Tag: faith

The Unquiet Land

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excerpt

“For both of us, of course. And for Michael and Mother Ross.”
They had been standing in the main street. Now they began to walk slowly down the hill towards the square. Caitlin felt easier when Padraig could not look into her eyes and read the secrets there.
“Caitlin, I do not believe you can answer for your father anymore,” Padraig said. “A rift has opened between Finn MacLir and me that will be difficult to close. I was once like a son to him. I am a stranger now. And the love we used to share is all on my side.”
“Padraig, please don’t say that. Finn MacLir could never disown you. He’s not a vindictive man.”
“He’s a proud man. With a hatred of religion,” Padraig argued. “I represent religion. I preach the truth of God that Finn despises. As he denies God, he denies me. As he despises the truth of God he despises me.”
“You are taking everything much too personally, Padraig.” Caitlin felt herself becoming angry with the priest. She thought he was being unreasonable. “My father doesn’t despise you. He loves you, Padraig. In many ways he still regards you as the son he never had. You even more than Michael. There was a bond between you and my father that is still as strong as ever. He admires your achievement, Padraig. He gives you full credit for everything you have done. But he is disappointed that you chose to be a priest. You could have been a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant. You could have gone into any of a dozen different professions. But you entered the priesthood and you can’t expect a man like my father to be pleased about that.”
“I did not choose the priesthood, Caitlin,” Padraig said. “God chose me to be a priest. He has work for me to do. And I believe that part of that work is to save the soul of Finn MacLir. God sent Finn to save my life for Him. In return I must save the eternal life of Finn MacLir. God wants him, Caitlin. God is the good shepherd fretting over the loss of one sheep. He has sent me home here to bring that lost sheep to the fold.” Padraig grew excited. “That is my mission, Caitlin. To bring Finn MacLir to accept Christianity. And not Finn alone. I am hoping that you too will reaffirm your faith in God. You must, Caitlin. You cannot continue to live in darkness, in hopelessness.” A fanatic gleam shone in Padraig’s wild, dark eyes. “Could that be what is troubling you?”
They stopped again in the village square.
Caitlin realised that she was standing in Padraig’s shadow. It was a normal shadow, elongated by the lowering sun, but not monstrous, not threatening. Out of the shadow truth had come.

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Savages and Beasts

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a few minutes to pretend of listening to their pleas and needs,
then the elections are over the politicians disappear as they have
done before and the Indians carry on living their substandard
life with no light anywhere to be seen. These are the people the
Anglos have to give a voice and a sense of what freedom means
by way of example and by way of re-distributing part of this
country’s wealth and share some of it with the Indians. However
I can’t see the Christian Anglo ever getting to that point
of psycho-spiritual advancement that he’ll accept this idea as
something doable. Then, they talk of racism and that they stand
against any form of it but not by example: only in their hollow
talk and the promises which they don’t keep.”
Anton’s father sighed and stirred in his chair. Then he
continued.
“Here we have two different cultures, totally opposite to
each other and each of them preaching their ways to the members
of their society and the hatred one feels for the other which
results only to a short-lived victory for either side thinking they
each make some progress while in reality the fundamental differences
remain and are perpetuated and all this because there
is no dialogue. None of the two sides truly want to sit down and
talk since each side distrusts the other and as long as that distrust
exists between them there won’t ever be a dialogue, there
won’t ever be an embracement. The only way forward is that
small room for dialogue, the exchange of ideas, views, thoughts,
images, and perhaps one day something positive will emerge; this
is the chance both sides must take because there isn’t any other
way forward, except of hatred, enmity, endless doubt, hell.”
He stopped again and took a deep breath; yes it was much
to take for anyone; besides the truth always hurt the ones who
didn’t like it.

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In the Quiet After Slaughter

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infant, the swell of faraway traffic, but not a peep from the boy. The
gate opened and slammed shut again as though instructed to do so
by an invisible hand.
He’ll be home by dinner, they told Esther Rhodes. He’s at that age,
they said. But the assumption that Fender would soon saunter
home, as Lois Daniels predicted, proved groundless.
– Call me when he turns up, the social worker said. She left her
card on the table.
By early evening the stifling summer air had cooled, shadows
lengthened in the yards. I was told to peddle to the drugstore and
get Mrs. Rhodes’ prescription refilled.
The All-Stars, their practice cancelled, gathered around our
kitchen table. They divided themselves into groups and assigned
duties, filing out the front door solemnly in their black and silver
club jackets.
A few teammates sat with Esther as she worked the phone. She
called kids Fender had gone to school with, fellow idiots, people
he’d done odd jobs for. When, at 9 p.m., he still hadn’t returned, she
called the police.
Others fanned out across the neighbourhood. They knocked on
doors and scoured the woods. The All-Stars aimed their flashlights
into garages and yards, under parked cars, behind every bush. They
rang bells and blew whistles.
Sgt. McManus turned up at the house to explain to Esther that police
don’t file reports until someone has been missing 24 hours. People in
the Project respected the veteran policeman.He had fought at Dieppe.
–We’ll find him, he said. I’ll bring him straight home when we do.
But they didn’t find Fender that night or the following evening
either. Esther Rhodes looked like she was about to unravel. I think
she had so many pharmaceuticals coursing through her bloodstream
that she no longer knew what was going on, which was, I
suppose, their purpose. After three days the All-Stars declared a
moratorium: no more frames tossed until Fender was found.
– Esther has already lost a husband and a baby, a team member
reminded. She might not have the strength to survive the loss of
her angel.
A week passed without a sighting. It was as if the boy had
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Blood, Feathers and Holy Men

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“True, but first we must find a safe shore and make repairs to the prow. She is
ready to break up if we run into more rough weather.”
“Fresh water is running low, and we need fruit and vegetables to stop the spongy
gums and bleeding. Several men are quite sick. Their wounds from the sheep capture
are not healing.”
Hjálmar was the last to speak. “Well, then, we will let the current carry us farther
south. There is land to the west, but ice still floes between here and that far shore. We
have plentiful fish and fresh lamb on board to last us to safe harbour.”
When Captain Hjálmar informed the crew of his decision, they expressed their
approval with a loud cheer. Only Ari voiced disappointment to his new friend,
Brother Lorcan. “Now you will not get to meet my brother, Melrakki, nor fish with
me in our mountain streams, nor ride our Norse horses. But most of all, I will not
see my dear father whom I miss so much. We argued when I left to go to sea. I have
been away from home so long that he will think me drowned as he threatened I
would be.”
With the tremendous pressures of having to fight currents, winds, and unexpected
disasters finally over, Norsemen and monks alike began to relax, to enjoy the
leisurely voyage south. Some mended clothes. Some whittled dogs, horses and sheep
out of bone and driftwood as toys for their children at home. Others fished by attaching
gut line to small blocks of wood. With rock weights and bronze fish hooks
baited with lamb liver, they hauled up cod hand-over-hand as they sailed once more
over open water, steadily southward. The diet of fresh fish was welcome, although
several of the crew were experiencing sores and lesions in their mouths and on their
lips caused by lack of fresh vegetables and fruits.
Brother Rordan at last sat talking with Ul beyond the almost silent sheep pen.
The captain’s thrall had given up trying to avoid the Celtic monk who had been so
insulting.
“Please forgive me and trust me to be your friend. If we were to be sold in Thulé, I
doubt if we will be now. Whatever time we have left, I would like to get to know you.”
“I bloody well doubt it. There’s not a member of Hjálmar’s crew wouldn’t like to
get his filthy hands on me, and if he catches me talking to you, I’ll be in for a beating
and so will you.” With that, the Irish thrall rose to his feet and slipped away.
Eighteen days after the eruption off Thulé and five since their ice encounter, a
huge whale, almost sixty feet long, began following the ship. It blew a fountain of
water higher than the ship’s rail. Then, with a massive sigh and a gentle rippling of
the water, it sank beneath the surface and reappeared far ahead. Later on the same
afternoon, the Norsemen were visited by a shining black pod of killer whales. One
by one, the dozen beautiful mammals moved gently under the hull and resurfaced
on the other side, blowing water like Moorish fountains.
Captain Hjálmar saw the visit as a good omen. “Tomorrow,” he told the men, “we
will find good harbour and all will go ashore.”
That evening, everyone drank toasts of mead to Ægir, King of the Sea and to the
Sækonungar, protectors and patrons of Nordic sailors and explorers. Every Norseman
also drank to the Irish God who had delivered them from an icy grave.
Finten felt a sudden surge of excitement as he recalled stories told to the student

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The Unquiet Land

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“That ideal has died, Padraig. The light has gone out. It goes out for many of us, I’m afraid. Because it’s only an idea, not a reality. The Greeks first had the idea when civilization was young. Didn’t they believe in the human community as commonweal? Didn’t they tell us we were all free equals linked by a shared concern for the common good? Come on, Padraig, you know more about these things than I do.”
Padraig swallowed a mouthful of wine and thought for a moment. He wondered if he really did know more about these things than Finn. “You mustn’t overlook the Christian component of your humanitas, Finn: humanity as a moral ideal rather than a biological fact. From Christianity, not from Greece, comes that conviction you mentioned that human life has value. Man was created in God’s own image and was precious enough in the sight of God for God Himself to become man. This is what gives human life its value, Finn, and human life must be protected, must be saved at all cost and returned to God transmuted into spirit, pure and undefiled.”
“Another ideal.”
“Another aspect of the same ideal.”
“But equally unrealistic.” Finn leaned forward and held Padraig in the grip of his eyes as the Ancient Mariner held the wedding guest. “You are still young. The torch you hold aloft to light your way through life still burns with the fierce brightness that youth demands. You are just starting out. But as your journey proceeds and the day wears on, the idealism that fuels your torch burns lower. The light grows dimmer, Padraig, till you no longer see your way with clarity. And you stumble and fall. And every time you stumble or fall you spill some of the fuel you still have burning. And the light grows even dimmer. Long before midnight it’s all gone. And you can’t see your way anymore. You look back for some idea of where you were heading, and of course it’s all darkness there too. The light is gone. The darkness reveals the idealism for what it was: a figment of the human imagination, a fiction born of the unique human capacity for creative thought and nourished by the unique human need to believe.”
“It’s too pessimistic, Finn,” Padraig argued. “The light that guides us really burns; it really exists. You can keep it burning brightly right to the end if you have faith. Faith is the fuel, Finn. Pick up your torch again and find the faith to relight it and keep it burning. It will show you freedom, truth, justice, goodness. It will show you love. It will show you God.”
Finn smiled. “As I said, Padraig, you are young. You have a fire in your head and in your belly. I am old. My head is cool, and my belly …

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Savages and Beasts

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Yet the evil pouring out
of that entry shook him up as if a powerful tempest unlocks a
house off its foundations, such was the thunderous burden put on
his mind to comprehend the atrocity the details of which he read.
“Why, father? Why a man would end up doing these evil
things?” Anton asked.
“Most of these behaviours relate to the man’s psycho-spiritual
essence or level of human’s advancement but in this particular
case it all flows out of what these people who run the Residential
Schools believe, on what philosophical basis they have been
brought up, what values they have been taught in their schools,
and believe me, in the era we live in this country, the Anglos, still
live with the colonial era mentality. They still consider themselves
occupiers rather than co-existent people next to other
people they see themselves as the archon class and everyone else
down under them. That’s where all this misery springs from.”
“Dad, how could that be possible, we live in the 20ieth
century, this is an advanced country, this is not Africa,” Anton
resisted his dad’s negativity.
“Yes, son, it is true this is Canada, yet think of it seriously,
how did these evil things could ever occur? Where would their
origin be but in the colonial era mentality of the people? Because
when we supress we follow in the steps of tyrants who declare in
speech after speech their desire to bestow freedom to all and to
work for the betterment of people’s lives whereas they indulge
in self-deception and monologues which have themselves as the
only audience, satisfying themselves and their ideologies, whereas
when we reject suppressing others and accept others the way they
are we transcend deception and become true societal citizens.”
Anton said nothing. He felt his father was right. He felt
it in his heart and he only hoped that one day things might get

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Hours of the Stars

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Sirius
We saw her unfold the spin wheel of time
opposite the wind
and the pashas we saw
the beak of day touching her sun tied
on the iron stake of a rock and the eagle
coupled her sides. There she armed herself
while each of her gods stood forty yards high and
started talking to children and geraniums
at times even men got teary. Then you would think
they tossed barley into the fire or dice
on the chess of virgin Mary as
time takes away time and brings back
her sea-kerchiefs and the vigils of the north wind.
Time unfurls the flutes of colors and
the blouses of girls that into their eyes
convoys of birds and flowers travel.
At the lower levels the olive tree leaves
embitter us and at the higher level
pines breath signals a shiver
of guilt sprouting on her skin and platoons
of cypresses climb up the hill
as the hours start to blaze she offers
atonement libations to the fair weather; she assumes
the ephebe July and establishes the new crops like Aeneias
white horses thresh Logos and the golden plains
from end to end
fever spreads into her veins for hours and hours
like weather does to grapevines
that the performance of a group of disorder
appears straight by the edge of the precipice.
The hours stagger on their red heels and on their faces
intensifies the blushing aroused by their hearing
focused on the far away when silence
announces inexplicable oracles and
truth demands ransom as
years go by she becomes an orphan and
hangs over the waters when she seeks to
blindly attach herself onto something as
the camel driver gets fooled by the mirage
of the desert and assumes seeing far away
the sword of Alexander the Great pushed
into the scabbard of the Dead Sea.
We saw her floating over waters and ruins
like a big star when the mermaid
rejoiced in tearing up the forgetfulness
of the sea floor and during the night
Glaucus fought against the hours striking
them one by one over the castle of Astropalia
and the bell of Virgin Mary.

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Blood, Feathers and Holy Men

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Perils of the Sea
As if the wind heeded Finten’s prayer for a quick return to Ireland, a stiff breeze
blew the tiny craft steadily southeast, along the coast of Mull. By noon, they were
in sight of Colonsay but the wind died before they came close to Islay. Now they’d
definitely not reach Kintyre before dark when the North Channel currents would be
most treacherous.
Rordan felt miserable that Finten had chosen to sit next to him as if to make sure
he said his prayers aloud with the other Brothers. Why can’t we just pray silently
on our own. I’m not up to all this chatter when we’re cramped together like this. In
chapel it’s different, I don’t have someone breathing down my neck. He tried shifting
away from the priest but Father Finten just seemed to lean in closer.
As evening approached, a chill wind whipped up waves and enclosed the craft in
clinging fog. The monks bobbed around until they lost all sense of direction. For a
few brief moments, the moon appeared through the mist and, by her position, the
seamen knew they were heading north instead of south.
Keallach exclaimed, “My God, we’re sailing in the wrong direction.” He pulled in
the sail while Laoghaire manoeuvred the side rudder to bring the currach around.
The turn took all of fifteen minutes, an eternity in the choppy sea.
The moon hid behind a black cloud as the sky darkened. Chilly sleet drifted over
the huddled crew and icy rivulets seeped down their necks. Finten crawled between
furs, shivering violently, praying his Pater Nosters and Ave Marias. Brother Ailan slid
a cover loosely over his cauldron. He had just gathered the uneaten supper from
wooden plates to be saved for a later meal and had secured the supplies in leather
bags against the mounting storm. The currach began to be walloped by waves, as she
moved up one side and down the other of each mounting swell.
The dizzying lift and drop made Finten nauseous. Soggy bread that had slipped
from its package swished about in the seawater among smelly slices of semi-preserved
whale meat and kippers. All that and the stench of the dying hermit priest
were more than Finten could stand. He grabbed the wooden bucket knowing he
was about to throw up before he could reach the side. “Out of my way.” He knocked
Rordan from his seat as he leaped up dropping the bucket. “Lord, Lord of the Seas.
Ohhh! My churning gut.”
Father Finten stumbled to the leeward and heaved his stomach contents to the
sea. Swiftly, Brother Ailan moved and grabbed his priest to save him from being
washed overboard. He led him gently back to his seat amidst the furs next to Brother
Rordan who turned his head away to avoid the sickly smell of the priest’s breath.
“Brother Rordan, for the love of Jésu, what have you in your bag to soothe this
wretched sickness?” Finten groaned.

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Poodie James

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back into the bay, “we ought to try a power gurdy. I don’t know if it
would control the lines any better, but it would speed things up.”
“I don’t trust them. The hand gurdy is fine.”
“But, Dad…..”
“Peter. I said the hand gurdy will do for us.”
“Look, I’ll pay for it. If you don’t like it, it goes, and it doesn’t
cost you anything.”
“No. I said no.” The steel of stubborness was in the old man’s
voice. “That’s the end of it.”
Evenings when the boat was in port, Peter rarely had supper
with his folks. He roamed. After midnight, they heard his quiet
steps on the stairs to his room.
“You must say something to him, Ivar,” his mother said. “He’s
going to find trouble.”
“He’s a grown man, Hilda.”
Then, after a few weeks back on the boat and more suggestions,
Pete argued with Ivar about how to do the work, occasionally at first,
and after a couple of years nearly without ceasing. The change in his
son troubled Ivar Torgerson. A scowl seemed engraved on the face of
the young man. Eagerness for work transmuted into a flow of resentment
and quarreling. He swore at people who got in his way when he
walked on the dock. Ivar heard reports of Peter picking fights in bars
and tormenting drunken Indians on the waterfront in Seattle. He
heard worse too, things he would not listen to, about Peter and sailors,
about the kinds of things some sailors do. At Christy’s Tavern, he
knocked Hans Karlson flat when Karlson began to tell him what he’d
heard. Ivar never asked his son where he went on his nights out alone.
He could not bring himself to mention what he knew Karlson and the
others whispered about.
On a Sunday evening, Ivar and Hilda strolled down the hill
toward the bay, relishing the softness of the springtime air and the
quietness of the streets. They looked in store windows, admired
flower beds, ambled along the dock.
“Ivar, you’re headed toward the boat. This is Sunday. Come on,
we’re turning around right now.”

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Jazz with Ella

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David smiled. “You know, I don’t know when Gorky wrote that, but it’s the utterly perfect story for this country in 1974. Don’t you find that so much that’s told to us is a beautiful illusion when the truth is really ‘bitter’?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” Paul continued. “The Soviets are like the old man—they just ignore the failures. The elevators that don’t work. The trucks that break down. The harvests that don’t yield what they expect. We visitors are like the father—we have to put a name to it, admire the beauty, then we point out that it’s not the truth. It’s no wonder they don’t really like our visits.”
“This is great philosophizing,” Maria cut in, “but I hear the truth right now.” She leaned over the railing. “I’m sure I hear a real nightingale singing.” The notes were pure and true, haunting. The group was quiet for a long time, listening, delighted.
Finally Paul got up from his deck chair. “Nah, it was just a scrubby little village lad.”
★
Paul Mercier returned to his cabin with the intention of diving into the definitive biography of the Sentimentalist period writer Karamzin that he had been trying to finish before the end of the trip. It had been difficult to find any study time because of their rigorous sightseeing schedule, though his conversations in Chopyk’s advanced class had been informative. That’s one thing about the guy, he is a serious scholar. He wondered if academia was truly his own calling. Did he really want to end up like Chopyk—an old lady, unloved by students and women alike? When they started out on this trip, he had found it easier to read the Sentimentalist view of nature in literature than to be out in the streets of Moscow actually viewing the real thing. But while they were in Leningrad something new had been emerging, something not found in books. He had been taking enjoyment from the scenery; it was refreshing. And he had even been moved by the rich, barbaric Russian history he saw depicted in paintings and church frescoes. For amusement, Paul had been keeping an informal list of the countless statues of Lenin they had seen to date, the endless art galleries, museums, and palaces of culture they had visited, but now he threw down these lists in disgust.

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