Today I head off to Westman Island via the ferry, this time bringing my car on board. My friend and his family who reside there are able to get a discount. Earlier he and I were discussing over the phone his work which is quite interesting, namely, digging into the manuscripts proper to Westman going back to the Settlement which is approximately the year 1,000. Westman, being an island, was site of a monastic settlement and later was raided by "Turks" who came from Morocco. They slaughtered most of the population and enslaved the rest. Later the survivors were randomed, including a Lutheran priest (this was shortly after the Reformation) while another was killed on another raid. Both left a bunch of poems dedicated to the Virgin Mary who always retained a special place despite the country having become Lutheran.

The key to my friend's success is not just his training in Icelandic manuscripts but his ability to read them in a spirit of lectio divina. In other words, he reads them as prayer which takes a longer time than usual for publication, hence their success: one small book came out late last year. This fellow admitted to a certain pressure to crank out material but has resisted it. We both noted that reading such mss in a spirit of lectio is essential nowadays. However, those in charge want to rush through things, and lectio divina is far from their minds. Such texts require thoughtfulness, to be sure, and my friend's ultimate goal is to make the Marian poems part of both the Lutheran and Catholic liturgy here in Iceland.

Yesterday, Sunday, I was driving into Reykjavik and on the radio got a Lutheran priest delivering a homily. Most people agree that priests drone on and on when preaching. One friend suggested it had something to do with the Icelandic language, conducive for this. As for preaching in general, those who do it often get a satisfaction of identifying with the Word of God and therefore with its authority. It produces a balance of sorts, not always desireable, but at least for the deliverer.

The Iraq war is tragic, to be sure, but seemed even more so by recent news that some Sunnis were slaughtered for having begun a dialogue with their Shiite neighbors. This inability to dialogue, not just in those extreme conditions but elsewhere, appears a commodity in short supply.