Lazarus Ink

#41.3, Tues., Feb. 7, 2023

Historical setting: 590 C.E. Cottage between Annegray and Luxeuil

A message arrived on a bird’s leg simply mentioning “the nuns of Laon.”

“Laon has no nuns, or convent or monastery. We were there this summer on our journey looking for nuns.” I can attest.

But Ana knows what this means and she’s delighted.

“Laz, do you remember when we stopped there when I was looking for medical knowledge and the young women we met were longing for any learning; they were even listening to me?”

“Yes, I remember that stop Ana, you were the teacher for them. I remember how we met at a house and you answered their questions long into the night.”

“They wanted a Christian community for women and we both talked with them about what we knew of monastic rule and vows. They were already followers of Father Columbanus, which is probably why he sent us to Laon with a message in the first place.”

Ana goes on explaining to Colleen, “And we hadn’t imagined then anything about Luxeuil. We surely had no thought that there would ever be a double monastery in the Irish Rule with Father Columbanus as founder and abbot.”

Colleen wasn’t with us then. But now she realizes the news of these women is also about her own dreams and hopes.

“Does this mean that women are already arriving to enter the community at Luxeuil?” she asks.

“I think that is what these few little words on a bird’s leg could mean.” I can only guess, “So Colleen, we should prepare for these guests to stay in the main room with you. Luxeuil isn’t ready for them yet, and it’s too cold for them in the stable these nights. I’ll send a message back to Brother Servant to let him know they are welcome here.”

Colleen asks if she may say the blessing for our morning gruel.

“Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name. Thank you for answering the desperate prayer of this simple midwife who I am, Colleen of the Irish! And even though Brother Laz tells me over and over again, God’s time is different than our time, you are sending me the helpers I’ve been praying for at exactly the right time! Thank you God, for helping me be prepared to deliver the twins for Ana. You must have noticed that I was feeling so helpless. Thank you. Amen, oh, and also bless this food, amen.”

(Continues tomorrow)

#41.2, Thurs., Feb. 2, 2023

Historical setting: 590 C.E. Cottage between Annegray and Luxeuil

When I mentioned our child yet unnamed Ana smiled with her beautiful whole face beaming far beyond that recent dinge of worry. Together we touched her round belly. We’ve been in the shadow of this thing Colleen calls “circumstance” for what seems a very long time. Alone with Ana, I ask if she’s afraid.

“Not really afraid, Laz, since I’ve never birthed a child I have no idea what to expect so I don’t really have fear, so much as anticipation and maybe a hope. I do worry for the child and if our child is two babies, I will worry twice as much forever and now. How can I be a mom for two at once?”

“Imagine, Ana, what it will be for us with new empathy, to see everything in our world through the brand new innocent eyes of an infant. How will our faces look starting from our chins then our noses as a baby sees us?”

Ana giggles. “Before we even have our new names, ’Momma and Papa’ you will be the soft beard, and I will be a breast. We already are the first people ever to be seen by her or him or them. What is there to worry? Whatever we say it is, so it is.”

“I was giving the little person a bit more leeway to think for herself. I’ve known babies before and, I have to say, try as we may to create their world for them, they always have their own minds. I don’t mean to worry you, Ana. It’s just an interesting thing to consider.”

I share my prayer aloud. “Dear God let us lay our fears out as opened strands that you may lay threads of love among them, so we place one piece of worry over a cord of holy love then allow a winding strand of simple trust, and in that way let us become the full braid of everything this child may need. Amen.”

We talk late into the night before we are both sleeping as though there were never any worries at all.

This new morning I wake to hear Colleen about the morning chores. She must know we needed this time together; she doesn’t just come in, she taps on the door. I answer.

She has a little thread of parchment from the leg of a bird.

It says, “Nuns of Laon here.” She asks what this means.

(Continues Tuesday, February 7)

#41.1, Weds., Feb. 1, 2023

Historical setting: 590 C.E. Cottage between Annegray and Luxeuil

Remembering something from a very ancient time, I tell Ana, “It was after the execution of Jesus most followers believed we had come to the farthest edge of time – the end times. We waited for a sign expecting a physical Jesus to return and God to rule as a human sort of king. There were stories and hints at this. As the years passed, it didn’t happen, at least in a physical sense, as we first expected.

“Instead there was an escalation of violence between the Romans and the Jews. Human brutality fulfilled rumors of prophecies and all varieties of the persecuted fled Roman rule. Some fled into wilderness places or east into gentile cities.

“We, who first followed John the Baptist then Jesus, including my sister and I, gathered together in our grief. We fled to Ephesus. Other groups were there also, I know, but each group of Christians stayed with our own people, like a “club.” ^[Footnote]

“In Ephesus, in the Greek way, all around us were images of the goddess of Ephesus – she was that many breasted version of Artemis. But the difference between the Greek and Roman statuary of Diana spoke of the Roman way with only a single righteousness, not a synchronicity. So today, when I was thinking of many breasts and I remembered when Christians came with many kinds of spiritual thirst, that statue of someone else’s goddess spoke of God’s love for all Creation even including humankind.”

Ana considers, “It seems it would be confusing to see a goddess with thirty breasts.”

“When God is invisible and all encompassing is it any wonder these little works by human hands, all answering the breath of awe, can appear confusing? But here was a way to imagine the vast wideness of God’s love.

“While we were close family in one group in Ephesus, other groups were less Jewish than we, some even Romanish. I feared that the Roman executioners were calling themselves Christian and tromping glosses of exclusions across our simple Jesus memories. What I heard from Jesus of a narrow gate, the Roman gloss spoke of an exclusive way.[Luke 13:24] What I saw of a Roman execution, the Roman gloss revised it to say the executioners were the Jews themselves. But if I pictured God with thirty breasts our little club of Jewish, John followers, were twin siblings of those Roman Christians, all of us nourished together by one God’s love. Knowing Romans as our twins it becomes harder to love these enemies, and yet, more possible.”

^{[Footnote] Westar Christianity Seminar – Erin K. Vearncombe, Bernard Brandon Scott, Hal Taussig – After Jesus Before Christianity: A historical Exploration of the First Two Centuries of Jesus Movements Harper One, 2021. Chapter 11}.

(Continues tomorrow)

#40.13, Tues., Jan. 31, 2023

Historical setting: 590 C.E. Cottage between Annegray and Luxeuil

Maybe it is true that I was enjoying a respite from confinement and limitation. Ana has no such freedom. I just wandered off. I was immersed in a religious milieu, a clutter of all sorts of obediences and solitary ways melding over one another’s rules, bending straight edges to God into life forms of flow and curves as God herself would create.

Ana and I are still pondering “better excuses” for my tardiness.

“Actually Ana, I was looking at a statue of a goddess with thirty breasts.”

“Yes! I just knew that’s what you were doing!”

The tension melted into the full release of giggles and hugs.

“So you were already assuming I was pondering a goddess?”

“Yes, exactly.”

“One made up of woodsy stuff with acorns for breasts?”

“Is that what captivated you so completely you lost track of time?”

I look into the blue waters of Ana’s gaze, her flushed checks, and the softness of a woman with her breasts longing to nurture.

“Ana, this is what I saw today. Colleen is best in the other room when I tell this because it was from other lifetimes I’ve known. She would only be confused or frightened by it. But the little church is one of ‘syncretism.’ ^[Footnote]”

“What?”

“It’s the taboo that sent Moses into a rage at seeing the Hebrew people melting down their earthly gold into a statue of Baal. It was the first commandment broken. It would seem to be breaking of the rule to love the one God, the God of Abraham, above all others. But now it is known that there is only one God. And syncretism is simply a mixing together of images and traditions from different religions. But does one God require one creed?.”

Ana notices, “One creed, but a threesome of a God?”

“Yea, that would have sent Moses back up the mountain for sure. The one God who spoke to Abraham of countless stars and an eternity of grains of sand probably doesn’t really quake mountains in fear of statues made by human hands. But all this so-called Christian use of relics and amulets to elicit miraculous behavior probably still does separate people from knowing the God who even loves their enemies the same as them. That one God apparently doesn’t take orders from people, rather listens to our prayers with compassion.”

“So it took you a whole afternoon to figure this out?”

^[Footnote]^{https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism}^{– retrieved, May 26, 2022}

(Continues Wednesday, February 1)

#40.12, Thurs., Jan. 26, 2023

Historical setting: 590 C.E. Cottage between Annegray and Luxeuil

“So what happened? Why did it take you a whole day to walk the horses back to Annegray?” Ana asked. But Colleen apparently didn’t want to hear excuses and my “sorrys” so she took her cheese and biscuit and went back into the main room to eat alone.

I think Ana is waiting for some amazing adventure story – maybe I was battling wolves and bears, or I had to free myself from robbers, or I was sinking in a bog until a bevy of angels swooped down to draw me up. These would all be good stories to explain my tardiness. And the bog and the angels could have been an honest allegory. But I know if I tell her about the church and the statues and Mater Doe that wouldn’t be a bond for Ana’s broken heart. It is true that we could visit that church sometime. Possibly when the monks are gone and we are taking a toddler walking we can go into that wooded place and find the tranquility of forever. And Ana will find it holy as I do.

My best explanation, “I was distracted from my walk back when I saw that church on the hillside above Annegray. I left the path and went there though it was a little longer walk than I’d guessed. I must have already let go of my sense of time and obligation.”

“How could you possibly loose your sense of time?! Time is everything. I’m just sitting here through yarn skeins of time. Every little moment and second is waiting time –waiting to meet these babies face-to-face and see that they are healthy. Time names chores, the milking and the planting. Time is already too slow and then you go off and loose your sense of it!”

Colleen pulled the door more tightly closed.

Ana rails on, “Time is all that fastens us to earth and now you say you lost your sense of time?”

“I’m so sorry Ana. What can I say? There was a solitude there — a peacefulness that didn’t have demands.”

“You do solitude all the time and you never loose your sense of time. You chant with monks! What could be more timeless than that! And yet you come home.”

“Monks keep hours with chants and prayer.”

This moment of silence tells me she is not asking for a rational explanation of monastic scheduling.

“What can I say Ana, but I’m sorry.”

(Continues Tuesday, January 31)

#40.11, Weds., Jan. 25, 2023

Historical setting: 590 C.E. Cottage between Annegray and Luxeuil

Colleen is just coming in from evening chores as I am returning. I hope Ana has a warmer greeting for me. Colleen is clearly annoyed. She said they were going to send a bird with a message to send the monks to look for me. I apologize to Colleen.

“You’ll have to explain yourself to Ana.” She says that as a threat.

“Of course I will. Is Ana alright?”

“You gave her extra worry. She already has to concern herself with keeping her family safe and can do nothing else all alone to make everything fine.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t apologize to me! Tell it to your wife!”

And so I go immediately to Ana’s bedside. In her face I see the whole of the sky, clouds clearing from rain, and now the sun is beaming brighter than ever. I wipe her tear and take her close to me. She is a full bundle of softness and I realize she has released her strong iron rod of personal fortitude in order to share our tender marriage. I shouldn’t have taken all day for such a brief morning errand. I can tell her I’m sorry to be so late as I am sorry. I know “sorry” with God and with a wife is nothing when it’s only a word. So I make the sorry as a promise.

“I won’t ever linger away from home when you can’t come along too.”

“Don’t say ever,” she answers. “You can’t promise me an ever, just promise to think of your family first.”

Dear God, You and I both know I can defend myself here, and say that my first commitment is to you, and I was off at a church. She’ll understand. But you are the very nature of love and every little earthly, tangible display of love on earth, in all the chants and icons of religions and in all the obligations of marriage. All loves share in your love so wide and all-covering that everything of earth fits safely under the your vast wing. Forgive my thoughtlessness. Guide my obligation for belonging. Let my promise of ever be honest even in my own heart. Amen.

“Ana, I do promise you the whole of ever.”

Colleen prepared cheese and biscuit but no one seems hungry. “I’ll tell her to bring it in here and we can all eat together.”

I suppose Colleen shouldn’t have to eat alone either.

(Continues tomorrow)

#40.10, Tues., Jan. 24, 2023

Historical setting: 590 C.E. Cottage between Annegray and Luxeuil

My feet crunch through the crust of snow as I walk toward our cottage at sunset. My thoughts still wander the nature of the all encompassing God I know as Love.

And how is it that Roman Diana was the Greek Artimas, and then the Ephesians’ Artimas was so very different? The Artimas I remember from Ephesus was more like an ancient goddess of India with many parts to do many tasks. And sometimes Diana is the very ancient Cybel — old as earth itself — at least as old as motherhood. In Ephesus she had many breasts to feed all of the animals of Creation regardless of the human purpose for the creatures.^{[Footnote 1]} Or maybe the Artimas of Ephesus was just decorated with acorns, not breasts, at all. She is clothed in the likenesses of many critters and surrounded by more of the forest creatures. Yet Diana has a bow and quiver, goddess of the hunt. It seems an odd juxtaposition to create one image of the mother of Creation as the same goddess who is also the hunter. But as a sometimes hunter I kind of understand this. Each time my arrow stops a beating heart of a partridge or a doe I ache for this paradox – the caring for the creatures and the feasting on the creatures is the same prayer of thanksgiving.

In Ephesus, when I worshiped with the Christians who named themselves for John, Christian worship was always shared as a feast in remembrance of Jesus. Christianities were many things then but there was always a feast. ^[Footnote2]

Maybe it took enemies of an earthly empire to make impervious boundaries between the various names and ways people have for finding God. Jesus didn’t quibble over the variety of followers. But somewhere in the centuries, what was once all varieties of sanctuaries, and all ways of worship, got sorted into human identities with fortress walls and watch towers guarding against strangers and foreigners and people who believe differently, and people who know different songs, or who sing the ones we love in strange languages. God’s inclusive love becomes religions’ exclusive clubs.

Now I am in view of our cottage and I see Colleen is going in from the stable with the pail of milk having already done the evening’s chores. I’ll have to explain my tardiness, I’m sure.

^{[Footnote2 E. Vearncome, B. Scott, H. Taussig for The Westar Christianity Seminar After Jesus Before Christianity Harper One, 2021, pp 180-190.]}

(Continues Tuesday, January 24)

#40.9, Thurs., Jan. 19, 2023

Historical setting: 590 C.E. The church in the woods

The sun suddenly seems to be sinking over the hills to the west, though I know full well the sun doesn’t suddenly do anything. The movements of the sun and the earth and the stars are always so predictably paced that they measure time itself. But the day did slip away from me. I was caught up in a conversation with the holy. It wasn’t Mater Doe who was listening, she can’t even hear me when I speak aloud. No, there, in that place, where so many for so long have come with prayers is a warm spirit present and I had in my heart an eternal thanksgiving. I needed to have that stillness to recall so many good things of life beyond the petty milieu of human judgment.

It’s an odd paradox that the secular church is named for the saint who was known as the slayer of sacred Pagan trees. If St. Martin sees this church named for him, is he raging and roaring through the heavens at all this mixing of Pagan goddesses gathered here under his name; or are the stories of his wrath against other gods mere legend?

I know there are Christians in these times who apply the superstitions of old Pagan ways to the Christian saints so that they would look for signs and omen sent by Martin to curse the Pagan use of his name here.

There is something in Christianity that keeps the ancient human root wanting a god that can be controlled by human behavior. Christian hunters still want to make a favorable plea to a statue or a heap of pinecones or whatever in order to send the beasts hurling themselves at their arrows. I get that. We who are human always seem to be wishful and wanting to buy good fortune. We pay dues to a god and expect a good return. It is about human control as sure as any monastic rule for order is about human control.

And the need to sort one righteous god from the mix of Pagan possibility is clearly stated in Commandment Number I [Exodus 20:3] brought down by Moses from the smoking mountain. So the story of God’s people is a very long saga that wanders on and on listening always for that still small voice. The stories in the holy books are a journey made of many infinitesimal human glimpses of a God, way larger than any one person’s imagination.

(Continues Tuesday, January 24)

#40.8, Weds., Jan. 18, 2023

Historical setting: 590 C.E. The church in the woods

Mater Doe watches me explore this sanctuary with the same eye she watches over the birds searching seeds outside the window.

I see this Roman statue of Diana looking very much like the goddess of the hunt our visitors mentioned. This is a deeply carved marble image, a youthful girl in a walking stride, wearing a short tunic with a bow and quiver. This seems an artist’s rendition more than an idol awaiting sacrifices. I always think the Greek and Roman deities are simply art shown as gods never present with people, off doing their own godly things.

Mater Doe asks, “So you wish prayers to Artemis.”

“Artemis? I see her here as the Roman Diana.”

“Another altar to Artemis is on that wall.”

I look at the opposite wall, and there is an altar ready as the flaming platform for a hunter’s kill. It features a collection of nature things undoubtedly honoring Mother Nature.

My mind wanders to another time and place where an actual carving of Artemis is a goddess with many breasts – maybe one for each species of Creation.

Mater Doe offers, “She has many names. Some just call her Mother Nature. Is that where you wish to offer your prayers?”

“I just came to look today.”

“Take your time, Lazarus my boy, sometimes the voice of God isn’t in the winter winds, nor the flaming altar, but in the silence.”

I choose not to shout my affirmation of Elijah’s mention of the “the sheer silence.” [I Kings 19:12] But I do notice the solitude, and my prayer is heard also in the stillness here.

Dear God, I hear you in the silence among the many ways we know you are touching us with love too vast for the simplicity of two human breasts. Yet we have this little echo, a tiny spark of the great Creative nurture of love and we can do nothing less than create with our little human hands: we sing, we dance, we celebrate the gracious outpouring. Thank you — for life and love. Thank you.

By the time the tranquility of Spirit opens again to earth I find the sun is beaming through the windows on the west side of the church and Mater Doe has added wood to the warming fire.

“I have to be on my way now. But I will come again.”

(Continues tomorrow)

#40.7, Tues., Jan. 17, 2023

Historical setting: 590 C.E. The church in the woods

I’ve found my way to a little place on the mountainside overlooking the ruin of Annegray. Here the only words the priest can hear from another human is whatever that person chooses to shout to her. I assume she hears much more of Creation than I allow myself to hear in the milieu of everyday life with mostly people speaking to me.

I mean to explain my visit.

“Pastor, there were some hunters who stopped by our cottage, not more than an hour’s walk from here, and they told us they came here for the Christ Mass.”

“Yes, lots of people came this year. I assumed our numbers would always dwindle, with the Catholic Christians below us gathering so many followers. I’m Mater Doe; when my husband was yet living many hunters came here. Still my own expectations are far less than the grace of God. I have no thought or guess as to who is the church in the Mind of God. But here I am. And so it is.”

“And so it is.”

“Excuse me,” She says, “I don’t hear people when they are speaking softly.”

In a stronger voice I answer, “And so it is.”

She clearly hears the voice of the bird outside the window. She turns and looks when it stops pecking at the seeds for a moment to coo its subtle song. She throws another handful of seed to the dove.

“The Irish Father is named for such a bird as that. Have you met him?” I shout.

“I have no need to visit that place. The hunters who come for blessings tell me of them.”

“The monks will be moving soon, I hear. The King has already granted permission for Father Columbanus to gather his followers at the baths of Luxeuil; so you will be alone here.”

“I’m really not alone.”

“Of course, I just meant all the activity there will cease.”

“I probably won’t miss that.”

As I explore the niches for various gods I ask, “Are all that worship here in this time Christian? Or do the followers of these other gods also come here on their feast days?”

“I don’t ask the why of theology of worshippers here. I don’t indoctrinate so there’s no need to pry. Here we eat together, I say blessings, sometimes there is dancing, sometimes there is quiet prayer. Here we just worship.”

I find a place to sit near enough that she can hear my questions when I shout.

(Continues tomorrow)