Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.
I’ve come to Jarrow following my own curiosity about what I, as a mere lay person, judge as wrong-headed. Obedience to the papal edict is demanded when it is actually the voice of God that calls us in the dark of night.
I came here to argue against Bede’s historical writings that barely excuses the Irish founders of Lindisfarne for holding on to the traditions of Celtic Christianity. What I found here, visiting this library is Bede’s student, Brother Wilbert, still grieving for his beloved teacher. He is telling me of Bede’s life, while I came, only to measure Bede by his judgmental verbiage in his history of the neighboring community.
My hackles, were I a bird or a wolf with actual hackles, are riled up whenever I read this style of religious authoritarianism, calling one with different traditions an “open adversary of the truth.” [Footnote] Judging each little external difference of religious practice as divisive among Christians. Yet, here I am, judging the judge. I came here looking for an argument, but I found a human person in Bede simply doing his best to straddle the line between the voice of God calling him in the darkness and the obedience to the religious head, a pope. He would never even meet the pope. For Bede, the pope was mythical — more than mortal human —acclaimed to be infallible. I came to find Bede, an imagined adversary, and now I find a better understanding of Bede, the person. The mysterious Jesus way of love washes over diminishing narrow divisions, not with better rules and stricter obedience, but with a simple, broader understanding.
The monk with the Irish tonsure, with shaven forehead back to a line center from ear to ear, looks at the tonsure of the Roman Christian monk, and judges that the little circle of hair he wears as a crown, as a prideful flaunting of royalty. Then the monk with the crown looks at the Irish tonsure, and judges that man flawed, disobedient and unwilling to wear Christ’s crown of thorns. So where is God in all this so-called “truth”?
I only see with human eyes, but God sees from the vantage point of Creator, all-loving.
Dear God, grant me a wider view of your own beloved “others.” Amen.
[Footnote] Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English Oxford University Press. pp 153
(Continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 