The Brendan Voyage

1. The Brendan Voyage A poem for the road

2. SaintBrendan(484-577)

3. Saint Brendan • A happy land-born monk until… • God called him on an interesting journey • As close as the Canary Islands • As far as Newfoundland or even the St. Lawrence Seaway • In 1978, Tim Severin proved it could be done

4. St. Brendan • Overall, Brendan’s story is about trust, about saying “yes” to God even when everything inside you screams “NO!” • It is not a psuedo-spiritual “yes” but one that faces the same dangers that Jesus faced when he said “yes” to the Father.

5. Luke 22:39-44 “Jesus went out as usual to the Mount of Olives, and his disciples followed him. On reaching the place, he said to them, "Pray that you will not fall into temptation.” He withdrew about a stone's throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed, "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done." An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him. And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.”

6. A question of trust • This is not trust without anguish or fear • This trust is not serene • It is worked through, it is a journey • The way of Jesus, which is obedience to the Father within a world ruled by hate and self-interest, is the same way Brendan took; it is also the same way we are called to take.

7. Promises for the Voyage John 14:15:18 "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you. I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.”

8. Promises for the Voyage • When we step out onto this way of Jesus, this way of trust, we are surrounded by the Holy Spirit. • This doesn’t mean we won’t suffer, but that God will make our pain into something beautiful for Him, ourselves, and the world.

9. Trust and Time • God has given us all the time we need to become the kind of people He has called us to be • Our choice to trust is receiving from God our days, and then giving them back to him again. • We will worship Him not by trying to control our lives with possessions and positions but by trusting Him

10. An interesting note • Two years ago • Today

11. A Psalm to help us push off! Psalm 66:8-12 Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard, who has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip. For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried. You brought us into the net; you laid burdens on our backs; you let people ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.

12. The Brendan Voyage Part 1 what is the cost of a savage heart? its shift and lift into the shore and its gliding waters? what is the price of a spending will? governing its pace, a rhythm that rollicks and flows Brendan felt an itch, but was it just his monk’s shirt, aching from years of service? Brendan felt a tug, water seemed to gleam when he caught its semblance out the windows of the monastery call his name, like a whistle whipping its melody in the high air calls his name

13. Brendan often tried to be faithful, tried to please those he loved the most, tried to follow God, the God he was ever knowing and un-knowing. Brendan shrugged off the desire as the devil or a bad piece of food, not enough exercise. all of these were normal tormentors and on about the same level of fear-inducement.

14. the land turned brown with the rising sun, its rainless skys giving nothing for the bounty promised beneath the quiet earth. the ground slept, and Brendan heard his soul in the ground, giving voice to the brown and hardened soil, crying, “give me water, surround me in its blue, its azure desert, better to die in it than in this, the golden nothing creeping closer everyday.”

15. in the night, after compline, the question came like the confusion and desperation of sundown with no camp in sight, “King of the mysteries, will you set watch over me? Christ of the mysteries, can I trust you on the sea?” so he set his hand to his mind, churned the temples into thinking, rubbed the chin into brooding, the moon watched like a dumb child, pretending to brood with him while laughing on the other side.

16. the waves crept up in the silence of the night, held in the mouths of pelicans, “bring us to Brendan!,” they said, “we would listen to him pray and cry! For God has given him to us and us to him!” And Brendan did weep, and the ocean did hear him, folding over itself in the mouths of clumsy birds. everything he had known was here, on the land, all his beloved friends, mentors, teachers, mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers.

17. there was also a small pin in the fabric of Brendan’s consciousness, the pin of pride, the pride of control, the pride of the elephant, or perhaps the lion. he could move fast amongst those in the cathedral, impressing and blessing, he could swing so much his way, but this way was calling, one that was different, hands free…..

18. already his stomach rocked like the tides. he felt a happy doom to head towards, a happy doom to melt into, no hand to guide an oar, no sail to catch a westward wind, just the hull, the skin of wood, taking the abuse of the ocean, to go where it would take him, this was pilgrimage, and it was in the air… whatever happens, that is pilgrimage, that is your journey, your voyage, your song. “King of the mysteries, will you set watch over me? Christ of the mysteries, can I trust you on the sea?”

19. I offer my all, he says in the dark of the early day, only if you will stop this call! but the ocean pounds, like a madness seeping into his head, like Nineveh wailing for judgment, it meets him in his weakness, the weakness of obedience and he cannot say no because he does not want to say no but only yes to the king of mysteries, of the forgotten fish and the deep justice

20. that once claimed its rolling as the flesh tent to all peoples, that now claimed him again, for the flaming heart, the burning emotive centre, harkening and harping for some loon song, beating it out of himself and into himself again. tide come and go, I know you are my brother rhythm now, I embrace you. gull, dip and dive, cry in the sunlight floor that will be my home, I know you are my sister, and I share with you my food.

21. so Brendan prepares and goes to the wise friends that he has accumulated by grace and by wonderful conniving and by the insistence of good gluttony. he goes and he falls at their feet, in the middle of the meal they are sharing and he cries out, I am going where there is nothing but mystery, nothing but being led or being dead! pray for me now, if ever!

22. give me the gift now of these moments for I fear that my eyes will never clasp your gaze again, never again the friendship cup of strong wine, of soft stories and wet tears. and the night drew over them a tender blanket, offering what it could for Brendan and his friends, bowls for their grief and wonder.

23. the day dawned a bright pink, over land, as if a last look at the universal flesh of land, its inhabitants, so different from the blue desert that stretched in grey out into a rug of fog rolled up by angels and by birds. he mumbles quietly in the tumbling moments “King of the mysteries, will you set watch over me? Christ of the mysteries, can I trust you on the sea?”

24. the waves are a ravenous quality, a hitching and witching brew, frothing up their demands, impatient and full of the dead dew of the coastal flower; they are knives and guillotines, to Brendan especially, for he knows not yet their names, nor their language. he hears only the war cry of the Gauls in standing opposition to the Romans. and mixed blood as he is, he steps across the threshold, water and land, invisible and seen, the controlled and tilled and the ever-flowing, ever shining, intangible by common rules.

25. …king of the mysteries…. balance tips ocean ward, friend’s hands push the wood and leather framed boat out …will you set watch….. a sudden lurch as a bully of a wave comes to play its spite against Brendan’s insecure stance …over me, over me, over me…… and the tide shifts, from the smaller ones coming in and in and in, home, home, home

26. to the large single train, filing invisibly out out and out, to who knows where, exiled, estranged, God, servant, home redefintion belt buckled ignition, the grim smile of the sun rising under half cloud, the alley of gulls falling into line behind the coracle of Brendan, my own boat, your own vessel, our own adventure, turning our stomachs and our hopes to vinegar, to wine, to vinegar, and then back again…. Christ of the mysteries, can I trust you on the sea?

27. Part 2 now that all sight of land is gone….. is there nothing to think and nothing to say? what is the beacon of trust out here where there is no rock to run ashore on? I am only praying for Jonah’s whale to make me a fading memory in the mind of the sea. language takes its life vest and floats off back to the island I came from, if I ever was there to begin with. the dead ground was better than this azure desert, which stretches for all that my eyes can grasp, stretching me on its distance.

28. I have forgotten your face as I have not seen my friend’s face I have forgotten your voice as I have not heard the honey of my friend’s words I have forgotten your words, but they are buried like bones in my chest I have forgotten your words but everyday they leap like vomit into my mouth not the taste but the involuntary expulsion they interrupt my delirium, they taste my madness and then ingest it like a thanksgiving feast, leaving no insanity for me to spend my hours on.

29. I enjoyed trust when it was one of many psalms, one of many theologies, one of many doctrines, one of many prayers. but now it is all I have, and I stare at it, sitting in my boat, patient and sentient, annoying and there, there and annoying. trust is now all I have, and I am afraid to eat it. I want its taste to be bitter so I may curse God and die, I want it to give no nutrition so I may be justified and wrinkle up in cold skin.

30. but because I know and fear the love that created my body and mind, I am cautious about eating this trust, so it waits all the same, all day and all night, with the moon and with the sun, the gulls ever with me, singing a tune that glides in like their bodies: oh nervous heart feed on the air and the circling planets for they have not been spent nor fell out of place oh nervous heart, spreading dysfunction in your bowels break peace like eggs in your lap tear open trust like the meal of bread you have not been spent nor will you fall out of orbit reach out your tongue….

31. oh Christ of the mysteries…… holding the lantern light, the simple moon holding the breath that is the belt of stars, the arrow of your mouth sings now, into me, in my choice, in my trustmeal, its own voice, wordless and furless, only showing itself on the inside of my liver, but exploding all over the night, which is never night but the Father’s single hymn.

32. and so my body rested like a winter field, for the first time since I left the land I once named home, that first rest was so sweet. as wonderfully vaporous as the scent released between summer and fall, finding you playing at some scheme, arresting you and giving you sleep, giving me sleep.

33. I awoke and the sun was a friend, speaking words into my ear though I could not open my eyes, it was too bright, I reached for the bread at my side and found it waiting, cracked with waiting, for my eating to come to it, the fear had passed I could now splice the adventure with where I was, wound up in the trust of the thing, the open road of water, the signs ahead, the gulls following my trail, not mine but the paraclete, ruach, ruach, ruach….wind wind and wind

34. a single rumble beneath the waves, unknown to me it wounds the silence, at first, a burst of what I knew when I was a child but the real sound, I’ve been learning, not purging the free knowledge of the gull resilient and yet, supple and responsive to the currents of wind and storm rumble dark on horizon’s brow.

35. the liquid graves, opening and closing about me, are my only stones, my only house the one you build up through my throat, a feeble song, acclaiming and proclaiming, a whisper of praise thrown into the tumult gathering before me. fierce moon rises early and beckons my fear to take its place tonight is my death or my witness to God

36. “King of the mysteries, will you set watch over me? Christ of the mysteries, can I trust you on the sea?”