Post #20.1, Tuesday, May 4, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. The house of Eve, pagan healer

         A long night of sleep into this waking with graying skies, and now it is late morning.  Yesterday I was listening to Nic talking on and on to let me know I’ve returned to a world of ever-changing human life. Thank you God, for allowing me to be alive while splayed onto this bedsheet in the stillness of listening. Thank you God for such a friend as Nic who is telling me of this world I was returned into alive again.

         Today, I am able to move, thank you God.  I can move my mortal human form as was intended in creation, stretching now a hand and a foot and one-by-one each part of me once nearly bare bone, now a new painful stretch of sinews forming.

         I’m thinking of Ezekiel seeing the valley of all the dry bones. Was it an ancient war? Was it just a time forgotten? Why was it so distinctly a valley? Or was it a plain that felt like a valley? Was it his valley alone with a whole earth of dry bones? Human spirit wanders the valley we see and touch and long to find the Spirit of universe in the pain of stretching in a way of growing anew.

         The prophet doesn’t mention the length of time it takes for the sinews to return to the bones, for the breath of life to be shared among those rising up, for the stretches and the pangs of new life to howl then sing, then rise and dance. Why did the hand with the inks copying these pages of Ezekiel’s valley for us to read in this new day fail to keep the part about the pains of each growing into new strength — the rising first on elbows only up from the clay and then to sitting on the edge with new strength barely noticed, but rising above the dust cloud. Was there no word left in the story telling us it was a very long time to wait before the dancing? Rising is so slow and painful even in the meager measure of human years.  Healing seems to make itself a story with too slow a plotline, an eternal continuation, an ox journey that needs editing …

         Eve is in the doorway with a sorrowful continence.

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #19.13, Thursday, April 29, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. The house of Eve, pagan healer

         “Yes indeed,” Nic goes on, “the world has changed. The Church has changed. Even life in a monastery edges toward a standard practice now. And it isn’t about the Jesus words. We still copy the same words of gospel over and again perfectly in the changeless vernacular of St. Jerome. We shape each letter of it for every wealthy church patron who can sponsor a bible. The bible stays the same but the world skews anew.  I’m too tired to tell it again after I wrote it in those pages. I thought you needed to how to fit into the world when you awoke. I didn’t think I would be here then. And anyway, I’m too tired to tell it all just now. Please, dear Brother, stay close to God for ever and always.”

         He didn’t hear my “Amen.”

         Eve listens nearby and has come to take Nic to the place she has prepared for him near the fire so he can rest.

         Alone now, my prayer pours from spirit in a thundering deluge of thanksgivings.

         Dear God, thank you for staying near me in this time of strange reunion. Thank you for the generations of my family, here and forever. Thank you, especially for such a good friend to let Jesus love be our bond even greater than his Roman military lessons teaching fear and calling it hate of the Jews like me and like Jesus. These are so many redundant thank you’s cascading from my thoughts of Nic. Thank you for the life gifts even to the mortals, and for the strange welcome back to life with people who once loved me are trying to hobble love together just now. And need I tell you, I noticed Ezra’s wife Colletta, is still struggling with metaphor in her Christian faith. She made an angel’s robe for my rising. It’s not sized for my earthly bones and has a huge gapping space for wings I never expect will emerge from my mortal again meat of man. She set the arms in upside-down, so I could forever raise my arms in praise, or be flying. She hears of angels and has no mind for spiritual metaphor – then an artist who brings metaphor to literal image plasters a winged angel unto a wall of a sanctuary and Colleta believes angels have this exact visage. Thank you God for the inspiration for her plan, for all of this and everything more. So be it.

(Continues Tuesday, May 4)

Angel’s clothes, metaphor, artist’s imagination, family love obligations, inspiration, changes,

Post #19.12, Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. The house of Eve, pagan healer

         Nic is telling me how my bones were saved from a forever memorial under the stone that fell.  He rambles on, “August tried using the winches adding to them the stronger pulleys retrieved from the crane arm but to no avail.  So on the third day he had the stone-cutters split the stone in two to managed with strong men and winches.  On the fourth day we found you were indeed badly crushed and broken into uselessness like the crane was also. If you don’t mind me saying it so bluntly, you were very definitely dead – though not stiff with death or stinking yet.  That was the surprise. We all thought you would be stinking by this time.  There were all sorts of theories flying around about how come you were not stinking after four days dead. No one believed the ‘Lazarus theory’ even though your own blood sisters had the same wonder back in the day. [John 11:39  — best from the KJV for the use of that rare word “stinketh”]

         “We were able to remove what was left of you. I wrapped you in your cloak and laid you onto the cart next to the lady of stone. Brother August wasn’t pleased with that. It was his cart and it was messy. I knew enough to bring you up here, and we didn’t have to travel at ox speed.  It seems your patient brown horse was willing to wear a yolk and harness. I made it in good time while everyone else in Bordeaux was worrying over the broken crane wheel. That heap of wooden crane curves never did heal in all these twenty years. The new basilica never rose to the heights of the older Roman buildings. The whole world it seems is coming to grips that the empire has indeed fallen. Well, except for the pope in Rome who is still battling Arian heretics. I wrote all that stuff in some history pages I gave to the little girl, Anatase, who is as good at reading as she is playing the flute.  I thought she could read you the events of these years when I’m gone.

         “And I have to tell you, my dear friend and brother, when I am gone, I promise I will stay gone. I won’t leave you all with near on a two decades of hopes and wonders caught in a limbo between the possibilities of death-stench or life-stench.”

         I speak my apology. He doesn’t hear me.

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #19.11, Tuesday, April 27, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. The house of Eve, pagan healer

         Nic is telling me what happened when I last died and it does explain why this healing has taken so long. He says the huge stone being raised by the wooden crane fell back and landed on the wheel, while I was walking the treads.

         Now the child who assists my daughter has come bringing us a tray with tea and bread. She tells us this is a special brew to give new strength to body and mind.

         “And what for the soul?” Nic asks teasingly.

         I answered, “She makes music with her flute for the soul.”

         I’m not sure my words were really spoken; Nic couldn’t hear me. But Anatase was amazed and told Eve, “The broken man can speak! And he wants me to play my flute!”

         Eve instructs the child, “Let them have tea first, then you can play your flute for them.”

         Yes, the tea and the biscuits give us both strength and Nic can actually hear the flute. It’s true our spirits are renewed by the music.

         I’m nearly restored to life though not yet “glowing,” as may have been the expectation of Eve.  And Nic rambles on in his elder’s whisper-voice, telling me his worries with the huge stone.

         “I assumed as we all did that you couldn’t have survived such a horrific thing, but I was the only person who could guess that might not be the end of you.  I feared we had only three days until you awoke back into life, and probably we would find you badly damaged. I felt an urgency to remove the stone that no one else shared.  Brother Joel listened to my worry and reminded me we had four days, because only Jesus rose on the third day, and if you really were that Lazarus, you would have at least four days in the tomb. I found that assuring.

         August went to work right away, I think just to set my mind at ease, making sure the stone would be removed and not just left there to be part of the church. They were redesigning the structure so no more stone would need to be lifted by cranes and there was a thought to leave that stone imbedded a foot deep, as it fell as it was. It would be designated as a memorial to fallen construction workers. Your name would be carved on it. That was a grim possibility indeed.”

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #19.10, Thursday, April 22, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. The healing room of Eve’s house

         Nic tells of the day of the disaster.

         “So, you probably don’t remember that day of the horror when you died so dead down in Bordeaux. Brother Joel and I were sitting on the bench outside the guesthouse, and from that distance we were watching the outside of the wall under construction. Shollo and Kairn and a couple other construction workers were on top of the wall using the new winches we mounted up there the night before. We could see the large arm of the crane swing closer to the wall, and the ropes through the top pulleys were taught. Then we saw the huge stone rise up to the top of the crane dangling just past the wall, as the winches were turned and it was brought closer, edging, barely onto the bed of mortar prepared at the top. Everyone from the ground was shouting higher, higher, but from where we were we could see the crane arm itself was not really high enough, and suddenly there was a loud crack like a thunderbolt overhead, then the whole earth shook with the deep thud of the rock fall. One of the winches we had secured just the night before went tumbling from the wall.  The men who were working the winches flung themselves down the ropes like monkeys from trees.

         “I feared for what I would see when we got to you, but Brother Joel asked me to walk with him as he practiced with the crutch. I told him my fear that you would have been struck by the falling debris.

         “He said, ‘God be with his soul.’

         “I said, ‘God be with every part of him!’ I had to be distraught to argue with Brother Joel. He wanted to preach me the value of soul in times of stress. Like I wasn’t already wracked with prayers! The spoken ones could have been mistaken for curses.

         “August was shouting frenetic orders to everyone as though anyone were listening to a little fellow in a gigantic monk’s robe. The crane was in a million pieces all strewn over the whole area of the wall, and the huge stone was just where the crane wheel had been. The other tread man was sitting on the stones aside, in a bloody tunic waiting for first aid. I knew you had to be under the stone and there seemed to be no concern at all about moving it off of you.”

(Continues Tuesday, April 27)

Post #19.9, Wednesday, April 21, 2021

Historical setting: 584 C.E. Eve’s house

         A small bench has been brought into this room and Daniel and Ezra bring a frail and aged man in and he is seated on the bench. He is clear-eyed in a monks robe; the fringe of his tonsure is pure white, not the silver of the Nic I remember. His hands are shaking like a choir director who has lost the tune. Eve brings his cane and places it near his hand. He thanks her with a very soft voice, and when he turns I see this is indeed Nic.

         “Nic!” I think he didn’t hear my voice. I am not sure my speech was actually a word, but I am sure I made a sound. He looked at me as though he’d heard.

         So softly he speaks, “I don’t hear well now, and apparently you don’t speak well either. So it’s best I do all the talking. How strange a paradox that is. But it is the blessing of old Simeon that I have lived to see you alive again.

         “I have to say, your death is the strangest journey we have yet traveled together. And I do see your rising now to be a promise for us all. Isn’t that supposed to be the purpose of this life gift that you suffer with forever, to be a physical metaphor of the spiritual resurrection? Oh, excuse me. I fear I’m reaching for the sermon and I’m not ordained for sermonizing.

         “It was as you thought, that Ligugé was a monastery whose abbot would accept a man of age, an old soldier to be among the monks. He let me keep a horse for a while also.  I took my sword and my father’s iron tunic and had them melted and hammered into tools for tending your daughter’s herb gardens here. I learned that from the prophet. I know it was intended as a metaphor, ‘to hammer the swords into plowshears.’ But I chose to take it literally, so that the peace it speaks of may be of earth as it is in heaven.  It is not just the spiritual peace of becoming a monk. As my sword was hammered into better purpose so have I been.”

         If I could be heard speaking I would tell him that he is sermonizing again. And I’m waiting to hear him unwind some stories of these years I’ve been missing.

         He reads my expression.

         “Oh, you would rather hear me tell you what has happened while you were dead than listen to a sermon. Of course.”

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #19.8, Tuesday, April 20, 2021

Historical setting: At the family graveyard — 584 C.E.

         At this waking fresh light floods all around as Ezra and a younger man are at work taking down the low arch of reeds that is this sepulcher. This younger man must be my grandson Daniel. Here he is grown to be the powerful young man who can help his father with this vineyard when I was not here to help when it was needed.

         Thank you God, for generations that come to keep the cares.

         Ezra is speaking. “Now Papa, without the structure we can better see to cut you loose from the rags.

         “Colleta has already stitched a tunic for you. It is of bleached linen she was saving for something blessed and holy.  You will surely look like an angel when we get you all dressed in it. That was what she wanted for you.”

         If I could answer I wouldn’t know what to say. But apparently, I have the gift today of showing expression with my face.

         “He looks to wonder at that, Papa.” Daniel says.

         Ezra assumes, “Maybe it is a pained look and we are hurting him removing the linens. Are you alright, Papa?”

         I can smile today.  Each of my pale and frail limbs lie uselessly in place in the form of a man longing for the fullness of life, and what is here on this hill is a cold breeze. Now I see I was carefully brought here to this place near Susanna. This is where I would leave flowers for her. I hope I’m not too late to thank Nic as this kindness was surely his doing.

         Thankfully the white tunic doesn’t suit me. They came back with a quilt for a wrap and the wagon. Now it is Daniel who carries this broken man that I am into Eve’s house after a very short wagon ride.

         Thank you God, for keeping this family.

         I’m spread onto a bed.  I believe this is the very bed-stand and side room I built here for Eve to use when she takes in patients. She was a healer even as a young woman. In those years after the plague I was left in the plague pit outside of Tours. Eve and Ezra, who survived were ill and sent to the pagan hag of healing near Tours. When they were well Ezra was taken to learn the work of tending grapes, and Eve learned midwifery and the art of the healing. The old woman left Eve an ancient book of pagan remedies, and the scars of pox that had taken her life.

         (Continues tomorrow)

Post #19.7, Thursday, April 15, 2021

Historical setting: Inside a daub and wattle sepulcher — 584 C.E.

         At this waking the new light of morning is splashing and surging in clear patterns of brightness throughout the whole weave of the wattle.

         Anatase is here with a cup of water again, and her flute.

         Dear God, thank you for this wonderful waking. 

         She tells me, “Daniel has returned from Poitiers with your  monk.” I sip the cool water and it feels so good that I can swallow it today. The child chatters on. “But the old monk is very frail now, so Daniel and Ezra are taking him to my teacher’s house. Then they will come and take you down there to see him.  I have to tell you a secret that the old monk told me when I first came here so many years ago.  It’s something only I know and that’s why it’s secret.  He didn’t want me to tell it. But this is what it is.  He feared he would be dead before your waking so he wrote some pages for you to hear.  I’m supposed to read them to you in case I’m still here when you wake, which I am. But then, he isn’t yet dead either so now I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with the pages.

         “I must say, you did much better at sipping water today. I will tell my teacher you have already learned sipping. She will be pleased. And she said I am allowed to play my flute for you today, unless I see you close your eyes. That will mean you don’t want to listen and I’m supposed to stop.”

         Now, I guess I must pray I don’t blink. I so love to hear the music. She’s getting more proficient at the little tune every day.  Now her fingers speed over the beats of the dance faster than any dancer’s heel can flurry. But now she has chosen to pick through her five notes for a new tune she doesn’t yet play. She’s collected the proper notes, but making a tune of it is a dreary repetition. I would sleep, but if I close my eyes the music will stop. So, this bliss of dreaming is inside out. The goodness and music are on the waking side of dream.

         “Sorry the music was not to your liking. I will leave now.”

(Continues Tuesday, April 20)

Post #19.6, Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Historical setting: Inside a daub and wattle sepulcher — 584 C.E.

         “He looks to be a living man, dear Teacher. Shall we unwrap more of him?”

         “I don’t know what we should do. Maybe he would like to sip water.  Go, Anatase, and fetch a cup of cold water for him.”

         There is a scurry of leaving but Eve is still here.  I focus my eyes on her face. I see she has lost her sight.  I wonder if she knew of this blindness when I last saw her as a young woman only pretending to know reading and reluctant to marry.  But here she is a healer and now a teacher. How I wish I had strength to reach out my hand and touch her and I would tell her she is beloved. It’s her hand now that gropes for mine.

         “Papa, maybe you can hear me? Your hand is warm as living after all these years. You told us of your gift of life and life again, strange gift that it is. We only marveled in the wonder of it never thinking of the long waits through deaths and all the griefs you know in lifetimes of losses.

         “The God-things you taught me in childhood are my secret now, Papa.  People these times choose their quests for healings between the miracles of the Christian saints or the ancient pagan science. I know you would say God loves us all; it isn’t one or the other. But this world only knows choices, not fullness.  Since I’m not a saint so if I choose to be a healer I must be of the pagan variety and I have to keep my God prayers hidden. But I do pray to God and I very often thank God for staying close. I’ve prayed for my strength and life to last into this day, knowing nothing about how your waking would be except that it would come. And now I see by your frailty your healing will need to go on a bit longer before you are the full strong man we’ve waited to see walk from this tomb all aglow.”

         “Aglow” she says? Does Eve notice I’m smiling? Have I any smile at all to give? She doesn’t even seem to notice the clasp of my hand around hers. I’m sure I will one day move again but I don’t expect to be “glowing” ever.  I hear the child coming back.

         Eve offers, “Papa, would you like a sip of water?”

         The child tips the cup. “It is a cool sip of water.” She says. I can’t swallow. My chin and beard have a cool, fresh drenching.

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #19.5, Tuesday, April 13, 2021

Historical setting: Inside a daub and wattle sepulcher — 584 C.E.

         At this waking I hear the voice of the child.

         “I see the wheel is over the opening again. But don’t worry, Teacher, I can roll it back easily. I always roll it off when I come here to practice my flute.”

         I hear them rustling. I feel someone very near.

         “Here, Teacher, you can touch the edge of the opening then crawl in through this space. Now Ma’am, if you reach out your hand you will touch the broken man. Don’t be afraid. He’s very gentle.”

         Gentle? She says I’m gentle? I can’t even move. But I feel the touch. The firm hand of a healer touches my head.

         My daughter Eve’s clear voice is as always, the deep whisper of calm, “It seems he’s wrapped in linens is he not, Anatase?”

         “Yes Ma’am he is all wrapped in ribbons and ribbons of linens. Only his hand is unwrapped and that doesn’t seem as broken as they say he is.”

         “The monk must have wrapped him like this when he made the sepulcher. We should unwrap the linens.  Oh, dear little Anatase. I hope it isn’t a frightful sight for you.”

         “How does that concern you Ma’am? I am a student of healing and I am your eyes, so do you think I would be fearful of seeing a death now? If I haven’t had to turn my eyes away from new birth then why would I not be able to see the face of death? And anyway, do you not feel his gentle living spirit with us now? Maybe he’s not in death at all just now.”

         “I do feel my father’s spirit near us. But that’s not unusual for one who grieves as I would have grieved had my father died forever dead. But Anatase, the deaths of this man are not usual deaths. And I‘ve never removed linens like this before. Even I don’t know what to expect.”

         The child explains, “The hand that has been unwrapped seems like a hand of living person. Here, reach your hand to touch it.”

         “Oh, yes, this hand has flesh and warmth and life. Let’s take the wrappings off his head.”

         My eyes see a blur of bright lights, sun pouring through the spaces in the rotted away daub on the wattle of this tomb, and here are two human faces a blur. It is Eve, sparkling and silver-haired now, and a child with long yellow braids.

        “Please, Anatase, what do you see of his face?”

        “He has a black beard and sparkling dark eyes. I think his eyes are like yours Ma’am. But I think his are eyes that see, because he was casting his gaze all around and now he is looking right at you and now at me.”

    

 (Continues tomorrow)