It’s a good sign if they don’t change the locks while you’re away.  I came back to Westminster on Tuesday, to begin life post-sabbatical.   I’ll preach this Sunday and spend most of the week picking up where I left off back in May.

The past few weeks have been eventful with Tricia’s accident.  Thanks to the many who have brought food by the house and been so supportive while our family adjusts to a different routine for some weeks to come.

I had hoped to get further on some writing projects during sabbatical than I did but that will come.  However I did get my feet wet thanks to the writer’s seminar I took at the University of Iowa.  Here’s a creative short piece I was prompted to write by our instructor.  It reflects a bit on our time spent in Ireland.

Ruins

They crumble now, smoothed by rain, taunted by the wind, the hands that built them one carved stone at a time nothing but dust. Still they stand, glassless windows framing skies hovering over roofless sanctuaries. So you have to close your eyes and listen for the grumbling abbots, burping monks, and Latin Psalms chanted at midnight echoing across rock decade after decade, holy sounds only enhanced by unyielding surfaces. 

This was a foundry, bending iron wills, hardening short lives, for journeys no sane tourist would ever take. These people were crazy hunched over their vellum, scratching out peacock colored texts that most could never read. God they were crazy standing in cold water to cancel sins that I list as accomplishments. They were nuts seeing divinity in barbarians who cut them down like hay before the blade. 

It is ghostly serene now, minus the white-hot heat that burned cell to cell. Still they stand, monuments to absurd lives, markers of the extreme, compass points for those who choose to get close to the edge.  So I run my hand over crumbling rock, and I listen.