Every person we meet is an opportunity to learn. Tarlách taught me that there are some people who know everything. Unfortunately they don’t know anything else.
Tarlách had been baptised and called himself a Christian, yet disagreed with almost every aspect of Holy Scripture.
Exasperated, Brendán finally asked, “Do you even believe in God?”
“On good days I do. Most of the time I don’t.”
“How can you say you’re a Christian when you have no faith?”
“On the contrary, I have infinite faith. I believe that everything is shadow and smoke.”
“Including you and me?”
“A collection of dust motes,” Tarlách said dismissively.
In Brendán’s mind there appeared a quiet pool like polished silver. And then a hand, slapping. “Still water cannot move by itself, that is not the nature of water,” he said to Tarlách. “It must be acted upon by another force. Would you agree?”
“I suppose so,” the Ulsterman reluctantly admitted.
“And dust motes cannot gather of their own volition to form a human being; that is not the nature of dust. So some other power is at work.”
“If I grant that—and I’m not sure I do—are you saying that power is God?”
“What else could it be?” asked Brendán.
“Accident.” Tarlách extended his huge hands palm up, as if the gesture explained everything. “It’s nothing but an accident.”
“Look at your hands, Tarlách. No, I’m not criticising their size, I’m admiring their strength. Consider all the things they can do. What ‘accident’ could shape such complex and useful tools?”
Tarlách wanted to accept the compliment without agreeing to the premise. “That doesn’t prove the existence of God.”
“I myself am the proof. My imagination…”
“You imagine God exists because you want to believe in him!” Tarlách interrupted triumphantly.
“That’s not what I mean,” said Brendán. “My imagination comes from God, who created me in his image. Before there was me, God imagined me. I was kindled by God. And so were you.”
I did not consciously choose those words. They rose unbidden from a deep well of belief I had never explored. Yet it was there. A strength and a sanctuary given to me in my earliest childhood.
By Íta.
Brendán wrote, ‘Tarlách and I traveled together for ten or twelve days, during which time we talked so much we grew hoarse.’
Some might find it hard to like the Ulsterman, but I did. Tarlách was the dash of vinegar which cuts the sweetness of honey. Only after we had parted company did I realise what he really wanted. He wanted to be convinced.
Am I convinced?
Looking down at myself after all these years I see a belly like a small cooking pot, a pair of knobbly knees, and feet as twisted and gnarled as oak roots. Surely Brendán, with all his imperfections, is not a replica of God.
What has happened to my faith along the way?
Chapter 13
Wherever Brendán’s peregrinations took him, he heard music, soaring above the valleys and floating like mist around the mountains. Birds sang the day awake and sang it asleep again at night. Hunters sang around their campfires; farmers sang as they ploughed their fields; women at their looms sang weaving songs; youngsters at their play sang game songs. Traders even taught their children counting songs.
One cold, starry night a single human voice, unaided and pure, was carried on the wind to Brendán as he slept. Singing of love with a passion that permeated his dreams. Singing a lament that broke his sleeping heart.
The Gael fought. But they also sang.
Although Brendán tried to avoid warfare during his pilgrimage, in time it came to him—in the form of a red-haired, freckled man with a hawkish face, a young warrior who had been knocked unconscious during combat.
Colmán awoke to find that the tide of battle had rolled on without him. He lay flat on his back on trampled grass. Leaning over him was a clean-shaven man of his own age, holding a wooden staff.
“Hit me with that stick and I’ll kill you,” Colmán growled.
“Not from your present position,” observed Brendán. “But don’t worry, I’m not a warrior.”
“I’m not worried. You’re the most harmless creature I’ve seen today.”
“Is that meant to be an insult?”
“Do you take it as an insult?”
“I take it as a compliment. I am Brendán, son of Finnlugh.”
“Well then, Brendán, give me your hand, will you? My head’s still ringing. I am Colmán, son of Lennán,” he said as an afterthought while Brendán helped him to his feet. “Have you seen my sword around here? Or my shield?”
“What does your sword look like?”
“A bit longer than your forearm, with a leaf-shaped blade. Who are you that you know nothing of swords?”
“I’m a pilgrim,” said Brendán. “I don’t fight.”
“That’s hard to believe,” Colmán retorted. “The shoulders of you belong on an ox. You have to be a warrior.”
“I don’t have to be anything other than what I am. If a man’s future was determined by his origins, no bird that comes from an egg could fly.”
“I think I’d better lie down again,” said Colmán.
Brendán put an arm around him and helped ease him to the ground. The warrior sat with his knees raised and his head lowered, breathing raggedly, while dizziness came in waves. Brendán went away. Returned. Pressed a wad of moss soaked in water to his forehead.
Colmán said hoarsely, “I’m in your debt.”
“I’m a Christian, I give my help freely. There’s some blood on your tunic; I have a small assortment of herbal cures if you need them.”
Colmán looked down at the crimson smear across the saffron cloth. “I don’t think that’s mine.” He ran one hand over his body. “No, definitely not mine. Some other poor fool’s.” He gave a crooked grin, his teeth very white in his freckled face. “I’ll be all right, just let me sit here awhile.”
He sat. Brendán sat down too, and waited. After a while Colmán spoke again. “Did you say you’re a Christian? I’ve heard of your tribe; they’re all over the place these days.”
“We’re not a tribe. Anyone can be a Christian.”
“Even the unfree?”
“Slaves and kings alike.”
Colmán responded with a contemptuous snort. “I wouldn’t join a band of people who would accept just anybody.”
“That’s all right,” said Brendán. He sat down beside the warrior, reached into his bag, and produced a loaf of bread. Breaking it in two, he offered half to Colmán. “There’s a stream in the meadow over there and I’ve filled my waterskin. Here, have a drink.”
The warrior drained the waterskin but ate only a couple of bites of bread. “This tastes odd,” he remarked.
“I carry fish in that bag.”
“Hunh. A man needs red meat to keep him strong.”
“I don’t need strength the way you do. What I need is strength of character. Of soul.”
“You’re as odd as the bread,” said Colmán, looking owlishly at his benefactor. He was having a little trouble focussing his eyes.
They sat in silence again, while Brendán covertly watched the other man for signs of improvement. When a faint hint of colour returned to the warrior’s cheeks, he said, “Do you live near here, Colmán?”
“Not at all, I come from the far side of the Shannon.”
“What brought you to this place?”
“The fighting, of course. The king of Munster demanded a hundred warriors from the king of my tribe, and I was one of them.”
“When they miss you they’ll come back for you,” Brendán assured him.
Colmán looked dubious. “They probably think I’m dead, that’s why they went off and left me.” His bright grin suddenly flashed. “But we were losing anyway and autumn’s in the air, so I think I’ll go home for t
he winter and cut firewood and tell war stories.”
Cheered by this prospect, he was soon back on his feet. Brendán helped him look for his weapons. They found his shield half submerged in a tangle of bracken. The small, circular shield was made of boiled oxhide stretched over a wickerwork frame and whitened with a heavy application of lime. When Colmán pounded the shield with his fist a cloud of dust arose, making Brendán sneeze. “There’s more than one way to get the enemy off guard,” Colmán laughed.
They could not find his sword, though they searched for the rest of the day. “I loved that sword,” Colmán said mournfully. “I made the hilt myself and set it with sharks’ teeth I got from a trader. I made the scabbard too.” He ran his fingers along the embossed leather sheath that hung from his belt. “It’s no good to me now, though.” He unbuckled his belt and removed the scabbard.
“Save it for your next sword,” Brendán advised.
“It doesn’t work like that. First you have the blade, then you shape the leather to fit it. Every time I look at this it will remind me what a fine weapon I lost; that some other maggot picked up and ran off with,” Colmán added bitterly. He started to throw the scabbard into the bracken.
Brendán caught his wrist. “Give it to me instead.”
“If you don’t fight, what will you do with it?”
“I don’t know. Something.”
“You really are odd,” said Colmán. “But it’s yours if you want it.”
They camped that night beside the stream in the meadow. In the morning they set off together, with their backs to the rising sun.
“What’s it like to be a warrior, Colmán?”
“Hard work sometimes, occasionally terrifying. Mostly you stand around and wait.”
“That’s true about many things,” Brendán said. “I was wondering how it feels to kill another man.”
“I don’t kill very often, and I don’t feel anything much. It has to be done so I do it. I try not to look at them afterwards.”
“Then you do have a conscience.”
“I hope not. A conscience is no use to a warrior.”
“You could give up fighting if you want,” suggested Brendán.
“What would I do then? A man has to fight to prove he’s a man.”
“I’m a man,” Brendán said with certainty.
Colmán was a new experience for me. Two of my brothers—two whom I would never know—must have been very like him.
Colmán proved to be a skilled forager and a merry companion. Brendán had more in common with him than with his own brother Faitleac. The warrior, who had a keen mind, asked almost as many questions as Brendán himself.
“This Christ of yours—is he a god?”
“He’s an aspect of the one God, Colmán.”
“How can you say there’s only one god? What about the gods of fire and water and earth and stone? I’ve offered sacrifices to all of them. And what about the goddesses of war who hover over the battlefield? I’ve heard their wings myself.”
Brendán said, “They’re only superstition.”
The warrior turned to face him. Colmán’s freckled features might have been hewn from granite. His clear grey eyes were cold. “So if I don’t believe what you believe, then what I believe is superstition.”
Almost too late, Brendán recalled one of Patrick’s axioms: “Never tell the heathens they are wrong. Recognise the validity of their dissent. Their truth is as real to them as yours to you, and you will neither shame nor beat it out of them.”
“‘Superstition’ is the wrong word,” Brendán said hastily, “and I shouldn’t have I used it. You could apply it to my beliefs just as I did to yours. Tell me: what do the wings of the war goddesses sound like? Are they loud, or far away?”
The two men discussed many gods and one god, paganism and Christianity, for the rest of the day. Brendán remained mindful of Patrick’s injunction; Colmán was increasingly curious about Brendán’s viewpoint.
On the following day Brendán did not mention religion at all.
The day after that, Colmán asked him the questions he wanted to answer.
And sometimes the answers came to me without my having to look for them.
Every morning, Colmán awoke well before Brendán. By the time Brendán opened his eyes the warrior was busy stretching his arms and legs; bending and straightening his back; making leaps and lunges.
“Why put yourself through that when you’re not fighting?” Brendán wondered.
“Because I will be fighting,” said Colmán. “It’s what I do.”
When they arrived at the upper reaches of the Shannon they forded the shallows together, then parted company. Colmán headed south, and homeward. Brendán continued west, his destination a monastery on the Aran Islands. The warrior remained on his mind. Of the various men who had accompanied him during his pilgrimage, Colmán was the one he missed most.
Autumn was indeed in the air. The pilgrim walked with an easy stride. Thinking, praying, sometimes singing. Happily meeting strangers and happily being alone. Days slipped by. Somewhere ahead was another of the monasteries on his list but he was in no hurry to reach it. The pleasure was in the journey.
The sharp pain that lanced through his head drove the air from his lungs and made his stomach lurch. Tiny swirls of blue and green light danced around the perimeter of his vision. He sat down hard.
This time Brendán felt the earth singing: a sustained hum that rang through his bones and made his genitals tingle. He felt incredibly alive yet wonderfully at peace—and then he knew.
The ground on which he sat was an Other Place. A place apart.
He did not—could not move. From experience he knew that sooner or later the world would intrude through his five senses. Until then he concentrated on holding on to the rapture for as long as he could.
When the song finally faded he ached with loss. Come back, oh come back!
Shivering, Brendán got to his feet like an old man, joint by joint, and drew his cape around his shoulders. He regretted having left his heavy cloak behind at Slane, to prove how tough he was.
No one noticed anyway.
He looked to the sky to determine how much longer the light would last. A wind from the sea was driving clouds across the face of the sun. As Brendán watched, the clouds assumed the form of an immense chariot decorated with plumes. Nothing appeared to be pulling the chariot yet the huge wheels were turning.
Bright red wheels ornamented with silver bosses.
Brendán rubbed his eyes. When he looked again the chariot was racing across the sky. Then one of the wheels broke into two pieces and plummeted to earth. Clearly visible, the larger piece struck the ground just ahead of him, rebounded once, then settled. He ran towards it.
Instead of a wheel he found two large contiguous mounds of earth. Across them lay a swathe of red flowers with white centres, blooming out of season.
Perplexed, Brendán tilted his head back and looked at the sky. The chariot had vanished; there were not even any clouds. But the wind from the west was growing stronger.
He began to search for firewood.
Many years later at Clon Fert, Brendán pared the point of his quill with the knife he kept in an outsized leather sheath. Dipping the freshly sharpened quill into a pot of sticky black ink, he wrote, ‘On the Aran Islands I visited the famed monastery founded by Énda, considered the father of Irish monasticism. The islands had been granted to Énda by Aengus, king of Cashel, shortly after his own conversion.’ When Patrick pinned Aengus to the earth with his crosier. Smiling to himself, Brendán shook his head. Patrick certainly did cast a wide net.
He resumed writing. ‘While at Magh Enna I formulated a few ideas of my own for a religious order. Founding a monastery in those early days was not difficult. All that was necessary was a bit of land, some willing followers to help with the construction, and a man whose heart brimmed with the love of God.’
My order would not see life as a battle to be won but a gi
ft to be celebrated. We would be a scholarly band of brothers; moderately ascetic, enthusiastically devout. We would adore God, follow the teachings of his Son, and celebrate the Holy Ghost as a motive if invisible force in the world. Under my abbacy ancient wisdoms would not be summarily condemned, but used to illumine the all-embracing nature of the Almighty.
My abbacy…I knew I was not worthy. The very scale of my imagining told me I was too proud.
And the dreams that still came in the night told me I was too sinful.
‘From the islands I travelled east again, to a monastery in Connacht. There I met a renowned scholar of the Scriptures, a monk called Jarlath. A generation older than I, Brother Jarlath had been educated by Sénán, a disciple of Patrick, and by Énda himself.’
A very wide net indeed.
‘I spent the worst of the winter studying under Brother Jarlath’s tutelage. In spite of the difference in our ages we became more like friends than student and teacher.’
On a day of bitter wind the two men huddled thankfully inside the stone walls of the scriptorium. Brendán remarked, ‘At Tearmónn Eirc the scriptorium was made of sods. The wind used to follow us inside.’
“I was born in a hut of wattle and daub,” said Jarlath. “In the booleying time, when my clan drove the cattle to the high pastures, we built temporary shelters of branches. I don’t recall any discomfort. Everything seemed…softer…then. All this stone…” He left the thought unfinished.
“Stone is building for the ages,” Brendán pointed out.
“It isn’t the construction of this place that troubles me. Our abbot is a good Christian but he’s not a Patrician. I didn’t apprehend the difference when I first came here, but I do now. Blessed Patrick was guided by visions that were as real to him as he was real to God. That’s the sort of Christianity which appeals to me.”
“And me,” said Brendán.
“Like the Roman Emperor Constantine, our abbot places his faith in relics,” Jarlath went on. “Because Christianity is an historical religion based on historical fact, he wants tangible artefacts. He has us brothers driven to distraction writing letters to far-flung places in search of a sliver of the True Cross.”
Brendan Page 14