For the last 12 weeks I have had a slow healing fracture in my foot that has required no weight bearing. Where I have been house-sitting this winter has required that I go up and down the stairs to my room and office on my knees. Just a couple of times a day traversing those stairs has led to callouses on my knees. Each night as I rub a little lotion into them it has prompted me to think about how physical the acts of devotion and work would have been in that island monastery and scriptorium of Iona at the time of our stories.
If minutes a day on my knees had this effect how would theirs have looked? The callouses on the knees of even the children would have been so thick. Was the give of a new dirt floor welcome over the hard stone of the Irish churches left behind? How would they have soothed the thickening of skin from devotion and labour? Would they have collected bladderwrack seaweed from the rocky edges of the white sandy beaches and squeezed the capsules onto their cracked flesh for relief?
Could you spot one of the scriptorium workers by their hands? Had the quills created a large callous on the sides of their fingers? Would the fingertips be permanently dyed from the inks?

As the world I am imagining comes closer to me it makes me think of such small unremarkable things, the things we only start to notice about our own world when we are forced out of normal relationship to our days. Somehow this has brought the body of Erna, my forgotten saint, and her companions a bit clearer into focus. It allows her to move around the world a bit and be more free from the two dimensions of paper.
Despite its preservation on the page, the act of writing is a bodily endeavour. So is the act of prayer. The lesson of the last weeks for me that I think I will keep with me going forward is that I’ve left the body out of my appreciation and understanding of life so much. We’ve confused our comforts and health safety for a distance between our thoughts, creativity and body. In the Middle Ages that was not the case at all. They started the expression of their devotion with their bodies.
On your knees.
And as our story is not one of those that made it through the patriarchal ages of the Catholic Church, it makes me think of the scene in the brilliant BBC comedy Fleabag where the hot priest instructs the main character onto her knees in the church. It’s such a powerful, inevitable, collision of a moment of humans in bodies trying to reconcile life, fate, and faith. Our physicality has always been part of our devotion. Our making, our dancing, our cooking, our writing, our loving. It took centuries to take our bodies out of our worship.
I will be thinking about that a lot as I continue dreaming this story into existence. For your enjoyment I have included some clips of that moment and more from Fleabag below. Enjoy!
Susie
Thank you for this thoughtful piece. I’ve struggled for months with a painful right knee that hurts to bend. I know the roots of the pain are emotional. I’m learning new ways to be flexible. I love that the stuck places in our bodies hold a story to tell. Thanks for sharing your story.
Thanks for that, Susie. Especially the good bits from the hot priest. . .
I hope you’re healing and don’t have to go up stairs on your knees anymore. I decided that I didn’t want to be a saint when I was ten after I read about the torture they endured. I would have changed my faith rather than be tortured. I hope your Erna never gets put to that test.
Love to you,
Be