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Goda has the affronted air of someone who lurks in corners to hear herself spoken ill of so that she can hold tight a grievance to suckle.
For it is a deep and human truth that most souls upon the earth are not at ease unless they find themselves safe in the hands of a force far greater than themselves.
There is no way that she can become known all through Europe as a great leader when struggle is all she does all day long, all year long. The daily kills her greatness. As if god hears her, the reading at the meal that very day is Proverbs about how with pride there is disgrace, but wisdom for the humble. Marie laughs to herself, stricken to the core.
Awe. If only she had time to examine this feeling, Wulfhild thinks ruefully; but she does not have time, she never has time, her children call, the business of the abbey calls, the hungers and fatigues of her body call. She will come closer to god when she is old, in a garden among the flowers and the birds, she tells herself; yes, someday she will sit in silence until she knows god, she thinks, lying down in her bed to sleep. Just not now.
Collapse is the constant state of humanity, she tells herself; the story of the flood and the great ark that saved the creatures two by two is only the first refrain of a song that is to be sung over and over, the earth’s gradual and repeated diminishment, civilization after civilization foundering to dust, until the final death of the children of Eve with the apocalypse, the seven seals, the seven trumpets, the seven angels, the seven bowls. In the end, the earth will crack and the wicked will be cast into the lake of fire. Marie suspects this fiery end would be the stone and the soil and the
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To see god, who is not split in three, but singular. God, sole, female. She has had an eternity of community, it has been enough. Make haste, my beloved. So
