Lazarus Ink

#38.14, Weds., Nov. 30, 2022

Historical setting: 589 C.E. Cottage in the Vosges

This brittle morning I find easy success in hunting a buck for our winter stews. It falls so near our cottage that I can dress it right here, and don’t have to coax the donkey to drag it on a sledge back to the house.

Colleen says Ana is required to stay in bed these weeks to make sure the baby is safe. She says she has a concern. I’m glad we have Colleen because Ana has no experience with this, and I might not have a concern when concern is most needed. In other times I’ve had a wife with less fortitude than Ana and the babies have been born safely. So why would I have a concern now? I know this bed thing is frustrating for Ana. Brother Servant will be bringing some wool, that was gifted to Annegray, so that Ana can twist it to yarns. She’ll be glad to have her hands busy with that.

Colleen is just finishing planting the herbs as best she can in the nearly frozen ground and now I see she’s going into the stable. Immediately she runs from the stable into the cottage flailing her arms, slamming the door as though something had frightened her.

I don’t have to wonder what she saw there. Now a monk is coming out of the stable brushing hay from his robe, looking around with apprehension for someone watching but he doesn’t notice me way out here in the pasture. He walks off toward the monastery path, and stops just near the brink of the hill, as another monk comes out of the stable. He also glances around then slinks along with way more caution than would be needed if Colleen had just caught them in solemn prayer. He meets the first monk and they go off hand-in-hand down the hill.

It’s obvious that in our absence this stable served to hide a tryst or maybe more. That explains the abundance of clean, soft straw in the stable loft, when everything else from the field and the garden was just dumped in the house for storage.

Now we are home and have plenty. Thank you God, for all this goodness, and for this deer, for his good life in the beauty of nature and a good death of a deer that feeds our need just now. Guide me now, that in all this plenty I not loose sight of the sanctity of life. Amen.

(Continues Thursday, December 1, 2022)

#38.13, Tues., Nov. 29, 2022

Historical setting: 589 C.E. Cottage in the Vosges

Brother Servant finds Colleen’s porridge delicious. But Ana suggests I do the cooking if Colleen doesn’t allow her out of bed to do it herself. I’m fine with that. Let’s let Ana rest. I think we can spare a turnip from the heap of roots, and Ana requests some. Oh, yes, and we still have the sacks of rooted herbs out in the cart. No one has to eat boring porridge.

“So how is it that the cottage wasn’t used for the guests of Annegray?” I ask Brother Servant.

“Guests and beasts alike made good use of the stable, which allowed us to keep the cottage clean and tidy for your return.”

“Clean and tidy, you say it were?” Colleen asks with her way of blunt honesty.

Brother Servant defends. “It is clean and tidy, except for the abundant harvest of natural things, leavings from the critters, and soil left by the rain.”

I mean to bend Colleen’s accusation. “The whole farm is all such a wonderful surprise for us Brother Servant. Thank you so much for taking care of it all, and especially for all the fine work on the stable!”

Colleen nods her solicited approval. I think she’s really trying to understand that it is a different standard of clean and tidy among monks in a wilderness than a midwife would find encountering a well- maintained villa.

I step outside with Brother Servant as he is leaving and we catch sight of a rampage of antlered bucks racing across the meadow. It would be a good time to hunt one, as the wolves also calculate opportunity in this season of the running of the deer. Tonight I will fletch an arrow or two, and we will soon have meat in our winter stews and no more talk about barely and turnips.

Outside, here, I find that sack of herbs is still in the cart. It’s damp so maybe the roots are still good for planting. In fact these sacks are dripping with gray water and clumps of clay. Maybe I only brought this filthy bag into the house to tease the tidy Colleen. My centuries haven’t let me go of my nature as a once pesky little brother. But it is true, we also need to make a plan to plant the herbs before the hard freeze of winter.

Dear God may I be considerate of others with different tidiness standards.

(Continues Tomorrow)

#38.12, Thurs., Nov. 24, 2022

Historical setting: 589 C.E. Cottage in the Vosges

“So it will be longer walk for us to Luxovium.” I’m just thinking aloud to the Brother Servant. “We will have to go ten miles now.”

“You’ve no idea where Luxeuil is, Ezra? Your hill cottage is a stopping place on the way there. People going from one to the other will stop here for a rest.”

“That will be wonderful!” answers Ana.

Now inside it is cold and dark and here are heaps of grain bags and bundles of garden roots laying hither and thither. A rat runs and hides. The stable is wonderful, but the cottage is the storage barn for the harvest –ragged sacks of grain with chewed mouse holes, and heaps of carrots, beets and turnips with the sweet smell of a barn and the deep mossy fragrance of root cellar. The monks moved our hearthstone to the far wall to warm the stable side so the new roof I made was now opened for the smoke. Snow has fallen through both the new and the old smoke holes, so I’ll have patching to do first off.

We set about starting the fire and moving things to make a suitable place for people. Ana would be laying fire logs, but Colleen objects to her doing anything at all; so I finish making the fire, while Colleen inspects the little backroom and finds the folded blanket and sheet set aside in a nearly dry place. She prepares the big bed for Ana to rest. Brother Servant comes in from the stable to collect some oats and a bundle of thorny hay to please our cow and donkey. I have to roll the large caldron to the new hearth place. Checking outside I find the well is still fresh and deep.

Now stoic Colleen seems a bundle of busy – sending Ana to bed with a warm stone from near the fire, at her feet– checking on Jack in the stable. Does she think Brother Servant wouldn’t know how to feed and water a donkey? And now she is creating a porridge for all of us with a meager cup of barley and some fresh milk, but no finer flavors of herbs. It’s just as poverty would demand.

Dear God, thank you for this warm circle of home, this abundance and promise. Amen.

(Continues Tuesday, November 29)

#38.12, Thurs., Nov. 24, 2022

Historical setting: 589 C.E. Cottage in the Vosges

“So it will be longer walk for us to Luxovium.” I’m just thinking aloud to the Brother Servant. “We will have to go ten miles now.”

“You’ve no idea where Luxeuil is, Ezra? Your hill cottage is a stopping place on the way there. People going from one to the other will stop here for a rest.”

“That will be wonderful!” answers Ana.

Dear God, thank you for this warm circle of home, this abundance and promise. Amen.

(Continues Tuesday, November 29)

#38.11, Weds., Nov 23, 2022

Historical setting: 589 C.E. At home in the Vosges Mountains

On this new day the earth is glittering pure and glazed in snow — a blank page for new beginnings. This morning we will climb the hill to the cottage we left last summer as a still sleeping dream of a home. Brother Servant is anxious to come along with us promising that when we see it, we will be surprised. When we left in early summer I had just completed the roof on the house, but we had only a frame of the stable. And now, here we are bringing a cow and a donkey with us in the wintertime so a stable will be needed. The fields were turned over and planted last spring before we knew we wouldn’t be here for the harvest. So much was left undone.

Colleen takes one look at the steep path up the hill and insists Ana ride in the cart. Ana argues that she has walked this path many times before. Colleen insists, and Ana rides. I wonder if Colleen’s worries for Ana are more informed than my own. I suppose so. Brother Servant thinks both women and the bird in the cage should ride, while he leads the donkey and I guide the cow.

Now I wish Ana wasn’t hidden in the cart cover so she could see what I see. The rising sun has spread light beams on this hilltop glistening the snow. First we see our wheat field, a smooth place in all this whiteness with a few yellow stalks of straw leftover from the harvest. But it is a well-groomed field at rest for winter. Then, rising on the round of the hilltop, there is the cottage with the end a stable completed. It’s beautifully made with shaven boards and a fine thatched roof. No wonder Brother Servant came with us glowing as a gifter.

“It’s beautiful Brother! How is it monks can make such a fine stable for beasts, then make their own beds in a ruin under a string of tarps at Annegray?”

Brother Servant glances to the ground, groping for the veil of humility to hide his joy in generosity.

He tells us, “This cottage has served us all well throughout the summer, as hospitality calls for more than we can offer at Annegray. I know Father Columbanus is aware of our need for a better accommodation in order to have an actual monastery, not just a wilderness ruin. So our plan to move to Luxeuil will be a welcome improvement.”

(Continues tomorrow)

#38.10, Tues., Nov. 22, 2022

Historical setting: 589 C.E. the road home

Months ago, Ana and I had journeyed so long on horseback following a different route to deliver messages to the Bishops of Austrasia. Now we have a more direct path and it seems we are already starting the climb into distant mountains.

The infant in Ana’s womb is demanding smoother roads and more stops for rest. Ana chooses to walk much of the time, though I keep suggesting she might prefer to ride in the covered cart lying on the warm fleeces. It seems she doesn’t find that comfortable. Colleen tells me I shouldn’t try to tell her how to be comfortable because I don’t know. We set this slow pace for everyone with a cow and a pregnant woman leading. Dear God, stay close.

Despite our slow pace, the mountains that fringe the horizon now impose a larger shadow each morning we travel east, and now the path is steeper and the creek beds cut deeper. When we ask directions to Annegray the peasants here have heard of it and it seems everyone we ask points the same direction.

It’s steadily snowing as we reach the ancient guard tower and these fallen walls of Annegray. We are in time to join in vespers. Ana’s woolen monk’s robe won’t reach around her belly anymore. So we are keeping no secret here, where some months ago the Father struggled to bless our union as a marriage because we likely would have no children.

I’m assigned a guest room with the barbarians rather than the covered guest room where Ana and Colleen may stay. I’m glad Ana has Colleen with her now.

By the dark hour of matins its just the four monks and I from our party who join with these brothers for the chanting of the Psalms. Even before sunrise, the monks with us delivered the gifts from King Guntrum to Father Columbanus.

“So the king would have us take this whole community we have started here into another old place?” The father noted.

“It’s thought to be a Roman remnant in better condition and more appropriate for a community.” Answered the monk speaking for King Guntram.

“I know it well. I’ve been there for my own prayers. And while I’ve prayed for guidance expecting God to send me into a deeper wilderness, now it is the opposite of that. How will we ever find our solace there?”

“We assure him we’ve brought tools.”

(Continues tomorrow)

#38.9, Thurs., Nov. 17, 2022

Historical setting: 589 C.E. Châlons to Luxeuil

The well is restored and now I’ve gotten myself out. The four barbarians are here with the people from the cottages and they are passing a flask of ale and celebrating the success of the well water I’m doused in. And here I am, shivering, unnoticed, uncelebrated. Dear God, have you also forgotten me here? At least Ana would think me the hero of this. But the women and the monks aren’t here. I ask.

The would-be psalm-burning barbarian answers with the slur of ale. “They’ve all gone to the fields to gather straw and glean the last of the grain.”

I look beyond my little woes and see the donkey and the cart and some figures moving in the field far away. Right now I don’t know which I want most, Ana’s compassion or my warm fleece from that cart.

Some of these people from the cottages come with more ale and a whole bale of fleeces they’ve bundled for trade, along with a deerskin, all for our payment for the restoration of the well. With only a few swallows of ale I am flat out on the heap of fleeces, waking to Ana telling me we also have sacks of grain, bundles of hay and straw enough to fill the wagon bed, covering over the tools and the ropes and the bell. We still have the Psalms and the velum sheets and inks. The villagers have water. The barbarians have fleeces, the monks and the cow and the donkey and the mules and the women all have food and warmth… And I am on earth above, once again. Dear God, thank you. Amen.

We stay another night as guests in the straw above our beasts. And now, today we set out again on our trek. The November sky, flat, veil of clay is above and a hardened colorless earth spreads out below leaving hardly a walking space between the layers of cold. But now we have supplies, and also, a true expectation that it is a journey. Those who thought it would be an easy day’s walk don’t believe that anymore, and now all of us are prepared. It was a misunderstanding.

But Ana and I who came from Annegray on horseback expect we will not see our cottage again at this pace until the Christ Mass or even the Solstice. May that also be a misunderstanding.

(Continues Tuesday, November 22)

#38.8, Weds., Nov. 16, 2022

Historical setting: 589 C.E. Châlons to Luxeuil

Now, deep in the well, I can see the dot of sky above me and I am assured there is an earth above. Even the sky continues to be. It isn’t as cold here as I’d anticipated. Though I find my looped and knotted rope wasn’t long enough to reach all the way down so I have a few feet of a drop at the end and I know I will be depending on others to draw me back up.

And so, I begin the work of dumping out the new rocks in the pail, digging the mud out and filling the pail back again with mud for the hoist up. I give the pail rope a tug and it’s drawn up and emptied, then it comes down again filled with more rocks for me to lay to support the wall where the earthen clay is washed out.

Beneath my feet is slushy now. I wedge the rocks back in place that had washed out near the dry clay at the bottom. I see now how the washout stifled the water source by filling in the depth, blocking the flow with mucky clay. The water is still here beneath this mud.

This routine goes on and on. I’ve lost sense of time. Mostly I notice it’s harder to breath and every rock seems heavier than the last. Now water is seeping in faster beneath my feet, pouring between the cracks in the lowest part of the wall I’ve laid. And, in fact, water is coming in all around. I tip the pail to fill it with water now, and tug the rope. It is drawn up filled. Still they send it back filled with rocks. I find I am a good distance down from my safety rope. So I climb out of the water onto the pail, and tug the rope to be drawn up. I shout for help and someone looks over the edge above. I signal I’m ready to be drawn up as though I’m simply a bucket of clay, which probably I am. I don’t trust the four I call barbarians to pull me up. My distrust is frothing to rage surging as strength. Is this pail rope well anchored now? I don’t know. I find that standing on the pail I can reach the end of my safety line, so I can climb out myself.

(Continues tomorrow)

#38.7, Tues., Nov. 15, 2022

Historical setting: 589 C.E. Châlons to Luxeuil

In the dawn tranquility and the stagger of morning sleepiness, we make our way to the center of the cottages where there is this community well. Without words, we who will work today are unloading the wagon of ropes and pulleys and we’ve set a tri-pod of logs for a huge pulley. Now the plan is not just some sketch of a what-if, but it’s a true intention.

I’ve been chosen for the drop into darkness. Maybe because my name is unknown to them, I seem the most expendable person, the one whose loss could cause less grief because I’m unknown. Only my wife would care, and they don’t know her either. And just now I needn’t worry her with my own little terrors of the dark pit.

I drop a climbing rope into the well with all its knots and loops that I’ve secured above ground and tied it firmly to a long-standing tree.

“We don’t need two ropes down there,” says the fellow who would burn the Psalms and trade the bell. “Just ride the pail rope down to test it for weight.”

“I’d rather let a load of rock fail that test,” I answer back.

“It won’t fail. Are you afraid we don’t know what we’re doing?”

“Possibly.”

We can’t even see to the bottom of this hole. We’re told it’s dry. We drop a flaming torch down. The torch lays on the dry bottom until the flame dwindles in the thinness. We saw how the rocks laid to support the sides at the bottom have fallen into a wash of mud, but the walls above the washout seem in place so maybe the rock wall is holding these depths by shear strength of circle.

Dear God, stay close – you know how I fear a deep dark hole. Amen. Maybe I’m uniquely phobic because I’ve actually climbed back into life from death a few times, or maybe dark depths are dreaded by anyone. I don’t know how to compare my own fears to those of another. But I do dread. I take the rope in hand, as I step over the side of the well, locking the climbing rope between my feet in order to let myself down as slowly as I possibly can. I watch the pail of rock on the central rope pass me by. Why don’t they wait at least until I have my footing?

(Continues tomorrow)

#38.6, Thurs., Nov. 10, 2022

Historical setting: 589 C.E. Châlons to Luxeuil

It’s dusk and we’ve stopped at a cottage in a cluster amid these fields and vineyards. These people are hospitable to our cow, donkey and mules, but they haven’t much concern for the eleven of us humankinds. They won’t hear a word of our plan to trade food for tools because they fear for their own winter stores so early in the season. All they really want are some small sturdy pails for hauling water the distance from the creek because their common well has gone dry. And what is worse the creek will soon freeze over.

“The well never froze,” they complain.

Now the snarliest of our four barbarians steps forward. He’s the guy who wants to burn the Psalms, and dump the bell so we can trade the mules.

“I have a plan!” he announces.

I listen with trepidation.

“These farmers have that huge well-pail they can’t carry back from creek. We will drop that into the dry well with a man in it who will dig out their well. Here is this fellow who walks the cow and travels with women.” Yes, that would be me. “He will go down and dig, then with our ropes and pulleys and our sweat we will heft up the bucket to remove the clogging earth and send it down over and over again with rocks to line the wall — until the well is deep enough and flows with water, then we will take our pay for the day’s work in food and fleeces. You’ll have water, we’ll have supplies; everyone is happy, right?

“First thing in the morning.”

The plan is made. We all sleep this night in the haymows over the stables, sheltered and warm. But I can’t sleep tonight thinking of that terrible task. Why me? But also I should ask, why not me? Someone has to do it.

Dear God, you gave me this strange way of life and life again. I know you gave it to me as an earthly sign of spiritual life. But before there is ever-new life there is always a cold darkness –a cave, a dark burial, a time under the earth. So let this plunge into darkness be a blessing for this whole thirsty village. Dear God, stay close, you know I’m afraid. Amen.

This morning the peasants in the cottages have provided hot porridge for us as we prepare for sinking a deeper well.

(Continues Tuesday, November 15)