Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne Monastery
Ealdwin still chips away at the stone.
I say, “Seeing everything from a Christian point of view may have skewed my understanding of the Vikings.”
“How is that possible that truth can only be known from a Christian point of view?”
“I’ve heard that said.”
From this place by the sandstone outcropping, Brother Ealdwin keeps a watch. I think he expects the others will return any day at low tide. I leave him to his work and go back to the priory where the altar holds the gospel. That’s what I would most like to see now.
This gospel is so beautifully rendered. St. Jerome’s translation keeps the holy words holy so the readings in worship sound as grand as the psalms. But the parts I read over and consider so often are the bits and pieces of reminders of my friend and my first family in Bethany.
Those times have become the Christian gospels that we copy and translate and study now. None of us knew anything of Christianity then, even though we were already everything there was of it. We were survivors of a crucified leader and a plundered temple when this gospel was finally put together from old diaries and told stories.
Ealdwin watches the pathway relentlessly hoping for familiar faces as I am looking for the familiar in the gospel stories. We all look back at our own history in each era. With the destruction of Solomon’s Temple it was generations before the people returned to build anew. They were the grandchildren of the Hebrew people who were taken as captives. Sometimes a homeland is a history and not a memory.
The history of the Jewish people is kept in sacred scrolls for the generations. But instead of debating the discrepancies from one generation to the next, until tiny sprouts of truth can be gleaned, Christian stories were newly told to fit the Roman politics. The Jesus words [John 15] that all may be one in God who is love [I John 4:18] all people connected like a vine but somehow in the writing of it, useless, fruitless vines infiltrated and needed righteous prunning. So now, Jesus is the true vine but the chapter begins with some version of an imperialistic God, like the Roman army raiding the Temple, pruning the vine and putting the whole Jewish heritage in the burn pile. [John 15]
It is a good thing to keep history on a carved stone.
(Continues Tuesday, July 15, 2025)
Lazarus Ink 