt it down, butcher it and roast it.”

         “How would you know?”

         “The point is, even if the seed is given to you, it still has to be planted and nurtured, to have the abundance, then it is harvested and winnowed before it can be used with other things of earth to make that beverage you so love. Every blessing, every goodness that is gifted to you takes your participation in some way. And having children, sons and daughters alike, requires a father. You are a necessary part in all the goodness you receive.” It was by grace that my sermonizing didn’t earn another punch in the face.

         And today we plow his field.

(Continues tomorrow)


#56.2, Thurs., May 2, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. Vosges Mts.

         I plan to take my son-in-law up to the castle to beg a better bag of seed. He’s not gracious so already my lip is bloodied. The water pitcher is empty and he has no rag for washing up my wound. In another version of justice, I would just let my own fist follow my rage and bloody his nose, and then… That is exactly what I didn’t come here for.

         “Will, I have the donkey cart all filled up with family things that belong in your home these days as we all prepare for your new baby.”

         “My what?”

         “Surely you haven’t forgotten that Layla is with child.”

         I wipe my lip on my sleeve and draw back the cloth that covers the cart. Haberd’s oldest daughter crocheted some yarn into a ball for a baby toy. It looks like the work of a child just learning the ways of wool. That’s the first thing he notices and he takes it out and throws it on the ground, smashing it into the dust with his foot.

         “You’ve brought me old trash?” he complains,

         “Some is old.” I pick up the toy, “This was new. It was knitted to be a toy for your baby, a gift from a child to a child. Ana always wants baby things kept clean. But don’t worry, it will wash up clean and fresh before the baby is old enough to hold it in her hand.”

         “Her? My baby is a son!”

         “We don’t know yet.  But whichever, the baby is sure to love a toy that can be tossed and picked up again, by you, when you are playing tender baby games with the tiny little fellow.”

         “I don’t do that.”

         “Oh, maybe you will. The baby will watch everything you do, for a chance to smile and grin to see his papa hiding his face, then peeking out smiling.  That always seems to get any baby grinning.”

         “That’s the woman’s work.”

         “Layla will be tired. She has so much to do. The baby will be crying, and even when it is a tiny baby, her arms will be tired and she will need you to hold the baby, to walk around tenderly with the baby and be the safe strong arms for both Layla and the baby. They will depend on you to give them the kind of strong and gentle love you might never have known yourself. But you will see. Maybe the baby will teach you tenderness, or…”

(Continues, Tuesday, May 7, 2024)

#56.1, Weds., May 1, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. Vosges Mts.

         The castle was built where once there was a hunters’ woods and now around its outer walls are little plots of tillable land.  Each tiny field has a little hut on the edge which is the place where the poorest of poor farmers are kept safe from dangers real and imagined. But this arrangement is not as it would seem — a charity for the poor. Rather, the serfs are responsible to provide for the wealthy nobility an abundance of foods that allows the aristocracy to have a grand buffet for every dinner, feasting appropriate for showing off a high station of wealth.

         And now, I’ve discovered my son-in-law, serf, Will, with a clear love of fermented barely, has been granted some barely seed for starting his field. Will, a hunter by birth, knows just how to place an arrow to promise his family can always dine on the best cuts of boar, now finds the changing world has restricted the hunt and left him only a patch of raw earth and a few seeds of barely in a mildewed bag. Now, he has a wife and soon a child to feed, and here I am, his father-in-law come to assess his flaws.

         In his mind, and maybe mine also, I’ve come to be assured that caring for my daughter and the grandchild, yet to be born, requires protecting Layla from him – keeping her safe. Maybe I came here thinking it is my duty to pronounce him unfit and dangerous, a failure of a farmer! Maybe his poverty makes him impotent for the hunt and unworthy for anything else. Let us never forget he was the one who complained when, at our house, we feasted on lamb at Easter and not on pig.

         Now, as I think about what I’m saying, I have a little glimpse of understanding, maybe a prodding at my conscience in answer to my prayer. I can’t blame away the needs of my son-in-law by simply hiding my daughter from him.

         “You have to get up off the straw and come with me now, Will!”

         He wakes knuckles first, “What’re you doing here!  Where’s Layla? You’ve got my wife! You $#%@.!!”

         One blow knocks me down. “No need for another.” I said, “Come with me now Will, we have to get some better seed for your field.”

         If I go home without bruises Layla won’t think I’ve done my work here.

(Continues tomorrow)


#55.13, Tues., April 30, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. Vosges

         We ‘ve tucked Layla away in a safe place hidden from Will, safe with her mother and her sister. Now I’ve come to this little land patch where people try to nurture family despite the poverty. It would all be so simple if Layla could just leave Will and let us take care of her and the baby. Will is the epitome of my enemy. So, in my rote and righteous prayer I asked that God would let me love my enemy. I wanted God to fix him more loveable, not change me.  But here I am called to the love-duty myself. Without Layla, I’ve come here with the donkey cart filled with the things from our own family. Why not just fit Layla out with all this, and let Will look on from the outside and see how a real family cares for its own? Layla has already given this numb idiot all the love he deserves and more. Of course, I know it isn’t God’s justice to limit love to only what someone deserves. But since God loves him, and Layla loves him, and he doesn’t even appreciate that, why am I called to care?

         So here he snores in his drunkenness.

         I investigate the state of his field. Nothing has been done here. He has a sack with some barely seed in the bottom of it that is molding and spoiled.  The other serfs on this castle land have already plowed and planted. If he were my son I would …

         Well, in a way, he is my son. His children will be my grandchildren.

         The field next to his is already established, and that fellow sees me here and must assume this mess is mine.

         “Hello Neighbor!”

         My pride scurries me over to explain, I’m not this farmer here and I am a successful farmer from the far hills.

         I excuse myself, “Good morning neighbor! It is my daughter and her husband who live here. I worried they needed some help.”

         “He hasn’t done a lick of work there. He just rants like a mad man.”

         I answer, “I just figured he needs a leg up. But I noticed the only seed he has is spoiled barley seed. How do all of you get your seed for this?”

         “We all had a chance at the seed the landlord gave out. First come, first serve. He was last.”

         “So, the landlord gives the seed? That’s why he has only barely and no oats?”       

(Continues Wednesday, May 1 2024)

#55.12, Thurs., April 25, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. Vosges Mts.

         Like some kind of other-worldly hero or saint, or maybe simple rote righteousness, I let the prayer in my heart be that I could love the ‘enemy’ – the idiot who beats my daughter and who most certainly threatens the life of my unborn grandchild. How can God and Layla love this fumbling oaf? I was hoping my prayer could rid me of responsibility for him and dump my judgment of him back onto God. In setting a protective wall around Layla, hiding her away in the safe arms of her mother and her sister, haven’t we done all we can do? I pray some kind of fantasy that God could teach that numbskull husband of hers an iota of kindness.

         But as prayer – even a prayer pretending righteousness – God answers with a demand for me to act. I know God calls me to a hard task. Now, I am called to go to the worst place I can imagine just because I let my prayer be something I didn’t believe I would have to do – I said “help me God, to love my enemy.” It’s an inspiration, a calling, but I have to act.

         Now here I am driving the donkey cart to a serfs’ plot in the fields surrounding the castle. And in the donkey cart are all the family things we didn’t take to Brandell’s and Gaia’s new house just yet. With me I have the cradle I made so many years ago, and the soft blanket knitted with the wools from our first sheep. I have here that little glass spoon we used with the twins, to feed them milk when so many of us were helping Ana with the two at a time babies. It will seem so tiny in the oafish hands of this fellow.  And Haberd’s wife also sent along a wash bucket and clothesline, and all the little cloths for a baby. These are the things that are supposed to be passed from woman to woman, mother to daughter, sister to sister, friend to friend.  And here I am taking them to this heartless oaf in all his hopeless poverty and wrath.

         Here, his appears to be one of the only fields not yet planted.  Dear God, what are you asking of me? He is nothing but a problem. Their house is only a lean-to, like a pasture shed. And here he is on the straw mat, passed out drunk, snoring loudly.

(Continues Tuesday, April 30)

#55.11, Weds., April 24, 2024

Historical Setting, 629 C.E. Vosges Mts.

         Layla thinks she can solve this by postponing the hurt we all know is coming when she returns to Will and accepts his lying apologies. And that’s not a fix for this. When we can see Layla’s bruises and her crushed spirit this is not just Layla’s problem alone. It is shared by everyone who loves her and everyone who might ever love this baby, and even, everyone who loves Will — would there ever be any one of those on earth beyond Layla? And God. So maybe Will has no imagination for love at all. How can someone love a person who doesn’t even know love?

         Dear God, how can I love this enemy? This isn’t some abstract unknown kind of enemy; this is a cruel oaf in our midst.

         So, while we await the slow and timeless work of God to teach love to Will, we have to find a way to keep Layla safe, without endangering everyone here. Gaia has no idea what “place” we are talking about. She assumes it is something we all know of because it was always here and she just hasn’t been led to it yet.  So now we take Layla to the “place,” where Ana and I and Hannah will stay with Layla – and while we are there, we will fit out that little round house of thatch with all the things any house would need – a bed, a loft, a table – quilts and pots – fire and wood —

         Gaia and Brandell will stay at our creek house.  Now we have a plan.

         Now this is what happens next. As we are preparing a house for a newlywedded couple, Layla mentions Brandell and Gaia will maybe one day need a cradle for babies too. Of course, when the need for that becomes a promise, I can carve them a cradle. Haberd’s babies just used the cradle I made  for him, the same that served Brandell and Layla as well.

         Oh, I have a thought. Dear God, thank you for this thought. May I see it through in a very good way. Amen.

         Here are these women preparing all the things for a new household for Brandell and Gaia, but what are we doing to make a comfortable life for Layla and Will, and for this baby?  All we are thinking of is keeping Layla and the baby to be born, safe. What of this whole family, all three of them?

(Continues tomorrow)