Skellig

A safe place.

That's what he'd come looking for.

He remembered, somewhat vaguely after all the years, the breathless run down to the coast, white with fear. The king's men , swords glinting in the evening light, bore down on him. He didn't wait.....he jumped. Thrust himself into the bosom of the Atlantic.

He was almost dead from exhaustion and exposure when that little fishing boat came by in the morning. He remembered nothing from the night past; they fed him, nursed him.... When he knew he'd been rescued, he wanted to jump again.....into the Atlantic.

He waited for the darkness. At sunset, he slipped noiselessly into the sea again. No one saw him.

When he came to, he lay on a rock, on a grassy bank. It was morning. A huge black-white mass reared up before his opening eyes, startling him for a moment. It was an island. Out there in the sea.

He got to his feet...have I been swept ashore again? No...there's the mainland out in the distance...shimmering in the wintry sun. Where am I then? He turned. And lost his breath at what he saw.

A sheer mountain. Green, but forbidding. No fit place for any man, for sure. Too sheer for climb, too narrow a bank to last the day - he'd be swept away like drifting debris when the tide came crashing in. Then he saw the stone steps.

An ancient stairway, deliberately snaking its way up the relentless steep. Someone was here. It was a chilling thought. A picture flashed, like an icon, unfathomably, across his mind - of silent men, working soundlessly over the years, lovingly laying stone after stone.....to the very skies. He looked up again and couldn't find the end of that stair......

It was either the stair, or the Atlantic. Why live again? Those who would look for me now....want to take my life. Even I don't look for me now. Jump.....jump......let the sea take me. Let the sea take me.

He turned, and walked up the stair.

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No strength. Why did I choose this stair? Why am I kept alive? I'd failed......tried in my own strength. It was the only strength I knew.

At midday, halfway up that black, sheer slope, every moment a dance between being blown away by the gales, and clinging, adhesive, to that unforgiving cliff, remaining alive by sheer miracle - divine providence, to speak the truth.

No strength again. I don't care whether I live or die. Heck, I never had cared!!!!! Irony. Blackness.

When he came awake again, he was drenched. A chilly drizzle fell silently. He lay on a grassy knoll, precariously horizontal for a few feet before a yawning black drop opened its evil jaws. One one side, flowers grew among black rocks. On the other, the Atlantic slowly drank in the drizzle. For some crazy, delirious reason, he felt alive again. The cold rain drenched him silently, but a delicious, fresh breeze soothed his smouldering body. The skies were black, yet not angry. Not like the previous day.

Started back up those steps again. Just couldn't imagine how the stair had come to be......did anyone actually live here? May be someone lived here, but not anymore. Either way, surely someone who cared about no other human being; he knew and understood what that felt like.

But my head swims; can't stay on my feet. The Atlantic yawns behind me and the relentless unending stair in front of me. Gale winds. Oh well, let any wind that blows have its way with me; what do I care anyway.

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"How did he get here? We must leave him; it is no business of ours."

"We must care for him. It's God that brings anyone here. Get some hot water, and a cloth......"

"If he could get here, some more will follow; why, isn't he a fugitive with a price? Why need we pay? The bloodthirstiness of men has nothing to do with us."

"We must save him; that is God's will."

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He cut the carrots out of the thin soil; put them with the shallots and the potatoes. The Atlantic yawned in front of him, as it had every single day since he came here. Miles away, Eire stretched; it was becoming a distant memory as the days passed. There, on the mainland, men warred; ate and drank, sold and bought, bustled and moved......it had all somehow ceased to matter. Here, on this hill, time had stopped. Day and night, rain and sun, sunrise, noon, red sunset, murky twilight, black night.....all came and passed, but there was no concept of time.

Here, a few strange men lived; lived to the sky and the ground, in stone huts. All they were aware of, if earth indeed moved them, were the sky above and the ground below. They ate what they grew; sometimes a gull or a gannet would stray into their hands. Months and even years passed and no human being alighted far down the steep, where the hill dipped into the ocean.

Perhaps it was merely survival; on earthly terms, it was nothing more. But this was no mere earthly hill rising from the waters; divine providence provided day after day. Perhaps it slipped into the sea a bit everyday; if you woke up each morning and felt the earth you lay on, you were aware of what divine sustenance alone could do day after day. These meagre men impressed him; they lived with a disdain of life that was remarkable. They had nothing and there was nothing to live for; yet, they lived it not by sight.....but as pilgrims, looking to a different world.

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Sometimes anger draws blood within. Anger I did not know I had inside. Raw hate, bloodthirstiness. Any blood will do; mine or theirs.

But look where I live.....anger does nothing for this place - does not preserve it. If this slipped into the sea, me and my anger would go with it. No, there must be something, even SOMEONE, bigger than my anger, any one's anger.

I'd seen crude drawings of the carpenter, that some of the men had....there were no artists here. There was no colour. There were pencils, and parchment. A stark, bare tree hung inside the little chapel. They never said anything about Him. I didn't ask.

But I wondered. Wondered what manner of man He must have been. Why do I feel peace, who had never known peace in my life? Why did I slowly think it was possible, even RIGHT, to live again? My anger wasn't right; sometimes, the sea clawed like an enormous enraged dragon at our little hill, but was I right to think He never let this hill go? And when I walked on the stair, with the foaming sea on one side and the black steep on the other, did an invisible hand loose the wind's fingers as they coiled and clawed around my frail body?

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He'd found his safe place now; a patch of grass with underlying black rock, in a corrie on the farther side of the hill. Here he lay alone for hours, watching the kaleidoscope of sea, earth and sky, as God's gentle breeze blew over the hurricane gales in his soul. Permanence came; and with it, miraculously, that jewel of life on earth - purpose. The hard knot of anger came undone slowly, uncoiling and melting away, replaced by a strange calm which had no root within him; he could not explain it and certainly didn't try.

He loved this place; here he communed with what had become his home in the sky, not yet realised. Here an invisible hand touched his, here where the same hand joined sea, earth and sky.

He thought, strangely, of what this place would be if someone came here after him. Would they feel the invisible hand? Maybe they would....if he could put up a stone there. He heaved a black stone into the soft earth and began hewing it a little each day.

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Michael had gotten separated from the group he'd come with, and found he'd wandered on to the far side of South Peak. It had been cloudy and murky all day, with sheets of rain; they'd been advised not to come here today. Michael never knew what drew him.

Then he saw the Cross. On this seemingly God-forsaken outpost, looking towards the distant Americas far, far beyond the horizon, a gentle breeze blew and a weak sun appeared. The rough-hewn cross stood as it always had, a little tilt, well planted into the still-soft meadow earth.

Someone had known an invisible hand - in the attic of time, and just thought to record it.

It stood a witness to another who'd been here in a bygone age..... the centuries had flown by but yet the cross stood, braving the onslaught of the elements. Michael knew it would stand for centuries to come; unless the invisible hand were to remove it......when it's work was done, for all time and all ages........