A Vision

ONE SUMMER DAY I lay upon the grass. I'd sinned, no matter how, and in sin's wake there came a kind of drowsy peace so deep I hadn't even will enough to loathe myself. I had no mind to pray. I scarcely had a mind at all, just eyes to see the greenwood overhead, just flesh to feel the sun. 

A light breeze blew from Wear that tossed the trees, and as I lay there watching them, they formed a face of shadows and of leaves. It was a man's green, leafy face. He gazed at me from high above. And as the branches nodded in the air, he opened up his mouth to speak. No sound came from his lips, but by their shape I knew it was my name. 

His was the holiest face I ever saw. My very name turned holy on his tongue. If he had bade me rise and follow to the end of time, I would have gone. If he had bade me die for him, I would have died. When I deserved it least, God gave me most. I think it was the Savior's face itself I saw. 

-Originally published in Godric

Godric's View of Prayer

WHAT'S PRAYER? IT'S shooting shafts into the dark. What mark they strike, if any, who's to say? It's reaching for a hand you cannot touch. The silence is so fathomless that prayers like plummets vanish in the sea. You beg. You whimper. You load God down with empty praise. You tell him sins that he already knows full well. You seek to change his changeless will. Yet Godric prays the way he breathes, for else his heart would wither in his breast. Prayer is the wind that fills his sail. Else waves would dash him on the rocks, or he would drift with witless tides. And sometimes, by God's grace, a prayer is heard. 

-Originally published in Godric

Angels When They Sang

IT ALSO FELL TO me to tend the lads who sang at mass lest, left alone, they'd tear Saint Giles to bits. They chirped and fought like sparrows in a trap. They'd steal up with their candles from behind and drop hot tallow on bald pates. At Pentecost they brought a cage of mice. They set them free. The women shrieked and held their skirts. One whiskered villain ran off with a morsel of the Host and scuttled up a drain. They puffed their cheeks with air and mocked at Littlefair behind his back or cupped their ears like Joan and hooted out, "How's that again?" I caught them once at unclean acts behind the crypt. And yet it was like angels when they sang!

-Originally published in Godric

Godric's Musing

AN EASY THING it is to love a babe. A babe asks nothing, never chides. A babe is fair to see. A babe is hope for better things to come. All this and more. But babes grow into men at last. That's where it turns a bitter brew. "He hath no form or comeliness," Isaiah says. "No beauty that we should desire him. A man of sorrows we despise." Christ minds us to be good, to feed his sheep, take up our cross and follow him with Hell's hot fires if we fail. All this and more our Savior bids when he becomes a man, and to a man we say him nay. Thus when the Bishop tenders me with his own hands Christ's flesh and blood, I slobber them with tears.  

-Originally published in Godric

Vernacular

ELRIC HAD STUDIED with the monks. He wrote and read. He knew the Gospels back and forth. He had the psalms by heart. An oak grew near his cave with one great branch he'd climb to like a squirrel and perch there till he'd sung them through. He sang in Latin, but, for me, he put them into speech I understood. 

"God keeps me as a shepherd keeps his flock. I want for nought," he said. "I bleat with hunger, and he pastures me in meadows green. I'm thirsty, and he leads me forth to water cool and deep and still. He hoists me to my feet when I am weak. Down goodly ways he guides me with his crook, for he himself is good. Yea, even when I lose my way in shadows dark as death, I will not fear, for he is ever close at hand with rod and staff to succor me." 

-Originally published in Godric