Post #22.9, Wednesday, July 21, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. the road to Ligugè

         I’ve walked this road to Ligugè before. But all these years later so much has changed from human neglect. When inattention defines our spaces the buildings don’t just sit still and empty. There come first the little creatures, the insects, mosses and mushrooms, then the grasses come with spiders and mice, then birds. Squirrels make their homes in rafters, and the roof beams become saturated with rain-dampened thatch sagging and caving until only a few stones and a flat place once a foundation are left to mark a house.

         I imagine the God’s-eye view of this isn’t really of sorrow and loss. Maybe where we see decay God sees all things new. Where once there was a house filled with the chatter of people now a whole new nature sways in the creeping of unkempt vines.  How many times do we assume our ways are the same as God’s ways, with all our branches trimmed back neatly into tidy straight edges? Yet God forgives our shorns and trims and blesses us with life in all these eternal lands anyway.

         Along this road a small group of guardsmen pass by on horseback with a banner identifying their belonging. I can step aside for them because the simplicity of walking gives me that humble choice. I had a horse in a prideful time. And Christians have another story of walking humbly that speaks of crossing social mores for the sake of love of neighbor.  [Acts 8:26-39] There is a story of an Ethiopian Eunice riding in a chariot while reading from a scroll named for a Hebrew prophet. The basic love of God is not complicated theology. In all the Holy teachings there is a simple repetition — the rudiments of ancient Hebrew law. Love God above all else, and your neighbor as yourself. [Leviticus 19:18] Here is this wealthy person of rank from wise Africa, whom we pale Christians of the north hold in awe. Dark is the shade of early wise men and saints, the early Church Fathers and Augustine, … Story goes, while walking on the road Philip steps aside for this very important Eunich. Yet the aristocrat humbled himself for the sake of a broader wisdom and he invited Philip onto the chariot to explain the scroll. In this telling of it, Philip baptizes this Ethiopian Eunich. It’s a story of looking beyond the tribal prides and social prejudices, putting aside isolating barriers of “othering” and stretching ourselves into the broader unbounded nature of love for all people and creatures.

 (Continues Tomorrow)

Post #22.8, Tuesday, July 20, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Leaving the vineyard

         I’m preparing to leave at dawn to walk to Ligugè. My bag is a bit weighty. But Anatase has something more. It’s a secret. She has the book of remedies with flower stems marking pages and she asks a favor.  Could I copy these pages onto a parchment end so she can attach dried herbs onto the written descriptions. She wants her teacher to receive a gift that has smell and touch so Eve will know what the words say. 

         “That’s a very thoughtful gift, Anatase. I will take great care of the book. But what if it’s needed before I return?”

         “It won’t be needed forever while I‘m here. I worried that it would be lost so as soon as I could read I learned it all by memory just in case.”

         “Of course you did. Why would I wonder?”

         The rumor of my leaving has spread, and now Celeste and her children are coming with river rocks, marked by each great-grandchild in charcoal for me to remember them by. I can promise I will remember, but I choose not to add rocks to my pack. So we stack them into a cairn for all of our remembering as Jacob stacked stones for the Mizpah with Laban. [Genesis 31:51]

         My strength is nearly complete so I needn’t borrow a horse or wait to ride a cart. And with a pale haze of summer morning ousting dark this promises to be a fine day for a journey. Thank you God. 

         Yesterday set my mind on this as we were reading about humility. Nic’s humor applied to the paradox of being proud of humility came to me with all the demands of grief. I have so many memories of Nic I need to share with others who knew him. The story I was telling Anatase yesterday, which tradition calls “The Good Samaritan,” recognizes the human penchant for taking pride in hatred. Pride in hate is prejudice. People, who are fearful of being cast out of their tribe create exclusions of others in order to form a bond of hatred. The Roman military bonded over hatred of Jews. But of course, this tribal pride is antithetical to the Jesus message of love of neighbor. So it was that by Nic’s most humble nature he forfeited his fellowship with the Roman anti-Semitism simply to befriend me, a stranger who was born a Jew.

 (Continues tomorrow)

Post #22.7, Thursday, July 15, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Eve’s Garden on the Loire

         Anatase is politely listening to me as I tell a Jesus story she may have already heard.  But I wanted to tell it again, thinking of Nic, and his way of abandoning his well-earned pride in order to enact the humility of the “love of neighbor” command. I was telling the story in Luke 10. The respected and proud people who passed by the suffering man were too busy or too important to stop and help. Then along came a guy who was from an outcast neighborhood, a Samaritan, or it might have been a Christian heretic. Or in Nic’s case, the story was a Roman soldier, a navy rower who found a Christian pacifist beaten and left for dead by the side of the road who turned out to be born Jewish. This neighbor is the kind who is very hard to love. We think of him more as the “other” rather than a neighbor. But Nic not only took the time to help the man, he paid all his money from his years at the oars to be this man’s patron. And to do all of this kindness he had to give up his own plume of glory — his well-earned affirmations of prejudice – he had to yield his own tradition and his pride in maintaining popular warring hates simply to follow the love command. That is what Jesus meant by ‘love your neighbor’.”

         Thinking of Nic in this way I feel an urgency to go to Ligugè to visit Nic’s grave.        

         At a good pace a man of my newly returned strength can start at sunrise and arrive at the monastery just as summer’s darkness swallows up all traces of the road ahead, so I prepare to leave at dawn.

         Eve and Anatase are filling my traveler’s sack with every imaginable weighty object to remind me of their cares. It will be good to have a cloak and a biscuit and a boiled egg, and of course, flowers for the grave I plan to visit. Eve asks me to take a gift with me for the monastery. She is searching for something – may it not be a stone statue I must carry on my back.  Thankfully, she has only several of her beeswax candles she keeps to light a room for others who don’t know the darkness as she does. Surely I have every imaginable thing to carry on this journey. What more can there be?

 (Continues Tuesday, July 20, 2021)

Post #22.6, Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E.

         Nic’s pages continue to argue the rule of God’s love against a rule to manage sprouting monks, and now Nic takes issue with flaunting humility. It’s a paradox that doesn’t slip by Nic easily.

          Anatase reads on, “The old monk wrote, ’There are twelve steps and yet not much of true humility. Humility is what comes in awe of stars, or discovering one’s small place in the fullness of God’s love that speaks of the grandeur of all of Creation, even the grand value of you and me. But this written humility rule is driven by horrors, threats of angels reporting pride back to God and flat out fear of Hell. And just to be sure the exemplary righteous and ruly monk should appear humble he should ‘tip his head downward and look only at the ground.’ [Footnote ] But in doing so, I would expect he might see a true worm. Yet that very worm is a critter of nature beautiful in its own way and purpose. So how is pretending to be loathsome ever a display of humility? I ask you, dear friend Laz, please burry me with the worms before I accomplish this rule’.”

         “Anatase, I’m certain the old monk Nic needed no rule to be humble in the sight of God; so any nosey angels watching to report back to God surely found no shred of inflated pridefullness in him to tell of. After all, he gave up his soldier’s plume of glory just to be my friend. Humble kindnesses came naturally to him simply because he was close to God whom he knew as love. In fact, for me, born a Jew, he gave up the hardest pride of all simply to practice love for neighbor in the same way Jesus taught. He gave up his well-honed personal prejudices — a big sacrifice that is. Did you ever hear the story Jesus told to explain what a neighbor is?”

         “Maybe I already heard it; but you can tell me.”

         “In this story Jesus was answering a lawyer’s question. He had to get the answer right, because this fellow knew every single little rule and he followed the law to the letter. So when Jesus said ‘love your neighbor’ the lawyer said, ‘and who would that be?’

         “Jesus had a story for that. He said ‘A man was attacked by robbers and left for dead by the side of the road in a bad neighborhood. The man was a Jew, like Jesus and also like the lawyer asking the question.’”

[Footnote] White, Carolinne, Translator,The Rule of Benedict, London: Penguin Books, 2008. pages 22-26.

(Continues Tomorrow)

Post #22.5, Tuesday, July 13, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E.

         “Maybe we have done enough reading for the day, Anatase. Do you wish to take a rest from this? I could just borrow these pages if you would let me, and read them ahead myself. And I promise to save any that are interesting for you to read aloud.”

         “No. I can keep on, now that I know The Rose he was talking about was his horse. When first I read it I thought he was trying to practice giving orders to the flowers, bossing them around, expecting they would obey his slightest whim. Knowing it was his horse makes a lot of difference.

         “He wrote, ‘I’ve always thought there were two reasons for obedience, one was my soldier duty to the officer, and the other was something I do simply because God is God and my love for God makes me delighted to follow. Holy obedience is like the difference between following a military officer and training The Rose. Everyone said to teach obedience to The Rose I needed to teach him rank and show him I was the boss. But what actually worked was when I said to The Rose, ‘I am Nic, and you are The Rose and we belong to one another each in our own way.’ So that is also how I am obedient to God.

         “’The Rule of St. Benedict says, ‘As soon as the superior gives an order, they carry it out as promptly as if the order came from God, either because of the holy service they have promised to perform, or because they are afraid of hell, or for the sake of the glory of eternal life.’” [Footnote 1]

         “’It seems to me,’ the Old Monk writes, ‘obedience driven by threat or gift is not actually obedience at all. It is simply a fear or a lust greater than the respect for the master giving the order.’

         “’And the emphasis on humility is even a more disagreeable pretend of virtue. Clearly the paradox is that one who claims ‘to reach the highest peak of humility’ would not actually be humble. There are twelve steps and not one of them is of the true humility of discovering one’s own small place in the awesome love of God that speaks of the goodness of all of Creation, even the goodness of me.”

[Footnote 1] White, Carolinne, Translator,The Rule of Benedict, London: Penguin Books, 2008. page 19.

[Footnote 2] Ibid. pages 22-26.         

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #22.4, Thursday, July 8, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Eve’s garden bench

         The pages Nic left for Anatase to read aloud describe this world I’ve awakened into. Nic must have known I soon would be seeking a place in a monastery scribing the gospels. He knew me well, and he understood my calling to keep my friend Jesus always in sight of us who are of earth. So of course I will be heading back into the inks. He tells me that all around us are these powerful bishops, overseers like shepherds for an earth of mindless sheep. Here we walk the crumbling roads of an empire gone, following the flickering torches of imperialism into the deeper darkness.

         Here these shepherds no longer trust the patterns of nature or the direction of stars and phases of moon. Things of Creation that once served as psalm for all varieties of worship are sorted from Christian and declared Pagan. Yet Christian holds tight to the magic and manipulations always looking for omen but rarely for metaphor. And like the Pagan Romans the daily journey of the sun is even numbered by hours. Now the routine of each day for a monk is set down in a rule of old paganism. It is the abbot who decides the waking and the sleeping, the times for prayers and the times for song. And it is the voice of a distant bishop that declares a silence despite the chirping cricket under the door.

         I know Nic gave Anatase and I these pages affirming the Roman yen for order so that an ever-curious little girl may learn of the ways used now for educating young boys so often in the hallowed halls of a monastery. The Rule of Benedict seems mostly to be a method for managing aristocratic youth who have been sent from their homes to learn the vows of poverty, humility and obedience. But as we explore this, it seems outward practice may supersede spiritual poverty and humility along with obedience to God alone. With The Rule, a human authority, the bishop or abbot as fine as he may be, becomes the one to whom obedience is given. God seems only an assumption.

         Anatase has looked ahead and says these upcoming pages are truly “dull.” Yet I’m curious to hear Nic’s voice in this to know if it matters to Nic if the orders come from a bishop or the Creator of the Universe and ever present Spirit of love with us always? Does Nic agree that all this detailed instruction is simply intrusion in individual personal prayer?

(Continues Tuesday, July 13)

Post #22.3, Wednesday, July 7, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E.  Eve’s garden bench

         Anatase chooses to continue picking through the hard words on “Page 5, The Rule”

          “‘First off,’ he writes,  ‘The Rule tells of four kinds of monks and only the one who lives to obey the earthly offices of the church, the coenobites are the good ones.’”

         “I see what you mean about the hard words in this. You’re doing well with your reading.”

         “I shall continue. ‘Then there are anchorites, hermits who ‘lost their fervor for monastic life’ and now must ‘fight the devil on their own.’ [footnote 1] Upon hearing this Brother August decided this surely was written by one who had never actually ventured into the wilderness where the angels still linger. And upon hearing this Brother Joel’s deep longing for thin places and the nearness of God sent him grieving to return to the wilderness. Even an old and lame fellow would rather meet God without the hurdles of these human judgments as good a man as Joel is.’”

         Anatase interrupts Nic’s explanation, “Doesn’t God love all kinds of monks?”

         “I would have thought so but maybe that’s only my view as a Jesus-following heretic. I tend to think God made us and we are God’s people, even us heretics. So surely God loves the monks.”

         “Oh.” She resolves, “Then the old monk goes on to tell about the other two kinds of monks. Do you want to hear that part too?”

         “Sure.”

         Anatase reads on, stumbling into more strange verbiage, probably intended to put the fear of God’s bishops into young boys who were given over to the church. “He writes, ‘Then we have those untested sarabites, ‘most detestable’ who wander from the sheepfold to gather in groups of two or three or even one alone ‘calling every whim holy’ and everything they don’t want to do ‘unlawful.’ [footnote 2]”  

         Anatase adds, “The old monk says that is who he and you were. Do you think that’s so?”

         “I suppose that is why Nic included it here, unless the fourth variety is even worse. You know, Anatase, Nic was very humble – and honest to God — even if an honest look was a hurt for himself.”

         Anatase already knows what else he says, “But there is an even worse kind of monk. He writes, ‘Then there are those gyrovagues [footnote 3] the worst of the worst, wandering around from one monastery to the next…’ “

         “Well, that wouldn’t be Nic; but that would be me.”

[footnote 1] White, Carolinne, Translator,The Rule of Benedict, London: Penguin Books, 2008. Page 11

[footnote 2] Ibid.

[footnote 3] Ibid.

(Continues Tomorrow)

Post #22.2, Tuesday, July 6, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Eve’s house on the River Loire

         This new morning we finish the chores and now find our place on the garden bench for the reading lesson. Anatase read ahead again and warns me of the dreariness of monastery stories. And again, I beg to know what has happened with my friends in my missing years.

         “Very well” Anatase agrees, if you must know, Page 5 is  ‘The Rule’ Nic writes, ‘So, brother Laz, when you come back into a community of brothers you will learn the bishop of Rome seems smitten by St. Benedict of Narsia who wrote The Rule. Here at Ligugè we borrowed a copy to pass among ourselves to consider. We immediately sent it on to the convent of Poitiers.’

         “’I tell you this that you may be warned. Life may soon change for all of us who choose to live in Christian community. The Rule was probably meant for a monastery that takes in the young boys of nobility and trains them to be humble and responsible. Mostly it structures prayers and psalms to guide daily life, but it’s narrower and more specific than was our practice as fellow travelers with the spiritual Christ. Having served in the Roman military it’s not the structure and the order that disturbs me. All the order and uniformity of detail is fine with me. Details, like ‘Sunday Lauds should begin with Psalm 67, chanted straight through without the antiphon. [footnote] [blogger’s note] I surely don’t fear the structure as Brothers August and Joel do. That is all fine.’

         “But I feel I must warn you. My concern for you and your life to come lies in the human bent on judgments and punishments. Brothers August and Joel and I, as well, would never have found a place here at Ligugè if they were following this rule. In this it seems God is only briefly mentioned as a far off purpose, but the judgements and punishments are always of earth or hell. It is the bishop or simply a chosen abbot who determines goodness and badness in everything. Our abbot would judge us fairly, but he is old. This whole plan speaks more about the sins and the battle with evil than it cares for the love of God. Maybe we’re missing something but that’s how we are reading it.’”

         “I have to say Anatase, you are doing so well with all these hard words.”

         “I’ve been practicing ahead. But the next part has the strangest words of all. They are things I never hear said in real life.”

[footnote] White, Carolinne, Translator, The Rule of Benedict, (Penguin Books, London: 2008) p. 32

[blogger’s note] For the sake of open mindedness it should be said, the fictional characters in this blog do not reflect a modern Catholic appreciation for “The Rule” which can be found in other sources such as: Joan D. Chittister, Wisdom Distilled from the Daily: Living the Rule of St. Benedict Today (HarperSanFrancisco: 1991)

 (Continues tomorrow)

Post #22.1, Thursday, July 1, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E., Eve’s cottage on the Loire

         Eve and Anatase are telling me about a visit from soldiers. When Nic heard this he laughed and asked to keep the walnut shell.

         “Did you give it to him?”

         “Of course. Was it something special?”

 “Yes, it could remind Nic of a story I told him about a relic. I’m glad you gave it to him.”

         Eve asks, “Why did he think it was a relic?”

         “Apparently my fellow student at the inks of Tours is now the bishop as he predicted. He was George, or Georgius Florentius back then. He bragged that one day he would be a famous bishop, named “Gregory of Tours.” He said it with a kind of backwards genuflect, starting at his belly and turning his hand upward as a gesture of his own empowerment. He was assigned to teach me not to be a heretic, and I was supposed to teach him proper grammar. He was too stubborn to change his writing style and I was too stubborn to give up the notion that Jesus was a human person.  We had to show our work to the bishop. So for my part, I claimed a patron saint who was a fourth century Jewish Christian martyred before all the wrinkles of creed were even ironed smooth.  I made the relic of the true whiskers of St. Lazarus. But the lesson didn’t take. I still have my heresy. I still believe Jesus was human and that dead saints aren’t magical — either the pagan or Christian saints.  I mean, if Jesus taught us relics were important we would have saved a lot more old and smelly stuff back in the day when Jesus walked and taught.”  [Footnote 1]

         “Nevertheless, Nic thought your relic was a precious reminder.”

         “A reminder to smile maybe. I hope he didn’t try to explain it. And I wonder if my fellow student George ever finished his book about the History of the Franks. I read the first draft of the first chapter and it was just packed with fantastic powers and supposed heavenly acts of saints. In that story the first king of all the Franks, Clovis, was spawned from a beast and took on baptism as a Christian as good luck charm to help in winning wars. There were bible stories right in the mix but there wasn’t a word of the Jesus teachings of love for one’s enemies.” [Footnote 2]

 (Continues Tuesday, July 6, 2021)

[Footnote 1] “Roman law attached great importance of the sacrosanctity of a corpse” in the article “Dead or alive? The holy man as a healer in East and West in the late sixth century” by Joan M. Peterson, Journal of Medieval History, Vol.9, Issue 2, 1983 tracks to root of the miracle-empowered relic back to Roman paganism. In this article the example is described by Gregory of Tours, regarding the relics of St. Martin, and Western cults of saints.  https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1016/0304-4181(83)90003-9 retrieved 4-11-2021

[Footnote 2]Brehaut, Ernest (trans.) A History of the Franks, by Gregory of Tours (reprint First Rate publishers)


Post #21.14, Wednesday, June 30, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. The house of Eve

         Anatase has interrupted the reading to tell me of a frightful time they had here last autumn when Gregory, whom she says is now the  Bishop of Tours, sent his soldiers here.

         “Why did the bishop’s guardsmen come here?”

         “They said they were looking for you.”

         “For me? Why? Are you sure they were looking for me?”

         “They asked my teacher for the man ‘Lazarus.’ But she wouldn’t say where you were. She sent me to get Ma’am Colleta because she didn’t think you would want soldiers rummaging your sepulcher.”

         “She was right about that.”        

         “She wanted Colleta to answer their questions or send them away.”        

          “Why were they looking for me?”

         “Ma’am Colleta said they probably were looking to arrest heretics and pagans.  So when we got back here Ma’am Colleta told them a lie to make them go away.  She said we are all good Christians here. She told them she knows the creed by heart so they needn’t worry over rumors of pagans and heretics living on this land. And she started to say the creed, but they said that was not necessary. My teacher told Ma’am Colleta not to worry, it was alright now.”

         This is all very concerning for me so I call Eve into this conversation to make sure I’m hearing exactly what happened then.

         “What is this Anatase is telling me about the Bishop’s soldiers coming here?”

         Eve explains, “They were looking for you to return something they were calling a ‘relic.’”

         “My relic?” She doesn’t see my grin.

         “They said the booty from a band of thieves had been recovered and it was mostly holy relics taken from the Shrine of the Saint. But among the things these thieves had in their hoard were a few personal items robbed on the roadway. They had with them things like torn and bloodied clothing and what they were calling a relic. They said they  were seeking the rightful owner.

         “I was sure this had nothing to do with you until they laid out your old tunic and caplet, which Colleta immediately recognized as what you were wearing all those years ago when you left here.  She stopped me from touching it, because she said it was filthy and bloodied.

         “But how could you have had any kind of saintly relic?”

         “Didn’t Nic tell you?”

         “He just laughed and said he wanted to know if he could keep the old walnut shell that was with the clothing.”

(Continues tomorrow, Thursday, July 1, 2021)