Post #16.2, Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Historical setting: Pyrenees Mountains, 6th Century C.E.

We are on our journey, two horses a good distance behind the ox cart with the pace set by the little desert father and the ox. We are sent on our way most rudely this morning by the seller of Gallo-Roman stone gods and goddesses because we rejected Antton’s invitation to stay for his party. But surely our own dedication to a teacher who celebrates with the poor and outcast would have made us unfit guests for Antton’s festival of the Solar New Year. I do hope he finds some guests. It’s a bleak beginning to a year with having the very dregs of possible guests turn you down.

         Nic mentions, “I hope August didn’t hear that awful language. I mean in some ways the truth of it just made it so much worse. I too notice the stench of that little fellow but that’s not a reason to use such filthy slurs.”

         “As I said Nic, I’ve spent many long and peaceful times in prayer alone in wilderness places, and sometimes I’ve been with others of these ascetics and I know that baths and sweet scented oils are the stuff of personal wealth and vanity. So desert fathers are known to separate themselves from worldly bliss by making a deliberate effort to show devotion in this way.”

         “You mean you are saying August accepts that he stinks?”

         “Yes. In fact he may see it as a sign of his pious commitment to his life of prayer. And, after-all, it is us, asking the favor of him that he give up his cave and solitude and take this journey with us. I mean, alone in a cave with his ox and with God, who probably loves all smells of Creation, he surely doesn’t require the ancient Nicodemus’s hundred pounds of fragrant herbs to enhance a cave. He is who he is.”

         Nic adds a wayward hope. “But if the heavens took pity on these two fellow travelers who are riding with him, perhaps the clouds would let loose a great torrent of cleansing rain and we would all just smell of  clean wet wool together.”

         Today, the sky is gleaming cobalt for a new, unblemished year marked by the sun’s journey.

         Dear God, the beauty of this new morning seems a gift way beyond any intentions of humility.  The paradox of poverty in a beautiful world is the gracious gift of Creation we all share.  Thank you God, Amen.  And may it ever be so.  

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #16.1, Tuesday, January 5, 2021

Historical setting: Pyrenees Mountains, 6th Century C.E.

         The elfin monk wanders pensively among the Roman statues as we had done at first, seemingly lost in a maze of promised pagan fixes. He is gazing into the laughing face of the fertility goddess with her huge bowl of too much grain. Maybe he too is wondering what the prayers to such a goddess would sound like. Or is he simply studying the workmanship of another sculptor’s hand? We know he is wondering what has become of the Christian subject by his own hand.

         Nic offers answer, “We’ve moved the Christian sculpture into a more sacred space. She is in the oxen shed.”

         The hood and robe of August return a nod of gratitude and he follows Nic to the shed. He looks on it as a stranger as though he has never seen his own work before, but isn’t that the experience of every artist – step back for moment — see it with empathy with the eyes of the stranger seeing it for the first time. First there is a moment of surprise, then the search for the flaw. It’s a persistent dialogue of the artist to himself, “how does it look to others?” “If only I had …”

         I interrupt his wonder, “She is beautiful, isn’t she; just like the author of Luke must have seen her in his thoughts, a woman of poverty and simplicity yet she is holding the richest gift ever given to humankind.”

         The shoulders of the wool robe melt in a human moment, then the little monk brushes off my assessment, a compliment, adroitly skipping over any appearance of a prideful sin, bowing silently and prayerfully.

         We lift the statue onto the ox cart and prepare to start the slow walk to Ligugé, when host Antton comes along, not to wish us well on our journey, but to insist we are rude for leaving before his great festival of the New Year. Apparently his Gallo-Roman guest list has failed him.  Nic offers our most well-mannered rejection but rejection is rejection, and Antton handles it with a heap of flaming language following us out his lane and onto the public path. His words surely include the complete thesaurus listing for Hell.  It ends with “… and furthermore the little priest smells like a cur in heat!” Maybe August is already walking the ox far enough ahead of us and didn’t hear it, or maybe he just turned away and let the jeering roll off his back.

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #15.15, Thursday, December 31, 2020

Historical setting: 6th Century C.E. Somewhere in the Pyrenees

         In these days of waiting for the oxcart and driver, Nic and I decide to take a morning ride to give the horses a stretch and explore the various paths going out from this place possibly to find our direction on toward the north.

         The river we were following cuts deep into a valley with sandstone cliffs which is apparently the quarry being used to source the stone for the carvings.  Now, around a bend we come upon another thing, the monk with the oxcart waiting here these same days that we have been waiting at the thatched houses. Of course! This is the meeting place he knew of when making his transactions with Antton. Surely this would be the meeting place.

         “Good Morning Brother August! We’ve been waiting for you in the wrong place! Come along, follow us to the houses.”

         The messenger was right. He doesn’t speak. He’s a little fellow, in too-large a hooded monk’s robe made of rough wool. The hood is pulled over his head and covers his face completely.  The very long robe is drawn up with a sash at the waist so that his very small and pale bare feet are nearly completely exposed. Since he is a stoneworker it is something of a wonder how such a tiny creature would manage large pieces of stone. But now we see the cart is constructed with winch and ropes along with an extra layer of flooring that can be let down and bolted to the cart as a ramp.

         He easily slips the single yoke over one side of the ox’s head, then the other, then drops the pin in place to hitch the cart. Nic is offering to help, dismounting and leaving me to hold the rein of The Rose. He did tell me once he was more comfortable with oxen than horses.

         Nic offers. August holds the hood of his robe at the chin to get a peak out at Nic, then shakes his head, rejecting the help, gesturing the scar on Nic’s cheek.

         “No, no” Nic answers, “I am really accustomed to oxen. My scar is from a knife fight, not from an ox horn. Really I can be helpful.”

         But he is shooed back to his horse with a kind of grandfatherly back of the hand gesture as one would use to send children off to play.

(Continues Tuesday, January 5, 2021)

Post #15.14, Weds., December 30, 2020

Historical setting: 6th Century C.E. Somewhere in the Pyrenees

         We are here for a few days at this place where sandstone is sculpted into statuary, awaiting transportation for the sculpture of Mary and her baby. Nic paid a healthy sum to this man, Antton, to take this Christian work as a gift to the monastery near Poitiers where we are going.

         A messenger who was sent to find an oxcart with a driver willing to make a long journey into Gaul has returned alone.  It seems an oxcart makes slow any journey and the driver who is willing to help us seems not to acknowledge timeliness. The messenger on horseback was impatient and rode ahead leaving the cart and driver alone on the slow path into these foothills.

         The messenger warns us we will be completely bored with this fellow August. “He never even speaks and he and the ox drudge onward only slow or slower.”

         Nic assures the messenger we won’t suffer from the silence. “Laz can talk on enough for the three of us.”

         “Thanks Nic. I thought you liked all my stories.”

         But it is true I am never short of story. Now memories of pilgrimages into wildernesses inform my extended chatter.

         “I have to tell you Nic, I’ve followed this lifestyle at times myself. For me, I’ve gone alone into desolate places in order to have uncountable days for healing both physically and spiritually.”

         Nic’s thought, “As for me, I think I would get lonely if it were just God and me forever, but then you probably wouldn’t be one to feel so alone; you would just keep on spinning your stories even if no human brother were listening and you would never notice that empty moment when even God seems far off.”

         I give Nic my most sympathetic moment of silence right here before I answer. I know he is one who thrives in community. It is his gift.

          Nic breaks the silence, “Maybe it has to be a personal thing.”

         “Yes, maybe it is personal and that’s how it is so different from the cults.  I find it is a commitment woven from many individual experiences of awakenings. And I know from talking to some of these desert fathers their reasons differ. Some go into the wilderness looking for penance while others are following the hints and flashes they have already seen of mystical illumination.  I also know of others who become lone pilgrims in order to enter into a lifestyle of God’s loving acceptance when the world around them seems so smudged in fears and hates.”

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #15.13, Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Historical setting: 6th Century C.E. Somewhere in the Pyrenees

         We’re guests at this place where statuary is carved from the quarried sandstone. Most of these works are icons for pagan ritual. But here amid the cacophony of Roman talisman is also a carving in a Christian theme of a common woman of Galilee with a beloved baby in her arms. Nic made a deal in gold to take this Christian statue to be a gift to the monastery near Poitiers. The arrangement includes the purchase of grain to fill our sacks and a payment to send a messenger into the wilderness to find the sculptor who has an ox cart and may be willing to help in transporting it to the monastery. Antton thinks the artist may have enough of an interest in seeing this work off to a Christian place that he would be willing to take on such a journey. We are told he is what is called a “Desert Father.”

         “Desert Fathers” I explain to Nic, “are ascetics who choose to devote their lives, or at least some years of their lives, to long hours of daily prayer and other spiritual practice.”

         “Spiritual practice?” Nic asks.

          “Some people find spiritual practice in fasting and ritual or maybe in mentoring others. Some are artists, writers and scribes, or keepers of books. Some simply pray for many long hours. One I knew was a carpenter. In these times they might choose a solitary life in a wilderness area like Egypt, hence the term ‘desert.’ Some live in caves or small huts often alone and isolated. Even though we knew Jesus to be a sociable sort, always showing up for the party this solitary practice was actually modeled after Jesus. Jesus often went alone into wilderness places for his own personal fasting and prayer and his most intimate hours with God. I knew that of him and it is written in the gospels as well.”

         Nic asks, “How is this extreme asceticism different from the cults of the heretics the councils of Hispania had opposed?”

         The answers are obvious. “It isn’t a cult. A cult functions with rules set down by the deceit of a charismatic leader making hoax of known truths, and it eventually it leads the followers to their deaths. The desert fathers practice an individual faith journey with promises  between God and that ascetic; it’s not about loyalty to a human leader based on lies and fear. True spiritual practice is often a twisting path but it leads to spiritual renewal and to life. It is not deadly.”

         The messenger returns without the desert father or the oxcart.

(Continues tomorrow)

Post #15.12, Thursday, December 24, 2020

Historical setting: 6th Century C.E. Somewhere in the Pyrenees

         Nic and I carried the statue of the mother and child into the adjacent ox shed and away from the pagan statuary so we could have a better look at the work. My thought, this would make a wonderful gift to bring with us to the monastery of Ligugé where we will be seeking our callings. Nic worries about paying a pagan price for Christian art, and anyway how would we carry it?

         But here we find ourselves in an ox shed on the Eve of the Christ Mass when the whole Christian universe is hearing this same story from Luke 2. The song of Hannah becomes the lyric of Mary to turn the world upside-down, to lift up the poor and send the pompous power mongers meekly groveling in the streets. Will this kind of justice ever be so? Is the Jesus love intended for the whole world, or just for one heart at a time?

         I knew nothing of that birth. I don’t know if Luke was just spinning a story to speak of the simplicity of holy justice. I can’t verify the tangible details of manger and angels. The truth of it, I can verify. Undoubtedly the gospel writer crafted it from tender metaphor of barn animals and wet and messy human birth in order to tell the universal truth of a simple and just God. This God is a mother’s love that cannot be shaken by any acts of her beloved Creation. It would be hard to offer up a story of the Creator of the wholeness that is love, life and spirit, the unspeakable unnamed God, without using the simple metaphor of a mother and a child. And I do know Jesus was born, somewhere, some way and lived as a child who learned a trade in order to create things with his own hands. And in my strange circumstance of life I did also know his mother. She was Jewish. Her riches were her children and her faith.  Well, faith is not a thing one keeps as a treasure. It is said to be more like a song; it lives as it is sung, and when it is not being sung it doesn’t exist. [footnote]  But Mary, his mother was always singing.

         We, Nic, the ox and I, are together here in the silence of our prayers for however long. The ox was at first, standing. When we came into its place the ox stepped back in apprehension of a huge load of stone it would need to drag somewhere. It was accompanied by these two human intruders who are us. Now the ox has folded his knees with us for his own peaceful night’s rest.

         … and to all a good night.

footnote – Pastor, the Reverend Doctor Kelly Brill of Avon Lake U.C.C., spoke this beautiful metaphor for faith like a song in a message on Matthew 14.  She said she is not the first to use that metaphor which makes faith nearly into a verb, and not a thing one can keep and own. Thanks Pastor Kelly.

(Continues Tuesday, December 29)

Post #15.11, Wed., December 23, 2020

Historical setting: 6th Century C.E. Somewhere in the Pyrenees

         We asked the one who markets stone carvings what artist created this sculpture of the baby Jesus and his mother.

         Antton explains, “We were at the quarry we use to cut the stone for this winter’s work when we discovered another man using our source. We thought we had our own place. But there were three of us and only one of him and he was of a diminutive stature, so we could’ve bruised him and sent him on his way but of course, I have a better sense for marketing than that and I happen to know raw stone is of no value to anyone but a sculptor. So I offered to allow him to use our stone pit if I could sell his works for a slight profit. We made a deal to trade stone for statue. The next time he arrived at our quarry he had this statue in his oxcart.”

         “So who is it who carved this?”

         “Maybe you would want to be asking what the price of this is. Christians seem to cling to poverty over wealth. So I think you will find I can sell it to you at a very low price and still glean my profit.”

         Now it seems Nic is negotiating for this thing he doesn’t even like.

         “Lazarus and I’ve looked upon this woman and her infant with my Christian eyes which tend to see things in ways different from Antton. So here we find a strange paradox, the very face of empathetic poverty from a gospel story we know well, here for sale amid all these pagan idols purposed for marketing hollow wishes and empty dreams of wealth and prosperity. I fear this lady is not a work that should be sold for gold or silver, but obviously she was created as a sacrificial gift by an artist whose work was an act of worship celebrating the Creator. I believe this should be gifted, and not sold for coin.”

         The seller of statues named a price anyway. Nic baulked. I suggested we move the mother and child away from the clutter of the other statuary so that Nic and I could see it more clearly for what it is.

         She is still in the wood base used for moving statuary and it isn’t hard for two men to carry her into the adjacent ox shed so that we can better see her in simplicity. And I think Nic will understand my affinity for this work as it is in a proper setting.

         But of course, the problem remains, what would two traveling Christians do with a statue?

(Continues tomorrow – On Christmas Eve)

Post #15.10, Tuesday, December 22, 2020

Historical setting: 6th Century C.E. Somewhere in the Pyrenees

         “Christian convicts you are? I understand.” Of course he says that. Antton is trying to sell Nic a stone statue.

         Nic explains, “Our thanksgivings are to the invisible God of all Creation.”

         “And that doesn’t seem to be working out for you very well, since you come here begging a sack of grain.”

          “We do have more use for grain than stone.”

         “But have you considered the possible powers of a sculpted stone goddess in the form of the Virgin Mother of the Christ? Just imagine it! Your mystical prayers to an invisible god could wend and weave with the fragrant smoke of sacrifice before the Christian goddess.  I can show you that sample too. Please don’t blame us for this workmanship. This one was not by the hand of our own artisan. There isn’t even any symmetry.”

         I really want to see this sculpture, though Nic is full ready to leave. The man shows us the so-called, “Christian goddess.” He points out the distinctive differences between the fertility goddess and this Christian “appeasement.”

         “In place of a cornucopia or bowl of fruits and grains she is holding a naked baby.” And, he notes, “The Christians seem to prefer their goddess leaner and from a distinctive caste of poverty. I don’t know why Christians want to turn everything upside down seeming to value the outcasts and the riff-raff the most. But no matter, I’ve got nothing against Christians if they have coin.”

         I see it. “This is beautiful! Look at her Nic! I think this draws us into a disturbing empathy with the ancient woman of Galilee. Surely this is the work of one who actually shares in the Spirit, someone who can see the holy shining through human poverty.”

         Nic adds, “I think you like it so much because she looks like you. She has your same nose and brows anyway, though a bit more gaunt with hunger, and of course, she is a woman.”

         “Yes, I suppose you would notice she is Jewish. But look at how she cherishes this baby. She shines a sense of joy, not from owning the plenty as the pagan goddess displays, but in sharing all she can give to nurture this infant.”

         “It’s a piece of carved stone, Laz.”

         “We have to ask Antton who this artist is.”

(continues tomorrow)

Post #15.9, Thursday, December 17, 2020

Historical setting: 6th Century C.E. Somewhere in the Pyrenees

         We stopped at a place with houses hoping to fill our grain sack, but we have been escorted into a most unusual world. In this place the people carve Roman pagan gods and goddesses from stone to be sold at a summer marketplace.

         Nic takes notice of a stone carving of a popular Gallo-Roman fertility goddess. She is a design of rounded, smoothed and meticulously polished spheres of stone. Her abundant thighs spread to hold a bowl of grain in her lap. Unfortunately for us who are seeking grain, it isn’t real grain; it is just a likeness of grain carved of stone. Her long tunic drapes across her knees to her ankles. The broadness of her arms and the fat of her chin and cheeks speak of plenty and of course, it can’t go unnoticed that her breasts are abundant.

         Just imagine the prayers that some lean and longing farmer may bring with his sacrifice to her amid a drought, bowing deep before her knees to speak his wish or at least a hope for a better harvest to come.

         Antton notices Nic’s interest. “If you would like to order such a carving it can be hewn in dimensions to fit your need, perhaps as a personal charm to carry with you in your travels.”

         Nic answers with his rural simplicity. “No need. It’s just that I’ve never seen this goddess so ample, and particularly in a time when I am the one who is hungry for the grain in her dish.” 

         “I understand. And such a carving would hardly be appropriate for a man on horseback. This one was made on order for a particular client — a man of great wealth who maintains a private temple in a distant villa. But she will just have to sit here until the weather is better for travel.”

         “Of course.”

         “If you order a goddess for your own wishes her bowl of plenty can contain whatever may be the benefits of fertility you long after: grain, fruits, whatever — and we can even render her tunic folded back in any style you wish.”

         “No, no. Any fuller revelations of this goddess would surely be disturbing to me. And of course we have no use for statuary. Laz and I are of the Christian conviction so we don’t make wishes on stone.”        

(Continues Tuesday, December 22)

Post #15.8, Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Historical setting: 6th Century C.E. Somewhere in the Pyrenees

         Our immediate search to replenish our supplies and our hope for hospitality led us on a path and into a community of round thatched houses in the style of the grass houses we see often in these mountain places. On hearing our horses, a man steps out of the larger central house.

         “Good morning Brother Stranger” Nic begins, “We are travelers on our way to Gaul, but just now we are looking to make a trade of two little winter furs for a sack of grain. Our supplies have run low.”

         “You should have thought of that when you started your journey.”

         “Of course. But we aren’t beggars. We come with a trade in furs or if you are one who values the likeness of the Emperor we can trade with coin.”

         “Coin, you say?”

         “Yes. We can trade in coin if you have use for coin.”
          “We do use coin. But we don’t trade in grain. We buy our grain, and we only buy for our own need.”

         “What is it that our coin may buy then?”

          “Oh, you are buyers.  My name is Antton, and in these winter months my family and our artisans create great works to sell in the summer markets. Sometimes we also take orders. So you can get anything you may wish for. Let me show you what we have!”

         We tie the horses, and follow the man walking passed a heavy-wheeled ox-cart parked now. It seems ready and waiting to use on this roadway paved in broken stone. It seems to be for larger loads than a sheep or two bound for a near-by summer farm market. We cross over a footbridge spanning a creek passed a row of strange, yet intentionally carved rocks – demons and devils — winged goddesses of Roman origin — legendary creatures of every ilk. The path takes us to a circular thatched portico surrounding an enclosure with benches and a central warming fire. All around us are the kinds of things that can turn a cave or portico space into a pagan temple with an altar honoring any random stone god or goddess who may be receiving sacrifices in exchange for wishes. In fact here is the complete soul-source of Roman temples still in the making.

         Nic seems awed by a very large statue of a seated woman flanked by two horses.

(Continues tomorrow)