excerpt
…no matter what. I wish I had your blind faith. Some of us have not found it quite so
simple. Once the routine of regular prayer and devotion was gone, we had time to
think. We had to think. Now the prayers that had been so mechanical, uttered at the
command of a bell, have become intimate conversations with the God within us. I’d
never really known God before. Now I see Him in these people we called savages.
Even these Norsemen have turned from being cold-blooded killers to fond companions.”
The two of them stood up. He clasped Ailan in a warm embrace.
“Thank you, my Brother. Thank you for listening.”
Although he demanded it of his monks, prayer, sincere prayer, was a struggle for
Finten, too. The safety of monastic walls and discipline was gone and Father Finten
felt the authority of his position as priest slipping from him. The nudity of Native
men, women and children made him uncomfortable. Still he was unable to avert
his eyes. Little boys and girls running naked reminded him of the horror of Brown
Bear’s daughter being raped by Hrafen, which revived the terror of his abuse as a
child at the hands of the Vikings.
As a monk in Derry, he had hidden his body and his shame beneath thick woollen
robes. Now the robe was gone and finding privacy even for bodily functions was
seldom guaranteed.
Finten was haunted by feelings of guilt for his own imagined sins, but more by
the lingering pain of loss. He remembered his little sister, Ossia, being assaulted by
those same Vikings over and over again and he couldn’t get the horrible images from
his mind.
Libros Libertad 