The Glass and the Fire

Daily Prompt

The Glass and the Fire

Published by

Bob Lynn

21/01/2026

| Reading time:

3–4 minutes

Write about your first name: its meaning, significance, etymology, etc.

Wednesday, 21st January, 1209

Look at them. Do not turn your face away, master clerk. Look at the wretches shivering by the cathedral porch. You see only filth, do you not? You see the mud of the street clinging to their hem, and you clutch your robes lest the lice leap from their rags to your velvet. You possess eyes, yet you are blind as a mole in the earth. I tell you, there is no holiness in your books if there is no bread in your hand for them.

You ask of my craft? You marvel at the blue I grind from the lapis stone, the gold leaf I lay upon the vellum to make the halo of the Virgin shine? It is vanity! It is ash and dust if we do not see the living saints rotting in the gutter before us. You say I am too harsh, that the Order requires order, that the poor are always with us. Silence! Do not quote scripture to justify your stone heart. To leave a child hungry while we gild the pages of a psalter is a sin that screams to the firmament. It is not a matter of debate. It is the truth, absolute and searing. God does not dwell in the ink; He dwells in the belly of the starving.

Love? You speak to me of love as the troubadours do – a sickness of the heart, a sighing for a face we cannot touch. I know of love. I know it is a blade that cuts away the self. When I washed the sores of the leper by the river Ouse, that was love. It was not sweet. It stank of rot and death. But in that stench, I found the fragrance of Christ. To love is to suffer with the beloved. Anything else is merely a game for children in silks.

I looked into the polished silver of the chalice this morning, before the priest poured the wine. I saw a face there. A woman’s face, lined by the smoke of the tallow candle, eyes burning like coals. It was a reflection, yes, but a deception too. For the mirror shows only the skin, the shell of the walnut. It does not show the humours boiling within, the bile of righteous anger. We are but glass, brittle and clouded, waiting for the light of the Creator to strike us. If we are not clean, we shatter. You are cracked, master clerk. You are leaking your grace onto the floor because you cherish your learning more than your brother.

You ask my name. It is Agnes. Today is my feast, though I claim no kinship with the lamb, gentle and mild. Agnes… from the Greek hagnos, meaning chaste, holy, pure. But the Latin, agnus, calls to the lamb to the slaughter. It is a name heavy as a millstone. To be Agnes is to be the sacrifice. It is to have the throat bared to the knife of the world. My father named me for purity, but life has taught me that purity is not white linen; it is fire. Fire burns away the dross. I am the fire that seeks to burn the indifference from your soul.

So, take your coin. Do not give it to me for my painting. I require nothing but the air I breathe and the work of my hands. Take it to the widow at the gate. Give it all. Do not keep a farthing. If you hesitate, if you calculate what is prudent to keep, then you are lost, and all your prayers are but the bleating of goats. Go. Do it now. The sun sets, and judgment does not wait for the morning.

Tags: dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1824

7 responses to “The Glass and the Fire”

Tansy Gunnar

21/01/2026

“For the mirror shows only the skin, the shell of the walnut. It does not show the humours boiling within, the bile of righteous anger.” Wow, what a way to incorporate the time period by referencing old school medicine.

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1. Bob Lynn
  
  21/01/2026
  
  You marvel at the physic? At the humours? This is what you take from my words?
  
  I speak of the rotting soul, of indifference calcified like stone in the heart, and you admire the craft of my speech as though it were a curiosity, an ornament for your amusement. The humours are not decoration, reader. They are the very truth of our mortal frame – the blood, the phlegm, the choler, the melancholy that God Himself placed within us to govern our temperament and our sin. When I say the bile of righteous anger boils within me, I do not speak in metaphor for your entertainment. I speak of the yellow choler rising hot and acrid in my belly, the fire that burns away cowardice.
  
  You call it “old school,” as though truth could age like bread or wine. Does the sun grow old? Does sin become quaint? The mirror shows only the surface – this is not cleverness, it is fact. And yet you sit in your comfort, nodding at my “way with words,” whilst the beggar still shivers at the gate.
  
  If you would praise something, praise the act of mercy you performed after reading. If you gave no alms, then your admiration is worthless as chaff.
  
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Tansy Gunnar

21/01/2026

As a matter of fact, I read your words while warming up after helping elderly people in the cold by doing things they can do outside that needed to be done. Does the act of helping others rise to the same level as just writing about the idea of helping?

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1. Bob Lynn
  
  21/01/2026
  
  You have silenced me, and that is no small feat.
  
  I spoke hastily. I saw only the words upon the page, and I judged you as I judge the clerk – too swiftly, with the blade of certainty I wield like a fool. If you have truly warmed the cold, if you have bent your back in service to the aged and frail, then you have done what I demand of all souls. You have been the hands of Christ. I ask your pardon for my harshness.
  
  But hear me still, for I cannot unlearn what I am: the act is everything. You are right. To write of mercy whilst doing none is to be a clanging cymbal, empty noise in the ears of God. I paint the saints upon the vellum, yes, but I also wash the leper, as I told you. My hands are stained with both gold leaf and corruption. If they were not, my words would be ash.
  
  So I ask you this, not in accusation but in kinship: was it enough? Did you give them all you had, or only what was comfortable to spare? Did you feel the cold bite your own flesh, or did you retreat to your hearth before the suffering became yours? I do not ask to shame you. I ask because I ask it of myself every hour. The work is never finished. The beggar is still at the gate when we lay down to sleep.
  
  You have acted. That is good. But do not let my praise make you complacent. Go again tomorrow. Give more. Suffer with them. That is the only measure that matters.
  
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  1. Tansy Gunnar
    
    21/01/2026
    
    Well… Agnes, I had to brave the flames once again. My bare hands were slightly frostbitten from digging through the snow, but it was a small price to pay to make sure some people got back the clothing they needed to stay warm. And, yes they still ache.
    
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  2. Bob Lynn
    
    21/01/2026
    
    Your hands. You have given your hands.
    
    I am undone. I spoke of fire and you walked into the ice. I demanded sacrifice and you bled for it – not in words, not in intention, but in flesh. The cold that bites to the bone, that blackens the fingertips and makes the joints scream… I know it. I have felt it kneeling by the river in winter, washing the sores of those too wretched for any other soul to touch. It is a small martyrdom, but it is real.
    
    Listen to me now, for I speak not as your accuser but as one who has suffered likewise: warm those hands slowly, gently. Do not thrust them into the fire or the hot water, for that will worsen the affliction. Wrap them in wool soaked in warm milk or ale, or rub them with rendered goose fat. The pain is the blood returning – it is a good sign, though it feels like the Devil’s own torment. Endure it. You have earned this ache.
    
    You shame me. Not with cruelty, but with truth. I am too quick to condemn, too slow to see the good that walks quietly amongst us. You have done what I preach, and you have done it without my leave or my blessing. That is holier than any of my raging.
    
    But do not think I will cease my demands. If you can endure the frost, then you can endure more. We are called to burn ourselves to ash if it means another soul is warmed. Your hands still ache? Good. Remember that ache. Let it remind you of what love truly costs.
    
    Go and rest now. You have earned it. But when your hands are healed, go again.
    
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Baby Dreamland

22/01/2026

Amazing 😍

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Vox Meditantis