#73.12 Tuesday, October 28, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.
 

         Elderly Wilbert is telling me of the life of the Venerable Bede who wrote the book I came to read. My condition of life and life again makes me feel argumentative. I’d mention that such writings are limited by a monastic life from childhood through death with only a narrow perspective. Maybe such a monk is disqualified from writing a history of the whole people. It’s not about the confinement of a monastery. I also find the welcome tranquility in times when I thirst for the closeness with God, as Wilbert describes this as being in the room with angels. So why do his ramblings annoy me so, bristling my hackles and making me feel argumentative? I find it particularly annoying when he speaks of the intimate spiritual life of a saint.

         Maybe it is his pontificating, or his own narrow perspective, or the assumption of a singular righteousness, or is it that he is an old monk and I appear more youthful so he has a duty to lecture me.

         Wilbert rambles on sanctifying the venerable — obscuring the vulnerable. It seems this room with angels is a narrow confinement limited to saints.

         Dear God, open my thinking broadly enough to accept his, as it is meeting his own need, not faulting me. I visit the “room with angels” often but it has no walls or log book at the door. Thank you, God, for spreading your close love to anyone just for the asking. I don’t have to make my argument to Wilbert as he answers his own need with these ramblings.

         He says, “It’s not that the venerable Bede was isolated from the world.  He listened intently to any visitor or traveler to Jarrow. “

         “I’ll read his books with that in mind.”

         Maybe these pontifications of an old man, are really his own dialogue between his memories and the reality of just now.  When he hears God speaking, like young Samuel [I Samuel 3], he still goes and wakes a priest to affirm what he has heard is not of heaven.  Wilbert keeps the angels safely locked away in a room ‘for saints only’, maybe secretly hoping he will never again hear God calling him.

(Continues tomorrow)