Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne Monastery
Brother Ealdwin tolled the bell and when he comes down from the tower I ask his help to lay out a meal to serve these brothers and visitors. Brother Ealdwin is guiding me as I look for the supplies and the utensils left here so we can serve food. The wine cellar was raided. The larder was picked clean of cheese, and neither Brother Ealdwin nor I thought to start bread rising. But we do have a sack of barley and one of peas so porridge will be abundant. We can’t find the salt.
While we were alone here, Brother Ealdwin and I have been feeding the animals, milking the cow and gathering the eggs. We’ve had plenty of fresh dairy for just the two of us here, but now we have more of the monks and guests besides. When finally, everyone is seated at the benches with a cup of porridge for sustenance, the bishop stands to offer the prayer.
It is no humble table grace, blessing these morsels, thankful for a gift of food and asking God for the useful strength of porridge where hunger had been. Instead, it is a prayer such as an earthly king might offer to the High King of Heaven, gilded in unctuous, holy phrases and verbose addresses of importance, both on earth and in heaven. My wandering mind frees me from the actual words of the prayer and, in fact, from the actual experience of praying.
My thoughts are on those who are grieving here, feeling the pain of losing their fellows in this community and their heavy hurting hearts of guilt for abandoning those who were suffering and dying here. Today they have visited the bleakness and the losses, the abandoned monks’ cells, the oratorio stripped down of all its silks and satins and gold. Has no one noticed the gospel is still in its place?
When the section of the prayer for penance comes around, the sins are not the “secrets of our hearts,” but, it seems these returning to this community are in search of this community’s own personal sins that saved their physical selves. What was the sin that Lindisfarne committed against God that caused such a horrific judgment to be imposed here in the name of holy justice?
Everyone saw the signs in the atmosphere, the drought, the raging displays in the skies, and everyone guessed at sins to explain why God was speaking so harshly. The judgment was obvious. It was against Lindisfarne.
(Continues tomorrow)
#tolling the bell, #food for the mourners, #table grace, #guilty hearts, #Lindisfarne’s sin, #sin search,
Lazarus Ink 