Historical Setting: Lindisfarne, 793 C.E.
The reading of the scholar’s letter concludes, then the bishop blesses the squash soup such as it is – without salt. The benches are reset to face the dining board and the held breath of long-listening to the bishop exhales, relaxed now. Regardless, the fasting monks attend their prayers walking the shores with God. After the meal visitors, pilgrims and patrons await the shift in the tides, mulling the emptiness they came here to see.
Like little eddies roiling the waters in a rocky creek, the talk among the patronage and the episcopates is lots of little swirls of hates and not a healthy harbor for the flow of Spirit.
Those who are only rare visitors here may have expected to find everything burned to the ground thinking all this was made of wood. That was just gossip to decry the Irish root of Lindisfarne. It was only the old church of wood, later sheathed in lead, that burned. In these times the pope’s rule is kept. And in Rome, stone is used for buildings, so the newer oratorio didn’t burn.
I walk quietly among the visitors as a borrowed monk in another’s robe but with the required tonsure I appear rooted here. I hear the talk among the dignitaries as I gather up the dirty bowls. I thought all this divisive worry over the Irish tradition was well behind us two centuries ago when Faither Columbanus, the abbot of the monasteries I knew in Gaul, finally rescinded to the wishes of the Frankish bishops, and yielded to celebrate Easter on the day of the Pope’s edict rather than following the Irish tradition. But here we are again, in a completely Benedictine community of monks, resurrecting the same old arguments.
I would have expected to find the future of Christianity unfettered by seemingly petty issues of differences so we could all just celebrate the universal love of Jesus. To say I’m disappointed with the redundancy of all this political maneuvering is an understatement. To me, all of the contrivances of division are a dark shadow of hates and hurts that continue to divide people in spite of God’s love for all people.
Brother Ealdwin is here feeding the kitchen fire preparing to help me wash the bowls.
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 