Post #24.8, Thursday, Sept. 16, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         This time I paint the dove from the back. Triangular, yes, but its head is forward with legs extended for the landing on the head of Jesus.  Maybe it’s a more awkward position than a nestled dove but it is true to nature and yet a triangular wingspread is discernible. I’ve achieved compromise.

         Today it’s the master of the scribes who comes by my bench.  “Scrape it clean Brother Lazarus. Brother August will finish this. You do well with the pen, we thought you would be able with the brush also. But for now, we need you more for copying exactly.”  So I’ve been demoted, sent back to scribe.

         St. Jerome’s translation is really quite similar to my own since he chose to work from the ancient Hebrew, so I appreciate the cadence. Of course, John was always in Greek, at least since the Jewish stories of Jesus were morphed into Gospel by the new emergence called “Christian.” And the master of the scribes doesn’t seem to notice my own little edits with an all-cap lettering style for the places where Roman up-dates once changed “Sadducees” to “The Jews.” No one who is a capable reader seems to slow down and ponder a lettering style, so it goes unnoticed among scholars. But those student readers who pick through the letters one-by-one might notice. My hope is that readers who come with fresh eyes and will see that “THE JEWS” are different from “the Jews” who were all of us, and it was only “THE JEWS” who were making the politics of hate into Roman prejudice against our own people. Shouldn’t it mean something that Jesus was Jewish? In these times Jesus isn’t even known as a man; he is of some other “substance.” My indelible hope is that this gospel won’t be fodder for prejudice. Wishful thinking perhaps, but still…

         Dear God may it be so that this gospel does not become a forever tool for human hatred. So be it.

         The days are shorter now and with the afternoon thunder storm rising we are very nearly working in the dark. Some are moving our benches at angles to windows to capture whatever light overcomes the dark. Some light lamps. The shadows are danced onto walls with only the slightest light — lamps with lightning flashes nearly constant.

         The rain pours down, drenching, cleansing, quenching a thirsty earth. A sweet fragrance of earth anoints us.        

(Continues Tuesday, September 21)

Post #24.7 Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         “It’s relentless! The stiff, unbent, notions get painted over the ancient stories and called doctrine. It is as though God needs to be reinvented in each war of Bishops called Councils.” I plead with the master of the inks.

         “Scrape it clean and start again, Brother Lazarus.”

          I beg, “No one has to invent God! God already is! God is present with every little snail and dove. Doesn’t anyone notice?”

         Brother August tries to quill my wrath. “Let it go. We all have to scrape the parchments at first.”

          “The God-shine of nature is still here today as John saw it. This creative image of God is always new for new eyes but also always ancient and true. Like a new day rising, not pre-read for interpretation by the anointed scholar then tucked rotting away to a formless odor in a timeless reliquary.  I thought you, of all people, Brother August, would understand how these structures of creed intrude!”

         “Brother Lazarus, this work isn’t where artists find our prayers – it’s just the craft we practice to support the monastery. When I came here I had been finding my own prayers in my cave using my hands, sculpting in stone. Your father, Lazarus and I talked about the asymmetry that I believed marked the nature of a mother and child, when the only thing the Church really expected was symmetry. It was a hard lesson I couldn’t learn, so my artwork is still in my private place for personal prayer. Here, I use my skill of the craft to ink the usual expectation. When your parchment is clean again make the dove point to a dryer-headed, baptized Jesus.”

         “But clearly it says, ‘It rested on him when he came up from the water.’ It’s what John says.”

         “Of course, that’s what the words say, but, young Brother, we always think of the dove reflecting the Holy Trinity as it ascends. That is what the patron who receives this bible will expect.”

         Now it’s Brother August who is talking market. And worse than scrapping the parchment again, would be a pointless argument with Brother August.

         Dear God, do you find all this scraping away as distasteful as I do? I suppose you see everything, even this, more broadly. Help me see wide, too. Amen.  

(Continues Tomorrow)

Post #24.6, Tuesday, Sept. 14, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         With a fine, strong hair for a brush I’m now at an artist’s bench to fill a circle of art on the page of John 1:32. My subject will be a dove landing on the wettened head of my friend and teacher, Jesus. The dove finds respite from the swirling winds of distant edges of sky onto the raging and roiling river Jordan not far from my own birthplace in Bethany. John, who lives among the smallest of nature’s critters — those of the locust and honeybees — sees God through the metaphors of nature. A dove, resting on the head of Jesus is surely a sign for John that the Holy Spirit of God finds a home with this man, Jesus.

         In my drawing I see no need for tri-sections of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. My little sister Mary was there by the river that day.  She was in her teen years then, a bit of a rebel, always looking for the new ways of thinking maybe just to roust our father’s old Pharisee ways, or maybe she was called by the Spirit toward something new. Who am I to know her motives? So she followed this wraggle-taggle wanderer in a hair shirt, shouting, I mean shouting!  She and many others were drawn to the voice in the wilderness shouting repentance – the turning from the old ways to the new. At first she thought he was speaking of a personal sin, the dishonor of her father she felt in her rebellion, then with the crowds there she realized this was the whole world changing not just a few of the Jews. The voice of the prophet would not let go of humankind any more than God could. John was setting the world on a whole new axis but he hadn’t yet observed this reversal; he was waiting. He knew change was eminent. He called for repentance, and when the dove landed on the head of Jesus he recognized God’s Spirit anew – manna from heaven for the hungry minds – escaping the enslavement of Roman imperial orders and free from the punitive fears of power politics, set into the loving nature of God’s grace.

         Dear God, Thank you for windows on grace. May my little circle with a dove finding safe refuge from the waters become a new porthole to see out into your forever love. Amen.  

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #24.5, Thursday, September 9, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         The stable master is a caldron of bubbling royal rumors, and now he is telling me of a commoner, a son of a slave, turned into a count by King Chilperic.

         He goes on, “So this is how the fellow, Leudast, sleezzeled his way to the high place of being stable master for one of King Chilperic’s favorite wives.

         “’… He [Leudast] was sent to service … to the royal kitchen. But as his eyes were bleared … and the bitter smoke hurt them he was removed from the pestle and promoted to the basket, but he only pretended to be happy among the fermented dough.’ [Footnote]  So he was promoted again to stable master for that Queen. It was only a short step then to be assigned Count of Tours.”

         The stable master adds, “His service as count only got worse after that. In the end he was executed.”

         I wonder, “And the King’s men chose to tell this story to a loyal stable master?”

         “Yes, humbling for me, but it was I who asked about Leudast, because I had heard of his high appointment. It seems it is Bishop Gregory who is the one keeping a cold shadow over this, using Leudast’s demise as a lesson in sins and punishments.  The Bishop distains the King’s appointments of commoners. Consider King Chilperic’s most favorite wife, Queen Ferdigund was first a mere concubine.“

         Thinking of my own granddaughter’s husband, Bertigan, “I was wondering about this penchant for raising commoners to higher office because I know of a count of a lesser berg than Tours. Chilperic also raised him to office of count though he had no noble inheritance.”

         “Good trick if you can do it.  The Bishop would say it’s against God. So the king’s apparent disrespect for nobility is just one more thing Gregory adds to Chilperic’s list of the sins.”

         I mention, “But of course, the King is not the only one of noble birth here. Bishop Gregory himself is of the lineage of Florantinus, so his opinion may be more personal than holy.  I mean, Jesus himself was a commoner.”

         “Hardly” the stable monk argues back, “Jesus was a king, born in the lineage of David…”

         “As was said of most of the Pharisee Jews of the times.”

         “But Jesus is seated on a great throne of heaven at the right hand of God. Isn’t that right, Brother? Surely you’ve heard the gospels.”  

[Footnote] A History of the Franks, Book V, #48,  by Gregory of Tours, Translated by Ernest Brehaut, (reprint from First Rate Publisher).

(Continues Tuesday, September 14)

Post #24.4, Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         Now there is a stirring among the horses and the doves flap and fly immediately into the rafters.  The stable master is at the doorway, surprised to see another monk here in his own assigned workplace.

         “I came out here for some hairs of horses for my paint brush.”

         “Hairs of horses we have aplenty here, Brother. And my currycomb still has some hairs of royal horses who stopped by here yesterday when one of them came up lame. All four of them came in here at noontide to escape the sun’s heat, and after a wrap of the hocks and a rest they were on their way again.”

         This man must be lonely. He is a fountain of human chatter with news as the one who meets all the visitors when they first arrive, even just travelers who aren’t even guests. He knows all the latest happenings of the world and he waits to tell all to anyone who shows up listening.

         “The king’s men were here for hours with all the news of the Kingdom but the abbot doesn’t want us spreading the unholy gossip in the oratorio or at the dining boards. So I can only speak it to the horses unless someone comes in here for the hair of a brush. Let me tell you what I know.”

         I nod; he continues.

         “King Chilperic is calling his guardsmen together to go on a hunt into his brother’s woods. You know it is Brunhilda who rules there now as consort to the baby King. They said the Bishop of Tours is very annoyed with Chilperic, the King of Nuestra, these days.  He calls him a “Nero.” That was an idiot ruler of Rome, you know.”

         “I know. But I thought Chilperic was on better terms with the Bishop.”

         “Yea, you would think, but when you get two rulers with power over the same territory, even though one claims heaven and the other earth, feathers are bound to fly.”

         “I’ve heard Chilperic is spreading the nobility far and wide nowadays, even making counts from commoners.”

         “Aye. Did you hear tell of the stable hand in Tours, son of a slave who was elevated through the ranks, right up to count? Leudast.” [Footnote]

         “I’ve heard of such rises in power. But the count I was thinking of is doing the king’s business in a smaller village than Tours, though he was also given lands.”

[Footnote] A History of the Franks, Book V, #48, by Gregory of Tours, Translated by Ernest Brehaut, (reprint from First Rate Publisher).

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #24.3, Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         In my plea to read the Gospel of John as poetic metaphor and less as literal things of earth I ended up promoted to an artist’s bench. Apparently, my sketch of vining grapes was more beloved than my argument against Trinity. So I’m assigned to illustrate a border circle on this page about John the Baptist.  This speaks in John’s voice of his baptizing of one of his followers. John is clearly trying to make sense of traditions for ranking teacher over follower as this newly baptized Jesus is already loosening the mortar of tradition. [John 1:15-31]  Maybe the abbot assigned this art to me because he knows I will sidestep ruts of tradition? The abbot is wise.

         This text gives images of baptismal waters and a bird landing on the head of Jesus. [John 1:32-35] I know the images of holy cliché –dove stylized into a triangle diving from cloud as a pointing arrow on a banner to denote the Jesus just popping up from the water. Do doves descend straight down into water? Or was the original artist of this image envisioning a diving duck? The words of it say the dove landed on Jesus, it didn’t just point to Jesus. Like the dove sent out in the Noah story, it found a safe place out of the water and maybe returned with an olive branch.

         I know where the doves roost. So let me prepare to ink this art by winding a few well-chosen horsehairs onto a stick to make my brush. I’m excused to visit the stable.

         The stable is the sweet smell of horses and hay, a welcome solitude for me at this moment. The wings of the doves flying among the rafters are readying for a winter that today only seems a mythical tale told in cooing to fledglings. And I’m sitting down here for such a long, quiet stillness amid the gentle sounds of horses at peace, snorting, chomping at hay, setting a hoof, rustling the straw. The dove’s songs and coos are long and peaceful. One flies down. It “ascends” and lands on stable gate. Now I see it’s true. The dove doesn’t drop straight down, and they don’t take the shape of an arrow. It is simply a soft wad of feathers, wings extended for the glide, then a tucking back into the ball after the landing. A second dove flies down, next to the first in the same pattern of gliding and feathers.  So what could be the artist’s image of this? 

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #24.2, Thursday, September 2, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         We are considering using more art in our copy of the Gospel of John. I make a sketch that doesn’t speak of the currently popular idea of Trinity to let the sketch itself argue the issue. I suggest the room we have on the page for art show the grape vine growing up and weaving around the whole page from the single root of God’s love. It will remind scholars, laypeople, Roman Christians even heretics and pagans that one God is the whole of it, like a vine, like Jesus told his followers near the end of his earthly life. [John 15]

         It’s for the artists, the abbot, the proof-reading master of the scribes and even the others of us scribes who ponder my sketch.

         “Shouldn’t the vine be at the end of the gospel?” the master asks.

         “Maybe it could be the beginning and the end.” I answer. 

         Brother August adds, “Maybe it should be on every page as a border.”

         “But wouldn’t that make this gospel different from the others we have already completed?” argues the master.

         “Maybe it is.”  The abbot concludes, “But if we use the grapevine, each leaf should have three lobes, and each vine should have three bunches of grapes, and each bunch should have three grapes, so there will be no mistake. This is the gospel that defines the Trinity.”

         “But, your Blessedness, Dear Abbot, leader, teacher, Father, friend, let me suggest that the gospel was here before the Trinity was contrived so many years ago. Why must our artwork speak of Trinity when the gospel didn’t mention it?”

         The proof-reading monk explains, “You can’t just read John, and know what it means.  The Councils of Nicaea, Chalcedon and even more of these convergences of scholars have had to interpret what it really says. It isn’t for the lay reader to know.”

         I would argue, but the abbot can see where this is headed and he simply orders the pragmatic compromise.

         “Dear Brother Lazarus, let it be known that those who sponsor the copying of these gospels are of this earth and of this time. We need to honor the boundaries already set by the Roman Christians in the work that we do here. It is what our sponsors expect.”

         “And so be it.”

         Now even Brother August is pleased with all these massive trinities of grapes.

         He answers, “This is rote obedience, not art.”

(Continues Tuesday, September 7)

Post #24.1, Wednesday, September 1, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         We are at our work stations in the inks instructed to slow-walk the copying of John’s Gospel because there is no next assignment waiting. We will use more art and smaller letters to take up our time. But I fear art is so definitive and this Gospel of John, by its very nature is ethereal.

         No doubt, my opinion is heresy, but it is surely no worse than any other heresy that uses this Gospel for its proof. Those expecting a purely tangible duality whisper that John is simply the battle between earth and heaven — even, at one time, it was thought to be a “Gnostic” gospel.  But of course it isn’t that.

         This metaphor of “Word” which has no word to fill that space but “Word,” is the unspoken name of God for which there is no speakable name. Light, untouchable, Love, invisible, Life, unbounded – these are metaphors that lead the spirit to see invisible things, yet these metaphors are also of earth. So how could this be Gnostic, which denies the sacred nature of earth? Those who would say John is Gnostic notice only its mystical haze and jump immediately to the reliability of tactile stuff of earth and read it as the separation between earth from spirit — a simplistic duality. Then the next part of a Gnostic view is judging one leg of the duality as good (that would be the spiritual) and the other, (creation) as evil.

         But clearly, this gospel doesn’t use earth metaphors to speak of evil, rather earthly metaphors are also the breath or pneuma of awe for God. It isn’t heresy because it believes in things unseen, but it is heresy because it denies God’s own edict for Creation: “It is good.” The poetry earth — light, life, and love – simply say it is “on earth as it is in heaven.” It is the opposite of dividing earth and heaven against each other.

         So John’s Gospel jumps right into a fearless journey through the thin places, and heaven and earth become one mingling of God through the atmospheres of mystics and the poetry of earth. And there are no heavenly powers separating the great universal love into three “persons” or demanding the artist show us two people and a bird. It is the all-inclusive singular — the everything of all. 

         So I ask the artists and the master of the scribes and the abbot, “What art are we intending for all this spacious parchment we are saving for art?”

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #23.13, Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         Leave wide margins in John he says, so the artists will have plenty of space. And what will artists do with all that plenty? Will they simply make everything of God as three somethings?

         My sister Mary, a beloved first follower of Jesus never imagined the Gospel would be repurposed to create a humanly discernible God. If even the stars are countless one could never expect human imagination to grasp the fullness of God?  All of Creation is God’s imagination, from before there was a beginning and on forever and ever. With no human words to speak it, the Gospel begins with unspeakable space. We try to reduce the blank space to a manageable definition for the sake of translators, scribes and artists. Fill in the blank: “Logos” “Word.” But maybe she meant something more — the God for whom no spoken words can be complete.

         And always those of us humankinds who long for doctrine think there is a need to reinvent a god for Christians to ink. We long to know words and images beyond our own imagination for words and images. But God loves us, and knows our need to know more than we can know so it is all spread out before us anyway –the full universe of the Creation just to give us metaphor. God’s own poetry speaks what is beyond our tongue to say – as love, and life and light… And those who know God through awe and prayer, and reverence for all that is, know no word to say it.

         And those who don’t think they know God begged to have a simpler diagram.  The Alexandrians and Constantinoplians, and leftover Romans, and even some of the out-of-favor heretics from Jerusalem near Bethany all journeyed long through deserts and mountains; they argued and fought, and quoted books and even wrote new ones all to invent from one God too awesome for words — a working model of a Trinity.   

         Those newly moving over from paganism could agree that three things would definitely clarify the issue. So the clear notions from the times when gods were limited to words and form came up with all the flittings and peckings of a pictorial content: two men and a bird – A Holy Trinity.

         Those of us from the Bethany table who ate and drank with Jesus heard his metaphor of the vine.[John 15] We are one with God, though now it is God who seems to be three.

(Continued Wednesday, September 1, 2021)

Post #23.12, Thursday, August 26, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Ligugè

         On this day I’m assigned a bench near the front of the scriptorium. So the work I do must be of fine quality as fewer monks are ahead of me to check my work. It’s a sign my accuracy is trusted. I’m also supplied with a monk’s robe and tonsure so not to disturb the appearance of unity. A tonsure isn’t just convenient hair, here it represents a sacred commitment. That feels like an outward symbol, as I am indeed committed to the love commandment of Jesus. But then I suppose, the outward show of this embedded nature of me really shouldn’t be needed. And in other places I wouldn’t be allowed this appearance without committing to the creed. But I can’t honestly speak the creed though I know the words. I still believe I know of Jesus as a human friend and I also believe in the wider holiness of all humankind. Yet here I am shorn.

         The elder monk tasked with insuring the quality of work comments they had no idea of Nic’s talent.  So, may my centuries of practice shine as a memorial to my dear friend Nic.

         Matthew, Mark and Luke are fully complete so now we are venturing into John. We are instructed to leave wide margins and to give the first letter a particularly wide width of frame in which many hours of art may be applied. Time is unlimited since we have no more assignments ahead. I don’t know why fewer books are needed in these times. Perhaps there are so few who can read, or maybe the kings and counts are sponsoring their books from scribes with more youthful errors now in the Benedictine scriptoria.

         Word is, King Chilperic wants to re-write the creed. Apparently, the Trinity thing is not to his liking either. [Footnote] But of course, his bishop, the Bishop of Tours is firmly opposed. Maybe the wealthy patrons are starting to have concerns that even the gospels are out-of-date in these new times.

         My prayer is silent as well it must be. Dear God, are you seeing this? Those assigned to be holy are clinging to the ancient human control, and those assigned their power by ancient human lineage are wondering about the holiness of it all. How wide must this circle be scribed to find the meeting place for all of these? As it is now and forever, Amen.

[Footnote] Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chilperic_I, retrieved 4-13-21, mentions, “Gregory … objected to Chilperic’s attempts to teach a new doctrine of the Trinity.[2]” Referencing Gregory’s History of the Franks, Book V.

[artwork] John 1:1

(Continued Tuesday, August 31, 2021)