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#78.4 Tuesday, March 10, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

Ousbert finished emptying the ealdormen’s house and now his men have left with the full cart of the squandered and pilfered remnants of his loveless evil. All the people’s losses were the shabby little treasures that this ealdorman had collected from people seeking justice in their times of hardship.

It is getting dark and I need to return to St. Paul. Ousbert is staying there also so we walk together with the light of his lantern revealing only the next step before us and only as we need it. Empathy gnaws for the wrongs done to the people here by their own protector, this ealdorman.

Evil is reality even on God’s love-born earth. It isn’t a demon, to be exorcized by holy magic and driven into the sea. And it is a different neediness than the cold and hunger of poverty that can be resolved with empathetic generosity.

Evil is the greed that occupies the hollow place in spirit which was once a child’s longing for love. True evil is the warp of the golden lie of greed, empowered to obscure love’s healing power. It is as impossible for a rich man to enter that kingdom as it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.  I didn’t just think that up. [Mark 10:25]

Ousbert and I stumble through the darkness with no words spoken. We are both mulling in silence all that was revealed in that log book until Ousbert breaks the silence.

         “When I came with soldiers to take that ealdorman away the people came out of these houses and hovels thanking me. I told them we were only taking him to appear before the king. The king would need to rule justly. I’m not even sure that King Ethelred can rule justly. He, himself, may believe mere power makes one impervious to evil.”

         “I know when we prepared that vellum page to unfurl at his court, you were concerned over the appearance of the page, saying that the look of it mattered more than the truth of it.”

         “I never trust this king to have empathy for the poor, so the commendation had to have the lovely appearance, regardless of the truth of the story.”

         “And you still think if the document had simply been jotted roughly on a cleanly scraped piece of parchment the king wouldn’t have cared about the heroic rescue of the girl from the sea?”

He smirks.

         “The people trust the king to rule justly. But I am the king’s man. I’ve seen things.”

(Continues tomorrow)


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#78.3 Thursday, March 5, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

I make my way through the scribbles of an untrained, barely literate scribe, in order to read these cases and judgements brought before the Jarrow ealdorman. The log book is page after page of squabbles over sparse material things. Who owns the fishnet woven with stolen string? Is it the poacher or the land owner who is entitled to the rabbit? 

The judgement made by this king’s appointee is always won by whoever gives this ealdorman a coin, or a fish, or the skin of the rabbit in question. Therefore, the judgment always goes against the poor and his descriptive words for the poor and needy are also a euphemistic degradation. He has names for those who can’t pay for his favorable judgement: “paupers,” “urchins” and “leeches.”  The use of judgmental euphemism made this house a “castle,” and it tells how he continually brought suffering down on the poorest of these people.

         Ousbert says, “Did you notice the lock on the door to the bed chamber?”

         “‘Tis odd to lock a bed chamber. He must have had nightmares of angry villagers coming to get their revenge in the night.”

         “But the lock is on the outside of the chamber — it is where he kept the girl who birthed the infant. The box where he apparently kept the infant was a simple crate — with no blanket or toy. We found it pushed under the bed.”

         “Did he have a good excuse for all this?”

         “When confronted he had nothing to say. He just stood there in the chains I ordered for him, and watched us gather up the evidence. I have plenty of evidence to hand to the lawyers to support the girl’s story.”

         “Did he seem embarrassed or ashamed of the things you found?”

         “He had no remorse, only blame. He said, ‘the kept girl stole the life of his legacy. The baby died soon after he dismissed her because she had ‘put a curse on it.’ He wanted the King to put her in chains. Even though she wasn’t there to speak for herself it was obvious it all happened as she had told you, and that the baby died because he had no idea of how to care for an infant.”

         I answer, “It was one terrible thing to hear her story, and another, to know that was how it was.”

(Continues Tuesday, March 10, 2026)

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#78.2 Wednesday, March 4, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

At the house of the ealdorman, the furnishings and personal items are being loaded onto a cart. Inside the house I’ve found Ousbert in his full military garb in command of this project.

He says after the proclamation was read in the King’s court, he was appointed to investigate the work of the ealdorman assigned to Jarrow. That led to the ealdorman being summonsed, by King Ethelred, removed from this post to await his trial in the King’s dungeon. Now Ousbert must fill this post with a temporary ealdorman until the King hears the case and decides to replace him — may it be so.

Among the things taken for the trial is the logbook.

         Ousbert says, “If you want to know any king’s weaknesses look at the ones he appoints.”

         “So, what does the appointment of this ealdorman say of the king?”     “It is a whole tawdry tale, my friend, of power stolen with brutality and lies, not by rank or righteousness. You’ve not been in Northumbria long enough to know of the power battles of the kings.”

         “I’ve known of the Merovingians, though, so I can guess.”

          He says, “Ethelred won a war against King Osred’s brother and he slay the King’s sibling who had been the king’s guard. Osred was unprotected thus forced to relinquish the throne and Ethelred ordered him to be tonsured.” [footnote]

         “You mean, Osred was forced to become monk?”

         “Indeed.”

         “So, tonsure is forced on a deposed of a king to render him powerless?”

         “Indeed, ’tis the crown of humble suffering for a failed King.”

         “But I would think it would require more than a haircut to make a monk of a king.”

         “Tonsure imposes humility and obedience with God the enforcer.”

         “But how is it possible to force someone to literacy and prayers and keeping the hours. Forced ‘tonsure’ would seem an impossible path to sanctity.”

         “I guess the King leaves the sanctity in God’s hands.”

         The logbook on the stand before us reveals the festering need for sanctity.

         Ousbert says, “The man was barely literate. His hand with the inks is worse than mine, and I’m only a soldier. But the appearance of the letters do correctly define the content of the log entries. They are messy.”

         I stand here at the logbook, deciphering the scrawls to read the stories of these villagers while Ousbert’s men finish the task of removing the furnishings from this house.

[footnote] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86thelred_I_of_Northumbria     retrieved 6-18-25

(Continues tomorrow)


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#78.1 Tuesday, March 3, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

Usually, while at St. Paul, I end the day taking a walk at the vesper hour, following the river to the sea.  But this evening my thoughts are on the little village just beyond the paupers’ wood, so I walk the other way up the river to the place where several little houses make a village. The woods are just a few old trees, with the undergrowth of thorny vines and now it feels uninhabited here. The very poor hide in hovels of leaves and sticks and rags. I see no one here though the smoke from their fire rising smells of rotting meat.

In Deuteronomy [15:11] it is said the poor are always with us. So, it is always the responsibility of those with more to care for the poor. It is a given, not an exception. But maybe we also always let the poor hide from us, at least until there is a horror that can’t be hidden, a plague, or a drowning mother rescued by the watchmen.

I want to take a long look at the house of the ealdorman in the village. The child of this poverty called it a “castle,” because it had a horse tied at the rail and a fine roof as she had never known before, sheltering her as she was in her nine months and a year with that cruel man.

Here, now, that house at the head of this village is bustling with activity. Where once a horse was tied, here is a mule team and a wagon. Men are in and out of the opened door of the house removing furnishings and chests of personal belongings. I stop a short distance away to watch. Ousbert, commanding this project, is wearing his breast plate and helmet as though he is on a soldier’s mission. Should I ask?

         “Good evening, Sir. Has some ill befallen the ealdorman?”

         “The King ordered his removal.”

         “Why?”

         “You know why. The proclamation commending the guards was presented at the court of King Ethelred.”

         “The heroes were acknowledged?”

         “At first reading, yes. Then the king asked that it be read again. Then he read it for himself. He pondered it.”

         “He commended the heroism of the guards?”

         “It was the story of the rescued woman that stirred his ire so he ordered me to investigate the ealdorman.”

         “And you found him lacking?”

         “I didn’t have to look very far.  I only had to examine the log book.”

         “You mean, he kept a log of his transgressions?

         “Have a look.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#77.12 Thursday, February 26, 2026

Historical Setting: River Tyne, 794 C.E.

Talking politics with Cloothar, I’d been wondering what makes King Charles great, and apparently, the easy answer for that is that he baptized the Saxons.  He is Christianizing the world.

And I was thinking about the drastic change in baptism. In these times, war victory seems “cleaned up” by conquering an enemy on the battlefield. Now, rather than annihilating the remnants of wars, they are baptized.

Christianizing a people is how wars against pagans are righteously won, though the “win” in warfare is still preceded by the slaughter of many. But now victory is declared with a Christian sacrament.

It was the Roman nature of Christians to make the cross into a banner of victory — to turn that Roman torture tool used to crucify Jewish Jesus — into Christianity’s sacred logo; but the irony continued when Emperor Heraclius ousted Judaism from the empire by demanding baptism or death. Only a few hundred years after my sister and I were baptized in the Jordan river by John, repenting, turning away from the competitive warring ways of the world and back to the always love Jesus taught, then the instrument of Jesus’s death became the most celebrated icon. Baptism, at first, was a radical, personal choice to put love first.

But now in the eighth century, the king, not a bishop, performs baptism on the enemy to seal the win. King Charles is the great Charlemagne, who earned his stature on the battlefield against the Saxons and the Lombards.

         Cloothar says, “Who needs a bishop when you have a king? You know, a King is just one square in the game of chess and not the whole diagonal.”

And I thought, from what I’d learned from Alcuin in Francia, that Charles was great because he valued education. He had the best scholar to teach him and his children, and the best architect, Odo, to renovate the ancient traditional palace at Aachen. Footnote  It was all new wisdom built on old tradition. But now I learn the pragmatic purpose is imperialism — Christianizing the world. It all seems to be working very well for Francia and maybe for a new empire rising.

A commoner is not restricted from using a monastic library. Literacy is becoming more widely spread, escaping the walls of the clerics. Cloothar uses his own merchandise as an example of the rising quality of material things and he touts the benefit of a consistent ruler.

I still take my gratitude to God. Thank you, God.

Footnote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Aachen  retrieved 6-14-25.

(Continues Tuesday, March 3, 2026)

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#77.11 Wednesday, February 25, 2026

Historical Setting: River Tyne, 794 C.E.

In the long view of time, even things most reliably unchanging — like rocks and rituals — change. Over time rocks wear down and mosses own them, and the forever and always of our human habits and rituals edge away or sometimes quake abruptly but these seemingly most stable things always change.

Changed are Jewish cleansing rituals going from pond to mikvah, but always confirmed by Temple priests. It was still Jesus’s and John’s tradition.

There John came with a big splashing change into the deep dip river of cleansing, shouting for repentance, a turning around. It was an abrupt change, a rock splitting change, with the priest, now, in the wilderness, shouting, not chanting. We came in our youth seeking this turning from the old edicts to the new relationship with God. Shouting down the old — finding new was popular and youthful.

But even as the change was personal, the old Jewish traditions were also flexing in new ways. Synagogues were being built in the outlands to extend the access to the Temple and Torah. New ways of knowing God were rising up here and there within Judaism, some mystical, some midrash with new stories and budding traditions often change as reinvigorated adherence to the old. Questioning was as fresh as our own youth. When John was baptizing, the cleansing ritual was not our father’s rule, but a personal choice to enter the waters.

This was all going on in our community, while the Romans doubled down on outward obedience, holding fast to their ancient gods, with their own purification ceremonies, Lustratio, [Footnote] which had dried up into a procession with sacrifices. The pools of water, Lustral basins, were already losing their luster by the time Christian became Roman.

Then, Christian baptism repented and turned again from a personal cleansing into a tool for proselytization.

Christians replaced the briss with the baptism, and it was no longer a rebellious, teenaged personal option, but a holy demand managed by the polity of the Church. In fact, baptism became the head count for measuring Christian popularity.

As weird as it is to have a torture tool (the cross) once used by the Romans against the Jews, become the sacred symbol of a religion based on the Jewish love laws, the irony of change goes on. Always turning, always changing, even ritual and rocks are organic and always changing.

Footnote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lustratio    retrieved 6-13-25

(Continues tomorrow )

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#77.10 Tuesday, February 24, 2026

Historical Setting: River Tyne, 794 C.E.
 

I am chatting with Cloother over the ways of Vikings and Christians in these times. I came to him with a coin and bought back my fine cloak.

         He says, “So, you’ve found riches since you were my assistant, when we sailed down from Lindisfarne.”

         “Riches? I have one coin earned preparing a document for the King’s court.”

Clouds are heavy, threatening a cold rain, so I help Cloothar baton down the cover over the heaps of goods in his boat and we walk back to the main hall of Jarrow.

It is nice to have my fine cloak back again.

         “So, you have been hobnobbing with nobility?” He asks.

         “Not really.  I only did that little task for the Northumbrian king’s man Ousbert, who wants to set a guard around every holy place in Anglia to pretend he is saving us all from Vikings.”

         “It sounds like a good plan, but I’ve not seen any guards here.”

         “Have you not wondered why the Northumbrian royalty is buying up extra wide monk’s robes? The guards have swords under those robes — but that is a secret from the Vikings.”

         “It’s not a very good secret if you tell it to me. I deal with the Norsemen in the markets you know. But they already assume the monks’ robes hide swords. And now that’s true.”

         “I think the swords and soldiers hide in monks’ robes so the monks won’t feel guarded, rather than it being about soldiers finding ways to surprise the Vikings. Ousbert is initiating lots of protections against the Viking incursions, and so far, everyone applauds his success. Jarrow hasn’t been attacked.”

         “It’s winter. Of course, the Vikings haven’t attacked.”

         “We both know that.”

Distant thunder rolls as we reach the shelter of the library outer hall. Cloother is not one to value books, not being fully literate, but he does keep his ear to gossip for rumors. I ask, what of the rising king of the Franks?

         “You ask me that? Even though you are here in a monastery in the midst of a churchmen’s huddle.”

         “Does King Charles always take the pope’s side?”

         “You’ve been gone for a long while. It is well-known he is the pope’s finest sword, demanding baptism of the worst of the worst pagans even among the Lombards and the Saxons. He will soon beat the missionary bishops at the work of baptizing the whole world.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#77.9 Thursday, February 19, 2026

Historical Setting: River Tyne, 794 C.E.
 

Cloother doesn’t say it, but I am sure he’s been to the markets where the Norsemen trade and he has seen the displays of stolen wares.

        “Do you think the Vikings are enticed by Lindisfarne to strike again on this coast?” I ask him.

         “Of course! Even the booty from the raid that was obviously stolen from God was an easy sale for them. The space your parting left in their ship was much more valuable to them than keeping a cantankerous Christian slave. Now, they’ve had a fine, fat winter.”

         “I know they had a good supply of ale and a whole winter’s larder taken from the monastery.”

         “Even the conspicuously Christian gilded wood carvings reaped a healthy gain. Christian merchants, of course, could guess the source and they bought up the art works anyway, because the French king, Charles, sets this whole world in a new time of learning and prosperity.  There are castles going up — great manor houses for the lords and masters — and wilderness lands are soon to be tamed into fields to benefit the lowliest serfs.”

         “So, you don’t see anyone holding back on buying the stolen loot? You think the vicious Vikings are getting rich selling Christian chalices and bishop’s thrones on the Christian market?”

         “You make the good rewards of smart deals sound obscene.”

         “It is obscene.”

         “Judge as you are judged, man. The rich Christians rising want Christian art because they want it to be known that they deny the pagan gods and trust only in the Triune, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

         “That sounds like a benediction on the Jesus love.”

          “It is the Christian prosperity– God’s reward for loyalty.”

There is no goodness in this. What can I say? Is it the holy nature of unearned grace that is the silenced lesson?  The devil still argues that Job’s loyalty to God is only because Job is blessed with riches and health. But the meaning of the allegory dissolves away in this world where Job isn’t like everyman any longer, when trust in God is grounded only in abundant earthly prosperity and where gracious gifts are perceived as just rewards regardless of the means of acquisition. The wealthy receive God’s gifts, as God’s judgement naming themselves righteous. Then the heirs of wealth turn that notion of judgment onto the poor and label them of lesser value. Thus, greed becomes the moral judge. Job’s example of loyalty to God looks ridiculous when judged by greed.

And now the world grows rich.

(Continues Tuesday, February 24, 2026)


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#77.8 Wednesday, February 18, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.
 

Ousbert and I are working on a proclamation to be read in the king’s court. This begins, “Proclamation of Commendation for the Military Guard Posted at Jarrow” the “P” in proclamation is my best work in creating a decorative illumination, but it’s nothing to match the standard of the Lindisfarne gospel. The illumination of those pages is truly magnificent; but then, that is a gospel. This is just a note to a king to provide a list, generously spaced, naming the guardsmen.”

In the end, he rolls the document, and closes it with his seal. And for my work with the inks, he gives me a coin.

February is the tween time of the year when one day is cold bright winter — white earth — blue sky. And the next, is today, drear grey, but softening earth anticipates springtime. Who would think it is the gloppy mud that promises all things new?

The guards, walking their post from Jarrow to the sea have worn the path I follow hoping to find that Cloother has his boatload of merchandise still moored at the mouth of the Tyne. So, with the coin I buy again, my cloak once traded for the clothing for the young woman who gave of herself to help a needy family nurture a new infant.

Ousbert still wants to find her, to have her appear before the king at the reading of this document.  I tried to tell him she is needed by the family who provides her food and shelter and she can’t just leave their newborn baby to starve.  And, probably, he also needs to know she doesn’t always present herself as the demure, helpless victim he imagines will invoke the empathy of the king. She has a deep core of, should I call it, strength? On one hand, she might seem to have any mother’s single-minded inner drive to care for an infant. But on the other hand, she can be foul-mouthed with face-scratching talons that lash out with demonic intensity that no king would welcome to his court.  I warned Ousbert, but he is still planning to ask the nuns to guide him to the household where she can be found.

Cloother is moored here, and he does have my cloak amid his wares, so I buy it back from him, and he shares a loaf and a flask over a bit of conversation as we catch up on things he knows from his travels.

(Continues tomorrow)


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#77.7 Tuesday, February 17, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.
 

Ousbert made arrangements to use a monk’s cell as a scriptorium, with me the only scribe. He supplied a very fine swath of vellum. It will unfurl to an impressive length when it is read in the king’s court. He’s chosen to have me use the Merovingian hand which allows a bit more flourish than the script used copying the books produced here. And I find that style most familiar. He provides the ink and quills though I prefer to trim the quills myself for the nicer line, and I have asked for some scraped remnants of parchment, so we can prepare the content of the document before it is copied onto the finer medium.

He shows up this morning to begin work on this document. Today this king’s captain chose not to wear his armor under his tunic softening the military edge, though he still has the poise and posture of a officer.  I can understand why the guards he sends to this monastery speak kindly of him.  And this letter to the king reporting on their perseverance and adherence to duty speaks especially well of his method of leadership. At least it is fine with me, as I am now, also working for him and I am one who appreciates a leader who uses more carrots and fewer sticks.

Ousbert’s original plan was to commend his guards on guarding, but now he is aware of the story of the young woman grieving the life of the child she was forced to bear by the abusive ealdorman for this village. It was the guards at their post, early on Christmas morning, who saw her in the sea and risked their own lives to rescue her from the cold waters.

         “And in the end, let it be known, these heroes are also protecting the whole land from the attack of Vikings.”

So, the first hours of the first day, we have this full content of the proclamation.  It does what is needed — makes heroes of the guard, updates the king on the good work of Ousbert, and notes the moral flaw of the king’s appointed ealdorman. So Ousbert and I spend these next days arranging this simple message to fill this large scroll of vellum.

This begins, “Proclamation of commendation for the military guard posted at Jarrow” the “P” in proclamation took a whole day of handwork creating a decorative illumination.

(Continues tomorrow)


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#77.6 Thursday, February 12, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.
 

Ousbert, the king’s man who oversees the guarding of Jarrow against the Vikings is asking me to do the abbot’s or an ealdorman’s job of writing a report to the king. He wants a letter that will make a fine display before the court and that has good words commending the guards he has placed on duty here. He tells me something I already knew of the ealdorman, though I have only heard stories. The ealdorman here is known to be a cruel and self-centered fellow, who would prepare the letter putting himself in the role of the one who assigned the guards in making all these preparations for a Viking raid.

         “So, it isn’t the abbot’s letter you would have me write. It is the letter from the ealdorman.”

         “It will have my name and my seal.” says Ousbert.

He mentions payment, and I could buy my cloak back from Cloother with that coin. And also, I would like an opportunity to inform the king about the unfair treatment of a pauper by this very same ealdorman excluded from this assignment.

         So, “Might this commendation of the guards also include a denunciation of the ealdorman?”

         “What are you thinking?”

         “Maybe just an explanation after the signature like, ‘Ousbert, in leu of the local ealdorman.’ Then a note could be added in smaller letters, of course, than the commendations, that would give examples of the ealdorman flaunting of his power over his district.”

         “You have examples?”

         “I’ve heard a story of it.”

So, I tell Ousbert all that I know of a woman rescued from the sea by these royal guardsmen who are being commended.

         “Yes!” He says, “This is very useful! Might we find this woman again, and dress her up in courtly gowns to go before the king to tell her own story explaining why justice isn’t available from the cruel ealdorman.”

I fear I’ve said too much. He was just looking for an excuse to replace the ealdorman, perhaps with himself, and now I’ve put the troubled young girl in the midst of their own power play. And not only that, I can imagine her audience with the king, outfitted as a perfect stereotype of a helpless waif, that will end with her being dragged from court, howling curses at the king. She does have that strong core of self-reliance and she has very little regard for glitzy powerful rule makers.

(Continues Tuesday, February 17, 2026)


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#77.5 Wednesday, February 11, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.
 

Ousbert, the envoy for King Ethelred of Northubria, called me to meet with him here in the entrance hall for the library. He was here before the Christ Mass asking me details of the Lindisfarne raid and has since learned that my information was accurate. But I’m sure the reason he’s called me here isn’t just to commend my accuracy.

         “So Eleazor, the librarian tells me you are a scholar as literate as any monk, and you have a rapport with the guardsmen I’ve assigned to this place.”

         “We shared a Christmas song and a pint of ale.”

         “The abbot here does nothing but complain about these heroic guardsmen. He has no regard for their living conditions and their needs, even though they are here to protect this community. I don’t trust the abbot to provide accurate reports to the Kings man.”

I can guess where this is going. Ousbert is looking for someone to spy on the spies. I ask him if that is what he wants of me.

         “More than that.  It would be very useful if I could carry a document to the royal court of Northumbria commending the fine work of these guards in protecting this outpost against the Vikings.”

         “You want to report commendation for these men? That really should come from the abbot?”

         “The abbot won’t do it. It could be on a long strip of vellum, with flourishes and proper lettering so that when it is unfurled and read in a royal court it will be well known that it is a worthy commendation.”

         “Can’t you just go and tell whatever royal court the guards are keeping their watch as ordered?”

         “It needs embellishment fit for a king. At the top it would announce, ‘The good works of the loyal subjects of the ruler of Northumbria. Then you would write something to say we have had no Vikings raid Jarrow since the guards have been posted!”

         “I can’t pretend to be the abbot’s scribe. This is his task.”

         “Indeed, or this could be the task for the local ealdorman, but..”

Oh, yes, now I know why he chooses to by-pass the ealdorman here.  This ealdorman is the ‘Mister’ in the ‘castle’ who abused the young pauper, and then he sent her away and let her baby die. Apparently, even a king’s military general doesn’t trust this ealdorman. And I actually do have some information someone needs to know; and it isn’t about the guards.

(Continues tomorrow)


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#77.4 Tuesday, February 10, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

On the horizon towers are rising — bell towers rise up from churches, but also, watch towers rise up here and there, as rocks are stacked higher and higher into babel towers to reach the heavens.

Watching the sea once gave monks a spiritual tranquility. Once gazing at the horizon at sunrise set a new day right. The dawning edge where sea meets sky brightens tenderly, softly, silently waking until the saffron sun rises, and immediately day is all.

But in these times, the watchers aren’t monks in private prayer; they are military guards, eyeing the breakers moving toward the shoreline searching for the shadows between the foaming edges in search of the stealth longships of the Norsemen lying low among the shore waves hiding in plain sight on the sea.

Returning to the monastery, I find Ousbert waiting to meet with me.  I’ve already told him all I know of the Viking raid at Lindisfarne. And now the people of this land live by warfare — moving rocks, setting guards, gathering swords and spears enough for every hand to hold a weapon. Ousbert has been to Lindisfarne since we last talked, and now he commends me on my accuracy.

          “Eleazor, your observations are well collaborated. I was fortunate to find you, a clear-headed witness, here.”

I have to wonder what Ousbert’s purpose is in seeking me out now. A military advisory to King Ethelred isn’t likely to be sent on a mission to compliment a witness.

         “So, Captain, now everyone thinks of nothing but the possibilities for devastation. In that way a violent raid has already taken a toll here even without actual Vikings.”

         “How so?”

         “All this preparation is driven by imagining an enemy. And it is fear that sets our hearts on battle, the exact opposite of God’s love that is the holiness of a monastery.”

         “Fear? No, the people should find comfort in the safety measures we take.”

         “Safety measures are wearing leather shoes in a berry patch. Setting guards, supplying weapons, setting traps, that is warfare, not safety.”

         “These are uneasy times. Every day I wake and wonder if we still have a king. Ethelred has his own brutality.” [Footnote]

         “I guess that is the risk of following temporal masters.”

         “You sound more like a monk than a layman. Maybe you’re already under the influence of them. But I’m here to appeal to your secular interests.”

         “Have I secular interests?”

         “Everyone does, of course. We live in the real world.”

[Footnote] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%86thelred_I_of_Northumbria  (retrieved 2-9-26)

  (Continues tomorrow)

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#77.3 Thursday, February 5, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

It is an easy verse to remember, “There is no fear in love,” [I John 4:18]. But it’s nearly incomprehensible in real life. Surely, the quill slipped and it was intended to say, “There is no hate in love.” Hate has teeth and tools, strength and power. Fear is a human frailty that leaves its victims helpless and shuttering.

Hate is transformative. Those war-kindling rumors offer up strangers as hated enemies. Hate can take any fear, big or little, real or imagined, debilitating or simply a nuisance and rename it, “The Enemy.” So, when rumors circulate and Jarrow hears of the raid on Lindisfarne, a truly hated enemy is created out of rumors by fear.  Really it  isn’t a Swede, or a Dane, or a Norseman, as though the enemy is a person made in God’s image; it is a fearsome rumored “other” — a Viking. 

Fear hides as cowardly hatred, and hate devolves into a lie to dehumanize, and transform other people into horrific superhuman monsters.

Jarrow has turned a feared rumor into a Viking enemy and even good Christians are encouraged to hate despite Jesus’s teachings to do otherwise. But I buried the dead, and I know this enemy is no human. It is actually, greed — the root of sin — though no one really wants to forfeit the power of that sin even though less greed makes them less vulnerable. Because, when the sin is greed it serves a feast, not a simple bowl of gruel. Greed warms a house, and furnishes it better than mere shelter. Greed appears to be a very likeable sin, says the woman who clothes all her family in velvet. The plentiful life of the greedy is a prize worthy of the cost even if it calls for wars and murders to keep it.

Greed drives the marauders to this shore because those Vikings share this sin.  The Viking raids are not hate-crimes. The raids are crimes of excess. The brutality and deaths are perceived as the collateral damage of wealth. If the raiders come to this shore they won’t visit the pauper’s woods, they will seek out the tallest towers and the fattest storehouses — likely the monastery. Yet, here, these preparations are to build higher watch towers and fortify the storehouses with weapons — always to save the gold at the risk of human lives. 

(Continues Tuesday, February 10, 2026)


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#77.2 Wednesday, February 4, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

I return to St. Paul in near morning light.

It is the changing of the guard when these king’s soldiers who are assigned to guard the seashore are taking their posts dressed as monks prepared for any real or imagined Viking attack. On the Jarrow side of the Tyne some men arrive with a mule and are moving rocks onto the sandbar.

         “Why?” I ask them.

         “It’s a new plan to stifle the longships of the Vikings so they can’t come up the river.”

         “Isn’t that likely to stop all ships from entering the river from the sea?”

         “Any acceptable ships can moor in the basin as they do anyway, waiting for the righteous tide, and a smaller currach can ferry the people and the goods up the river if needed before the tide rises.”

Having seen the longships of the Norsemen I happen to know they don’t have the deep draft of merchant ships and galleys that would be hindered by a rock laden sandbar. They are nearly already riverboats.

         I ask, “But what if they would attack near high tide? They would just slip right into the river, and never even notice all this fortification.”

         “Aye, but the rocks would catch them on the return and they wouldn’t get away with the plunder. All these rocks will surely stop them from escaping.”

A Viking raid isn’t like an army attacking an enemy at war; it is much quicker than the turning of the tide — silent and brutal.

         The overseer of the work says, “Everyone knows now the saints won’t save them from the attack. This isn’t Lindisfarne. Here every hearth will have a spear, every mantle a sword and every belt a dagger.”

So, fear calls for killing power. Fear transforms the hearthside, where a child would normally learn familial love, into an armed fortress with lessons in hatred for strangers. Fear hides weapons in monk’s robes. It heaps a low-tide causeway with jagged rocks as snares for ships.

These people have never even seen a Norseman marauder. Yet they call them the war word, “Viking.” It is simply the tales of Lindisfarne that made the rumor that set the rest of the world against welcoming strangers. Fear has the power to suck the heart out of anyone’s self, and teach away all tenderness for the sake of transforming protective fear into blanket hatred. We have an enemy now: the unknown neighbor.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#77.1 Tuesday, February 3, 2026

Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 794 C.E.

It is the dark hour before dawn. We are five people waiting for the tide to turn in a shelter shed. The three who just arrived are arguing. The nuns are midwives advising the man on the needs of his brother’s family as they prepare for a new baby.

The grieving girl I’ve been keeping watch with through this night is huddled in the corner waiting for these people to leave– waiting for the silence to return pretending silence could be peace.

I’m waiting for God to answer my own silent prayer — Dear God, stay close to this young woman on her terrible journey through grief.

The three arrive in the midst of a heated argument.  The nuns insist the family must procure a fresh cow. The soon-to-be uncle raises the timbre of the argument insisting a cow is too costly, accusing the nuns of having no empathy for the poor.

         One nun says, “It is the responsibility of the family to care for their infants. It’s not simply the luck of having wealthy neighbors from whom to borrow a cow! Rich or poor, your family is responsible!”

         The other nun adds, “If we didn’t know your family to be poor we would demand that you hire a wet nurse. The cow is the poor man’s substitute!”

The man starts to speak. The nun speaks over him. 

         “All we ask is that you borrow a cow for the sake of this baby! It is the least you can do.”

The tension rises. The man rages.

         “Oh, dear Jesus, have these wealthy nuns no idea of what it is to be poor?”

At this moment, the girl huddled on the bench, flips her cowl back, stiffens her posture and shoots her demon glare right at the nuns and the uncle. She speaks boldly through gritted teeth.

         “Here is the fresh cow Jesus sends you.”

Silent. Stunned. These nuns have seen this demon’s glare before. Then they were prepared with a chain and manacles — though, of course, they prepared for a much larger demon. They recognize her now.

It is the nature of gracious God to send a holy happenstance.

When the tide turns the nuns, the man, and the holy gift of the wet nurse, cross the sandbar. I know the truth of this holy happenstance might seem a miracle at this moment. Really what happened is that God sent the baby to rescue the wet nurse. Thank you, God.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#76.13 Thursday, January 29, 2026

Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 794 C.E.
 

It’s been nearly all night that we’ve sat here in the quiet darkness, except for the gentle sounds of a horse waiting for his master to return and our few words. I asked her to imagine a wishful story. She has an imagination and she has words that could tell fantastic stories. Were she literate, she could write her way through all the years of this grief.

It isn’t dawn yet, but we hear people talking, approaching outside. I step out and here is a man and two women crossing the meadow toward the shed, coming down from the convent of St. Peter. The young girl hears them outside and hides as best she can, not being a mouse that can fit between the boards. She is crouched at the end of the bench with her cowl pulled over her head hiding her face.

         Now they are here.

         “Hello. We’re seeking shelter here until tide ebbs so we can cross at the sandbar.”

The three of them crowd into our midst — two nuns, and a villager with them who is holding up a lantern so we can all see the young woman huddled and silent as though she is hidden. Once I saw a kit in a wood, thinking he was hiding from me, but only his eyes were hidden. The rest of him was clearly exposed, sticking out from the side of the tree that shielded his eyes.  And though her hiding is imaginary, no one acknowledges her.

         “Is something happening at Jarrow, today?” I ask them.

         “It is possible.” says the man. “My brother’s wife may need a midwife this very day.”

         “What a wonderful blessing for your family!”

         The man doesn’t answer. A nun answers for him.

         “There is a fear. This mother had a beautiful little girl a while back, but the mother is sickly and then that infant failed to thrive.  We told this family then, and we tell them now, they must borrow a fresh cow if any baby can survive at all.”

         The man argues, “These nuns think every family is rich and all the neighbors have fancy farms and cows just for the lending.”

         The nun adds, “We aren’t talking about great wealth. We only insist that you borrow a fresh cow that has recently born a calf. Even a poor family can surely take on that little responsibility.”

So, here we are audience for a continuing argument.

(Continues Tuesday, February 3, 2026)

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#76.12 Weds., January 28, 2026

Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 794 C.E.
 

We sit here in the dark mostly in silence — the dark is cold — the silence is raw.  What can I say? There are no words of goodness or even hope. Much as I wish it, I can’t repair another’s grief.

She explains it again too easily.

         “I took him to the sea, and the baby prince was taken up by the angels. Them angels came in a crashing wave, and wrapped him up in sea foam and took him away to the place where the sea meets the heaven. But they didn’t take me — his own mother.”

She rubs the bruises on her wrists.

         “Instead, you and the demons took me away to Hell.”

         I say, “It was the king’s guards who were keeping watch over Jarrow and Monkwearmouth who pulled you from the sea. They brought you up from the water just as I was crossing over the sandbar to the church on this side of the river. I took you on to the church and to the nuns. They didn’t see you as you are. They only saw what belonged to the stories they tell — first they remembered you were a mother and they thought they saw Mary, then then they feared you were plagued by demons.”

         “They feared demons? But they’re the ones keepin’ the demons in the tower! There the ones chained me to the demons!”

         “The Reverend Mother showed me the tower and the chains with manacles sized to fetter a demon, but without a fearsome devil, a person in those chains could just slip away and run down the stairs and cross the field to the river. That’s what happened, isn’t it?”

         “I had to be stealth to hide all the demon howls.”

         “You were stealth. The Reverend Mother didn’t even know you had escaped until I asked to see you in the tower.”

         “Good for them.”

         “So now you are free from the chains. I could walk with you maybe to a new place. We could see what is on the Jarrow side.”

         “I already said that’s where I can’t go! And look at me now, all dressed up like a princess but bringing no one any of the riches. Maybe they could trade me for a better price now.” 

         “Very well, use your castle words and make up the story you wish to live into. Hone the words to say any kind of worthy ever after. We should make a new plan now.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#76.11 Tuesday, January 27, 2026

Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 794 C.E.

The young woman has a dress and an apron and a cowl, all the things she needs to appear presentable to other people who could meet her with either judgment or compassion. Only heaven knows her nakedness, though earth is still touched by her unshod feet.

She recognized my selfish need in trading away my cloak for her to have this clothing. She offers me no gratitude. She saw my gift for what it was, my own selfish appeasement of conscience. So, we sit here in this little harbor shelter in the dark.

There is a horse sheltered here with fresh straw while his rider might be rowing up the river a short way to spend this night in Jarrow. This shed has a purpose. The horse has purpose.

This young Rachel has her focus on the mouse in the corner working feverishly to move its nest out of view of our human eyes. Now two mice are working on this project. When the last of the babies are tucked safely between the boards of this structure and out of our sight, the young woman still stares at the emptiness.

         “I could go with you at first light in the morning, when the tide ebbs again, and we can cross the river and walk to the wood where there are people you know.”

         “You would take me to the pauper’s woods where already they traded me away? Why would I go there?”

         “I don’t know. Is that where your home is?”

         “They would expect a princess bringing treasures and food from the castle. But I didn’t take stuff when I was dismissed.”

         “The house we saw across the river was no castle it was the ealdorman’s house. This village is small and Cloothar agrees with me that a king assigns a literate villager, hardly royalty, to be the ealdorman. It was your hopes and dreams that made it a castle. And you still have the gift to make castles of your dreams. So, tell me the story. What happens next, when the hour comes, and a castle is an ordinary house and the coach is a pumpkin, and the coachmen are rats? Is there still a hidden princess in a common girl? What is the ever after for this story?”

         “There is no ever. I gave that baby prince to the heaps of waters in the sea, and I promised to always keep him safe. but I was taken from the sea.”

         “So, what happens next in the princess story?”

(Continues tomorrow)


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#76.10 Thursday, January 22, 2026

Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 794 C.E.
 

The young girl, along with Cloothar and I, have found shelter from the cold wind in a stable shed at the harbor on the sea gate of the Tyne. Cloothar has tailored a dress for the girl — the dress I traded for my cloak. And now he is in the spirit of this gifting also, and has made this child a cowl, and he has found in his heaps of merchandise. a linen apron just right for a small sized woman.

She fingers the apron, nudging the smooth weave, the purity of clean cloth, between her thumb and finger. Her fingers are like bird’s legs, rough and spindly but purposed for clinging to a branch — a flightless fledgling, alone. Her prayer is silent.

Dressed up in her own wools and an apron, she has the outward appearance of one who can manage the normal routines of life. But of course an outward appearance doesn’t fix the depths of a person where grief is relentless. The torments and sorrows aren’t dismissed when hidden. Underneath her restyled clothing she is still naked and grieving. But at least, I suppose, she isn’t exposed to the judgement from others for how she suffers. She looks to be a person first, before any infestation of demons, or sins of self-destruction are conspicuous. At least that was my thought as I wish to fix this thing.

So, what will she do? Where can she go?

Cloothar, hurrys to return to his boat by the rising tide and before the impending dark of night. I feel the unsettled night coming on as well.

         I tell her, “When the tide is out, the sandbar becomes a shallow crossing if you wish to go back over to the woods.”

She may know that as her first home. But she keeps her head bowed studying the weave of the apron with her fingers.

         She says, “You don’t have to wait here, you know.”

         “Yes, I do have to stay. It would ache my conscience to leave you here without a place to be or people to be with.”

         “It’s not about you and your shabby little conscience. I have to figure it out for myself, or not.”

Her idea of ‘Not’ isn’t an option. My “shabby little conscience” won’t allow it. So we sit here in the dark.

(Continues Tuesday, January 27, 2026)

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#76.9 Wednesday, January 21, 2026

Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 794 C.E.
 

The young woman wrapped in my cloak, follows me along the river bank toward the sea to the mooring harbor where I’ve noticed Cloothar’s merchant’s boat is moored.

         “Friend Cloothar!”

He is in his boat, folding and sorting his wares, preparing to travel up river at high tide.  He sees me and untethers from the mooring post to bring his boat closer to this bank so that I can tell him of our need.

         “Have you a woman’s tunic of wool to suit this season?”

He rummages through his heaps of goods, and emerges with a perfectly fine dress in a size much too large for this girl.

         “What price can she pay?”

         “I’ll trade the dress for my cloak which you remember, you traded me for my work and the monk’s robe.”

         “That is a very fine cloak, you realize, worth much more than this old dress.”

         “It is what I have to trade. Perhaps you will do the alterations for her.”

         “That would make it worth the trade.”

A cold January wind whips off the sea and this poor waif draws my cloak tighter around her. It is the same gust of wind that shivers me and reminds me of my sacrifice. Do I give up my cloak so easily because I think God needs to be reminded of my goodness? Maybe that was a thought that crossed my mind. But, as much as I would like to win God’s approval, like adding a star to my crown in heaven, I know in my brain God doesn’t love a person by the measure of their goodness.

God loves everyone, freely. The gift giving that shivers me, also defines humankind. It practices the God-love on earth as it is in heaven and speaks from the in-born nature of human empathy. When I give a small gift, it is amplified into all human goodness and because it says simply, “God is gracious and good, and through this gifting we know grace and goodness.”   With a few blatant and obnoxious exceptions, goodness prevails. So, now my one little shiver reminds me of all the goodness on earth and in heaven.  Life is good.

         Thank you, God.

The three of us find shelter from the cold in the harbor shed. So Cloothar fits the large woman’s tunic on this very small girl with fabric left for a cowl. Cloothar is being generous here. Generosity is contagious.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#76.8 Tuesday, January 20, 2026

Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 794 C.E.

The young woman who was rescued from intentional drowning on Christmas, then chained in the tower as demon possessed, then escaped, and found by me on this river bank contemplating grief, is talking with me about perspective.

The tiny specs of human existence on the opposite bank of the Don are this child’s whole life. What to her is untamed forests concealing a world of paupers, was the only world she had known until she was taken by a powerful “Mister,” I think she means ealdorman, into a castle (a simple house) and there she was the victim of this little man, bearing his child, then being “trashed” or discarded, or dismissed, when the infant was a year old. Without the care of a mother, the baby died, and now grief is the largest thing in her landscape.

So now where can she go if she could survive all this? I ask her about the paupers in the woods.

         “Are the people in the woods your family?”

         “No, they are old and poor.”

         “Before you were a child with them in the woods who cared for you?”

         “They said I once had a mamma, who gave her baby to them. She is gone. Only ones left are them now, who traded with Mister — me, for the King’s letter.”

         “What names do you call them by?”

         “Gramps and Old Ma and…”

         “Do you think they miss you, now?”

         “No, no, not me. They wanted a princess from the castle. The princess was always in their stories all shared around, and then they traded me, and I was supposed to change into the princess in the castle until… (she is sobbing) I can’t go back to them and tell them I was dismissed. Mister will want the King’s letter back. And here I am not a real princess, with nothing at all, no baby prince, no riches, no crown, no nothing –only one old robe.”

She is still wrapped in my own fine cloak. My cloak is no “old robe,” it is the scholar’s cloak that I traded with Cloothar for a monk’s robe and a few days’ work.

Now, when we walk along the river in the direction of the sea and come to the mooring harbor. There, are the little boats waiting for high tide to row up the river. I see Cloothar’s boat is moored here today, either a very fine coincidence, or a blessing.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#76.7 Thursday, January 15, 2026

Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 794 C.E.
 

     The relentless intensity of grief that owns this mother’s spirit allows a breath for my mundane questions about the circumstances of her life. I am trying to understand her options.

         She says, “Everything is made of words. In a castle even the words are rich. For the castle man “stinky garbage” is “discarded” or “dismissed. But when the Mister took the baby from me, he said I was “dismissed.”

She knows lots of words for garbage and for death, and she even knows the euphemisms.

         She says, “The castle word is ‘deceased. But the baby is still the same dead.”

Grief takes this moment for humor — dark and messy — momentary, oddly displaced laughter is couched in grim. Then in this meandering silence the emptiness continues. I grope for reprieve, a change of subject.

         “Where is this castle?”

         “It’s on the other side of the river up high from the pauper’s woods.”

         “I’m staying on the other side, at the Monastery and I’ve taken walks from there in the evenings.  I’ve seen lots of woodlands, and on the hill behind to the woods is only a little village. I thought only a few houses are there.”

         “Come, I’ll show you.”

We walk along the river looking across at the same river bank I’ve often walked.  She points to a little stand of trees she calls the “paupers’ woods,” she chooses to creep along behind the sparse foliage on this side, to stay hidden from the paupers she knows, but I see no one over there. Then on the rise near the clearing is a small cluster of houses I called a village.

         “See there, overseeing the village is the castle. The Mister might see  me here.”

We are much too far away for anyone to distinguish individuals over here. Yet, this girl insists we stay hidden as though anyone over there would see her. She whispers imagining they could hear us all the way over here.

         “That is his horse, tied there by the castle, so I know he is there.”

Now I see, her word for a house with a roof is “castle.” And very likely, seeing the lay of the village, the cruel man who owns a horse and rules from the castle and speaks in inflated words is probably only the village ealdorman — the one assigned the authority to collect the fees and dominate the lives of these poor in the name of the king.

(Continues Tuesday, January 20, 2026)


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#76.6 Wednesday, January 14, 2026

Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 794 C.E.

What to do with this grieving mother is the issue. I could take her back to the nuns if they could listen without judging. Maybe they would receive her with pity, unless their own fear of a writhing demon overrules their holy compassion. Obligations to care for strangers are always weighed against the possibility of hidden demons.  Maybe the nuns would understand her grief because they know the Matthew story of the slaughter of the innocents. Rachel could be their name for her. They know that Rachel weeps, and Mary ponders. They practice the mother’s grief each season with the Lenten sorrow standing with Mary at the cross. Maybe the nuns could understand.

But I know something of this grief also, because I have been the grieving parent, and even then, when it was my own child, I didn’t know the depths of Ana’s grief as the mother of our child.  No one knows another’s grief, we only know our own and from our own grief, sympathy is born. We never have the same grief as another.

         Dear God, you already know her, you love her, and I know you also love her child. You love the love bond of mother and child. You have given her voice to speak of it though the words she gave it were crude. Help me listen-in with what I have so carelessly named sympathy, that I may, in some little way, help carry the burden of her sorrow.

She’s shivering, even wrapped in my cloak. Her only garment is a simple dress– an undergarment the nuns gave her to hide her nakedness. I asked her if she has other things she can wear.

         “Mister had fine clothes for his son’s mother, but he sent me off in my old beggar’s rags and what was left my old cloak, he used to wrap the dead baby in. The baby wore my rags into the sea. I meant to give that child more, but all he has in his death are my old rags!

         “I wore fine clothes in Mister’s castle. And yet, he saved my rags because he knew from the first, he wouldn’t keep me. If he had only noticed me, I could have been a useful slave for him all the years of that baby’s life.

         “I would be a good servant.  I learned the fine words of the castle.”

         “What do you mean?”

         “I used to have wildwood words like “trashed” and “crud.” Now I have castle words: “dismissed” and “filth.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#76.5 Tuesday, January 13, 2026

Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 794 C.E.
 

The Christmas story leaves Rachel grieving for her child.

There are lots of bits of the Christmas story. When the nuns read the whole of it from the gospel of Matthew, told and told again by the followers of Jesus escaping Romans in Judah it calls for pondering, not just celebrating. The early Christians sought safer places. In the Matthew allegory the angel visits Joseph in a dream, while in Luke the angel comes to Mary. Joseph is the name of the biblical dream-keeper, so of course it was a dream. In Matthew, Mary and Joseph escape, back across the Reed Sea into Egypt with the baby, while Rome works through their puppet King, Herod, to issue infanticide on Judah.  Matthew keeps a finger on the pulse of the Hebrew bible and remembers Jeremiah 31, and allegorically names the weeping mother Rachel, after the mother of Jacob (Israel).

We know who Mary is. She is the happy ending to the Christmas story. But happy endings all depend on where the story teller takes a breath and sits back and smiles and says, “and that was the story of…” to make the story seem complete.

So, we sit here by the river, a stranger just visiting Jarrow for its library and this young woman who escaped a brutal household, then escaped the sea, then escaped the chains, forged for demons…

         Is there a place where she is safe, Dear God?

         I ask, “Where did you live before Mister took you to the castle, ?”

         “I lived in the pauper’s wood.”

         “Is your family there?”

         “They says my ma gifted me to the olders when I was a babe, then she went on her way. In the paupers’ woods people come and go but the olders are forever there. When Mister come down, he traded with them — me, for a King’s letter of permission.”

I can’t leave this child and yet she seems to have no place. She surely can’t return to this powerful man, “Mister” who traded a “King’s letter” for her, then sent her away after she birthed his baby and nursed it for a year. And it seems there is no place for her in the paupers’ wood where they traded her for a letter of permission. Permission for what I wonder. And that is all I know of this place. 

         I ask again, “Can you show me where these places are?”

(Continues tomorrow)


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#76.4 Thursday, January 8, 2026

Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 794 C.E.

The grieving girl tells her story.

         “The Christmas bells rang just then, same as when he was born that night when them nuns called me “Mary.” That baby were then, warm and wide-eyed, wiggling and wriggling alive; such a sweet babe he were. But then, the bells ring and Mister handed him back dead. I held him close ’til the bells stopped. I rocked him dead, and I sang to him dead.”

She starred off and sang and rocked herself.

         “Coo baby in the willow tops, tumbles down, tumbles down”

         “Used to, he’d smile back when I sing, but dead don’t smile. I poured my milk on him, but dead he didn’t put his mouth to me and pat me with that tiny little baby hand.”

Her tears flood every word now.

         She says, “I promised that baby I’d never leave him alone even dead, so I took him down to the sea where I could go too, to them pits of sheol. But I was dragged back to the rocky sand and now he goes on and on all alone, without a mother, all alone and so cold…”

Her sobs are all consuming.  She’s telling me, a stranger, all of this, because God already knows and yet she still needs to say it.  It is the season when the nuns don’t chant a lullaby. It is a dirge.

         “Herod the King in his raging …lullay, lullay”

It is the story that Matthew told all the way through.

It is the season now after the names remembered fled to Egypt, and now the song is for the weeping “Rachel.”

And here is this young woman who was snatched from the sea by men who would play the heroes. Her life was saved but she is inconsolable — consumed by a raging demon, or is it grief? I know its name is grief. The grieving mother is the story that also finds Mary grieving at the cross. 

What can I say to her?

I offer only silence and thoughts. The allegory of God’s love for all people is the bond of the mother and child. That love bond is every mother and child.

         “Yet, Rachel still weeps.”

         “Who is Rachel?” She asks me.

         “It is an allegory in the gospel. Maybe Rachel is any woman who weeps for her lost child.”

         “So, Rachel knows me?” She asks.

(Continues Tuesday, January 13, 2026)

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#76.3 Wednesday, January 7, 2026

Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 794 C.E.

The young woman slipped out of the chains and she could have leapt from the tower to her certain death, but apparently, she chose to run toward the river. I’m following the tracks in the snow.

The rising sun flushes the sky behind me in the fresh light of a solstice morning and here, the brittle winter envelops the hedges along the river in ice. She is on the riverbank barefooted, in nothing but a linen under dress as nuns wear, now, with rust stains from chains. She isn’t raging with the demon just now. She’s standing quietly on the riverbank. I put my cloak around her and ask her name.

         “Them nuns at that church say I’m Mary but I’m no Mary. Then it would be Jesus, dead.”

She tells me as bluntly as it can be said. And that is all that matters.

         I say, “It is the season when Rachel is weeping for her children.”

         “Who is Rachel?”

         “It is the part in the Christmas story when God is grieving with all of the mothers who have lost their sons. Are you the grieving mother?”

She looks away and doesn’t answer.

         I ask, “What name do others know you by?”

         “I’m called Girl.”

         “Who calls you that?”

         “Mister.”

         “Who is ‘Mister’?”

         “You don’t even know? Everyone knows. He lives in the castle.”

         “I’ve just come down from Lindisfarne. So I am unfamiliar with Jarrow. Can you show me this?”

         “‘Course not! I can’t go back there. He put me out and his baby died.”

         “The nuns said they remembered you when you gave birth to your son a year ago.”

         “Mister kept it, said it was his. He only just let me be the nurse for the year of its swaddles. Then he put me out. In my pretends I could wait there at the edge of the wood for all the years to pass ’til the pretty young prince from the castle come down for the hunt. I’d be waiting there to see him pass by and I’d know that prince were mine. Even without a word ‘tween us he’d know his momma.

         “But now Mister come by with the baby, cold, stiff, wound in my old rags, and Mister ordered me to fix the baby with my milk. ‘Said I cursed it so it only screamed and never ate ’til death stopped the noise. Cold and icy white was all that was left of that baby. Mister didn’t say another word. He just left the baby off and went back up the castle way.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#76.2 Tuesday, January 6, 2026

Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 794 C.E.
 

I follow the Reverend Mother to the tower entryway. The arch is just the right height for the Reverend Mother to pass through, but I have to bend down. There is hardly enough light to see the steps immediately before us. This wooden structure of stairs and precarious landings creaks and sways as we climb. The Reverend Mother seems accustomed to this climb probably only intended for one small woman at a time to reach the belfry.

She says it took the full power of two strong women to get the demoniac up this stairway.  And I imagine if they had a chain to hold her the chain alone would weigh more than any of them.  It must have been a struggle. As we near the openings at the belfry more light floods in. 

Here on the top platform where the bell cord hangs is a huge heavy chain and manacles lying in a heap. The Reverend Mother stares, stunned.

         “She’s escaped.”

It was easy to see the manacles are sized for a giant, and the grieving girl was tiny. All she’d have to do would be slip her hands out and she’d be free. The Reverend Mother looked down the high tower through a belfry arch. We both feared what we might see on the ground so far below. But there is nothing but the fresh snow.

         “She must have escaped down the stairs, and now she and her demons are loose on the land.”

Now, I go down ahead of the Reverend Mother amid the creaks and clatters of the rickety stairs.  We both know the young woman is in danger.

         “She’s probably going back to the sea to finish drowning her demon.”

Am I the only one who finds a need to hurry to find this young woman?

         “Her tracks are clear. I’ll follow her.”

Only my own tracks lead toward this church from the sea. But at the smallest archway of the tower her footprints are as clear as if she was laying a trail for someone to find her.

         The Reverend Mother says, “She wasn’t walking toward the sea.”

        “She’s chosen the river.”

The Reverend Mother offers a prayer with genuflect and kneeling. She lists many titles for God, and I know the unspoken prayer behind the holy words is that the nuns can be free of this so-called demoniac once and for all. I slip away before the amen that I might find her before she reaches the river.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#76.1 Thursday, January 1, 2026

Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 794 C.E.
 

Is this a magical time of year because of the particular songs and stories? I don’t think the season that Christians call the Christ Mass is sacred simply by edict or calendar. Now is when the sun begins a new light overtaking old darkness. There is no papal edict to set its day. It is an edict of Creation itself.  Lightness gradually returns gnawing away the edges of night at each rising. It would stay a Pagan thing, but Christians, also, keep the notion of the light overcoming the darkness. Epiphany marks this time of all things new.

Last night, at sunset I crossed back to the church at Monkwearmouth for the long night’s vigil of New Year. I was wondering what became of the waif I brought here on Christmas.

Now, after this Morning Watch, I knock on the study door of the Reverend Mother.

         “So, Joseph has returned?”

         “I am Eleazor, not Joseph. And I don’t believe the young woman I left at your door on Christmas would fit Luke’s ideal of motherhood. We’ve both seen her enraged.”

         “It’s been contentious. Her demons put us all to the test.”

         “The scratches on my face are quicker to heal than the scars on my conscience, were I intended to excuse myself from caring.”

         “So, she wasn’t just a stranger to you, washed up on the shore?”

         “She was a stranger then. All I know of her is what you told me. And also, that she was helpless and floundering in grief.”

         “This isn’t grief. This is possession of her soul by demons. We are equipped to handle grief here, but not demons.”

         “You mean grief is easier to manage, because it is a quieter infirmity?”

         “Grief heals with quiet prayers of sympathy. Grief has no comparison with this.”

         “Of course. I was just thinking, in her case, grief would simply drown its victim directly, but with demons, pigs are needed to carry it away for the drowning.” [Luke 8:32-33]

         She says, “We can pray for miracles, but while we wait, we have to do our best to deal with it any way we can.”

         “So, you have her here in chains?”

         “She is safe.”

         “May I visit her?”

         “Why? You said you don’t even know her.”

         “I know grief very well, and I want to offer a prayer of sympathy.”

         “It isn’t at all simple just to see her where she is now.”

I follow after the Reverend Mother to the doorway into the belltower.

(Continues Tuesday, January 6, 2026)

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#75.14 Weds., December 31, 2025

Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 793 C.E.
 

The Reverend Mother, asks me how I know this woman I brought here to them.

         “The guards rescued her from the sea and I went down to help them but I don’t know her.”

         “We know her here. Last winter she came to us in labor and the Sister who is with her now delivered her baby. It seemed to us then, an allegory of the Christmas story but for the missing Joseph. We celebrated the birth of a strong infant, despite the deplorable poverty of the mother. She was a child herself, living as a pauper. We intended to keep her here and care for her and the baby properly, but she ran away and took the child with her.

         “No one could find her, and when we asked about her, there was no one who even knew who she was. All that we knew was that she once lived with the paupers in the wood. Alone, and with a child, they were both in danger. We searched for her and prayed for her. Apparently, someone took them in because no one ever saw her again.  But now, here she is showing up here again, now, a demoniac, raging against God. She is truly a child of the devil.”
“She is a child in grief.” I say.

         “If you say you don’t know her, how would you know she is grieving?”

         “You told me she had a child, and now she is alone. Any mother would be grieving at the loss of an infant.”

         “She was no mother. She was only a child who birthed a baby.”

         “You say she left here with her child, and now the child is gone, and now she chose to give up her own life to the sea. If there is a devil in this story, his name is Grief.”

The nun goes back into the little office and closes the door.

I know the girl will run away from here when she is able, and she will find a less guarded shore for her next walk into the sea.

         Dear God, I know my asking prayer risks that I will be sent to answer it, but this really needs asking.  Please be with this little girl, take her in your arms and comfort her in her time of terrible sorrow.  Send a Joseph, or at least some understanding of grief for this child. I know I am asking for a turning, again. Amen.

(Continues Thursday, January 1)

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#75.13 Tuesday, December 30, 2025

Historical Setting: Monkwearmouth, 793 C.E.

The Christmas story is when the poor and weak are lifted up and the proud and powerful are cast down. It was the story Jesus was born into. And this too is that story. 

I take the bones of the near drown girl to the Reverend Mother of Monkwearmouth. She puts another in charge of the choir just as they prepare to process in, and she guides me to take this wailing bundle into her chambers off the sanctuary. This room is encumbered in brocades and velvets. I lay the waif on a golden upholstered couch. Then seeing the child is naked, the elder nun sends me away handing me back my cloak soaked and tattered. She asks me to fetch the tall nun, second to the last in the women’s choir.  So, I do, and now I step into the congregation late to worship but not too late for the reading of the Gospel.

In this so-called “women’s worship service” the Abbot of St. Peter and St. Paul rises to the pulpit fully adorned in his seasonal regalia: jeweled cross, silken robes and brocade chasuble. He proclaims the day. His voice is omnipotent, strong and powerful, quaking morning snoozers awake.

         “In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria.  All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the City of David called Bethlehem because he was of the house and family of David. … ” [Luke 2:1-4]

Thus begins the Christian paradox with familiar grandiose words –“decree” “Emperor” even the mention of “David” the nearly mythical greatest king ever — and this familiar reading ends with, “…they laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn.”[Luke 2:7b]

         “The Word of the Lord!” And the song rises.

It is this calm of winter when we set the earth with spangles and candles and sing the songs and shout the toasts for the season, and clatter our mugs of ale with friends and strangers alike. It is the Christmas story, the same story as always upside-down. For every person born there is a birth story. It is one story when what seemed unimportant is suddenly all that ever mattered.

I see the Holy Mother at her chamber door, gazing over the gathered people, maybe, looking for me.

(Continues tomorrow)


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#75.12 Thursday, December 25, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.
 

Some rise early for the mass. At Monkwearmouth the antiphons will be sung by the women’s choir this morning for this feast day celebrating the Christ birth.

The guards dressed as monks have their shift change at first light, so it isn’t just the monks stumbling through the Jarrow halls with a cloudy intention toward wakefulness which, just now, makes early seem contrary to the warmth of dark sleep. 

A guard I meet on the river path is breathless, hurrying to find a blanket because they just pulled a person from the sea near the river inlet. I run back with him to give my cloak.

         He said, “Keep this quiet, because the rescued girl sinned unforgivably by attempting suicide and the holy men will only chastise her.”

         “I’m sure the monks would only meet her need with kindness.”

         “You know nothing of the holy, my friend.”

Here she is, a frail waif drenched in icy sea, naked, shivering, barely living. We wrap her in my cloak and a guard and I will take her to Monkwearmouth for the nuns to care for her. In my arms she is like a child, so little burden as she is so frail. She finds consciousness writhing, angry, clawing at my face, barring her broken teeth like a rabid beast. I stop and lay her in the snow in order to reclaim some reason and gentleness. Isn’t gentleness how it is supposed to be on this holy morning of Jesus’ birth? The guard takes a different tact. He shouts, “Behave or the nuns won’t have you!”

Now hysteria empowers her kicking, biting, flailing and her howls echo across the snows with amazing clarity for curse words against God.

         He says, ” We should just throw her in the river and let her have her way. She meant to drown herself after-all.”

         “I can’t do that.”

It isn’t any kind of relentless heroism that keeps me from letting her go. I just can’t do that for the simple selfish reason that I have to keep on living after this and it would haunt me.

         “I’ll take her on to the church. You can go back to your duty.”

Now he leaves. I carry her shaking and sobbing, on to the church.  Nothing is silent and holy here, but this is the Christmas story too.

(Continues Tuesday, December 30)

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#75.11 Weds., December 24, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

The librarian, Brother Wilbert, said the sounds of the people’s celebration of the season escaped these guest quarters again and danced among the snows of the cold December night, then music-ed up and down the halls of the monks’ quarters sending shudders of worldly drunkenness throughout the holy chambers.

Now, tonight, I’m down the hall to join the singing, with my empty cup apparently begging for ale, though actually, I am longing for human company and song. No one is surprised a stranger here, dressed not as a churchman but a scholar, already knows every song for this season. They don’t ask who I am. They fill my cup and one song is everyone’s song.

Every song is one song.  It is the first song — woman’s song, even before the lullaby — the rhythm of the birth pangs, then were added Latin verses, and an ancient tune is unsourced because it is everyone’s tune.  Personent hodie — “Id-e-o-o-o, id-e-o-o-o, Id-e-o gloria in excelsis Deo!”

Tonight, the celebration is the same as the song, lifting up what was unexpected by humankind, yet, simply the very nature of God who is love. It is the song of reversal — the infant is the king. The poor are lifted up. The pompous are humbled. It was Miriam’s song of victory when the Hebrew people escaped the might army of Egyptians, when Hannah in her old age welcomed Samuel, new born. Of course, before that, Sarah answered the angel laughing. But then, aren’t we all laughing, singing, joyfully now at the great reversal?

The word the missionary, St. Augustine, left for the English people was that God loves everyone, and the Christ Mass is the celebration of the upside-down world where women are honored, and the poor are fed and clothed and beloved as royalty; the greedy, and power hungry are cast down, and love itself rules.

“On this day earth shall ring with the song children sing

to the Lord, Christ our King, born on earth to save us;

him the Father gave us.

Chorus Id-e-o-o-o, id-e-o-o-o, Id-e-o gloria in excelsis Deo!

His the doom, ours the mirth;

when he came down to earth,

Bethlehem saw his birth; ox and ass beside him

from the cold would hide him. Chorus” [Footnote]

[Footnote] https://www.classical-music.com/articles/personent-hodie-lyrics  retrieved April 16, 2025. Historians can only make histories of tangible things — written records, archeological finds and real things. Carols aren’t documented in the 7th century. When music and songs were at last written down for history to never forget, they were already well-remembered and often sung.

(Merry Christmas continues tomorrow)

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#75.10 Tuesday, December 23, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

Tonight, I hear the ruckus down the hall as the soldiers, incognito as monks, shift their vigils: two go out and two return with shivers, welcomed by the third pair ready with the ale and the songs of the Christ birth. Even this seasonal welcome with ale is a tradition here.  This missionary, Augustine of Canterbury, now a saint, left a deep path from Pagan to Christian for the people of Anglia to follow.  What I assumed would be the Christ mass is so flavored with traditions of the new light rising and the New Year celebration of solstice when the eons become a baby.  So, the Christians give him the Christian name, and his mother becomes the new Queen of Heaven.

Luke offered this pathway from the beloved traditions of old into the Christian celebration, but in my own brief time of friendship with the man Jesus, these stories of his birth in the style of an upside-down Caesar, lifting up the poor and humbling the kings, were really about the ways of the followers, not the facts of his life. That is something I would never say aloud in these times.  To mention the possibility that Luke captured the beauty of the virgin birth and the magnificent infant from pagan tradition based on solstice, would surely be anathema to all those Christians who so loyally mouth the creeds, human and God, born of Virgin Mary.

Was Jesus, my dearest friend and teacher, some magical being in the sense of a pagan notion of a god, and necessarily definitive of God? Or is the Creator of all that is the invisible presence of love for all, Mother of life, intimate holy, bigger than words, Yahweh, awe, something more than a human being? I keep my wonder to myself. To argue again the old wars of Trinity is only divisive and counter to God’s love for all, and it changes nothing of the reality of God. God is.

Tonight, the beautiful carols of the season that seeped into the Christian love through a pathway from pagan are the love songs bonding earth with heaven. I will just go sing with them and not argue the nature of God from this mere hill crest of earthly shepherds, drunk on ale, seeing angels landing among us. I go down the hall with my song and an empty cup. “Weal hael” or “Ves heill” they say as they fill my cup.  “Good Health” to all. [Footnote]

[Footnote] Old English words that span from Pagan to Christmas becoming a tradition of caroling https://researchersgateway.com/wassail/ retrieved 8-20-25

(Continues tomorrow)


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#75.9 Thursday, December 18, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

Librarian Wilbert and probably others too, found the night’s noise from the special “guests” annoying.

         “This is a sacred season. It is the Christ’s birth, and there those fellows are bearing down on us with all that Pagan noise. They might as well be Vikings for all the disruption.”

He has no real idea of the tragedy of Vikings taking actual lives of people for no better cause than personal greed. These watchmen are assigned to keep guard on the vulnerable. They dress as monks to “fit in” here, but armed as they are with swords under their robes the silhouettes they cast would make them seem very hefty monks.

         “Brother Wilbert, I have to say, I rather enjoyed the irony in their choice of song, all the while they are keeping constant vigil for foreign invaders they are singing Latin songs of Jesus welcoming all nations.”

         “They are uneducated Angli. They have no idea of the Church Latin they were singing.”

         “It is seasonal.”

         “The season sings of the Holy Mother and the infant.”

Now he lifts his old bones from the stool at the welcome table, and waddles his way to the Bede materials to find the place where the historian wrote of this.

         “The Angli [English] begin the year on 25th December when we celebrate the birth of the Lord; and that very night which we hold so sacred, they called in their tongue ‘Modranecht’. That is ‘mother’s night’.” [Footnote 1]

It was Pope Gregory I who took on the gospel call to spread Christianity to all the corners of the earth. He sent Augustine and his band of missionaries to this place to Christianize the heathens. And the missionary did his work giving gospel names to the gods and goddesses who were already here, rather than capturing people to Christianity by violence. We call Gregory “great” now, and it seems, the Roman Christian way of greatness is the imperialistic part of Christianity because it is said that in the spreading of Christianity, greatness is achieved. [Footnote 2]

After this day with my mind cluttered with the bookish history of a joyful season, I’m leaving for vespers. And here is Wilbert still at his station.

         “Brother Wilbert, I have a better notion now for the drinking song I will teach my neighbors.”

         “As though they need any new songs.”

         “I happen to know some very fine carols of Francia that have as many verses from the gospel, as Luke has verses in the Shepherd’s story.”

[Footnote 1] https://www.whychristmas.com/customs/uk-christmas-history#early

Retrived 3-30-25

[Footnote 2] St Augustine of Canterbury was the person who probably started the widespread celebration of Christmas in large parts of England.  The first recorded date of Christmas in England was when Augustine baptised 10,000 Saxons in Kent on Christmas day 597. (There was some earlier Christianity in England before the fall of the Roman Empire, but there’s no records of the birth of Jesus being celebrated. After the Romans left, other Celtic parts of Britain knew about Christianity but again there aren’t many documents about if or how they celebrated the birth of Jesus.)

(Continues Tuesday, December 23)


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#75.8 Wednesday, December 17, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

Drinking songs of soldiers changes the music of this hall from arguments among novices to soldier’s seasonal songs enhanced with ale. Even those youngsters attempting chants with their changing and untrained voices are, to me, a worse disruption to my sleep than drinking songs. I oddly appreciate the change in the neighbors in this hall.

Even with their most ale afflicted “best” voices, the little dancing tunes escape their cell and call forth the celebration of the season throughout these dank and chilly halls.

“Jesus Refulsit Omnium“[footnote] is hardly discernible now with so much fermentation, but I’ve sung this song in another time and place. Some centuries ago, we sang this when the bishops were encouraging the more Christianized celebration in mid-winter.  We kept singing it on the night of the Christ Mass — a band of monks trekking through the woods with frost bitten feet in the matins hour, returning to Ligugé from the nuns’ community in Portier.

It wasn’t a drinking song in Francia. But what else could it be on a cold Northumbrian night like this? When the tune meanders through my memories, it finds the better beat for dancing and consumes my grief in embers of joyful recollection. It gives Christmas a spirit of its own.

First light of dawn glistens over new fallen snow. Earth is new, in darkness anticipating new light. I can think of nothing else but this spirit of the Christ mass. It sings so long and deep with the woman’s song — the world upside down with the newest infant leading us. To worship this morning, I walk to the church of Monkwearmouth for the mass. The rivers run as usual, un-snowed and dark. The hums of the chants are usual. Everything tries to be usual, but it isn’t. It is Christmas.

At the library here is Wilbert at the sign-in table, all so ordinary.

         “Did the so-called ‘guests’ in the visitor’s hall keep you up all night?” he asks.

         “Do I seem drowsy? Really it was my own thoughts that kept me up all night; they only added the music.”

         “The noise corrupted the sleep of all of us, even in other areas in the monk’s cells. You would think they could at least pretend to be devout like you always do so well.”

         “I am devout? But they were cold and had suffered so long at their duty walking to and from the sea for the good of Jarrow. In their own task they are devout.”

[footnote] https://www.oldest.org/religion/christmas-songs/   Retrieved 4-7-25

(Continues tomorrow)


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#75.7 Tuesday, December 16, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

Winter is upon us, nearing the season of the solstice and I’ve chosen to stay here in the guest quarters at Jarrow. This is a double monastery, with the women’s community, called St. Peter, across the River Tyne on the River Wear. In that church often the worship is led by the abbess, and a women’s chorus chants. I go there often to stand for gospel to partake in the mass. The walk refreshes my library-stiffened bones, and taking of the Mass daily nourishes my spirit. Even, clothed as I am, as a layman, my old monkish ways still make me useful at Jarrow helping with daily chores and keeping the hours. So, no one is pushing me to move on from my cell in this hall set aside for visitors and novices.

Now there are some other long-term guests in the visitors’ quarters. They are also an odd mixture of holy and profane, but for me, my holy tradition is hidden in layman’s clothes. And for them, their holy monk’s robes hide the soldiers that they really are underneath. These are Ousbert’s men who have come to guard the monastery. No one says it, but we all know it. They draw their hoods over their tousled hair to appear as true monks as though they walk in pairs “with deep devotion” keeping their posts along to river all the way to the sea. When I go looking for a solitary place for prayer, there are always guards lurking, watching. These guards are assigned to always keep watch for those longships of the Norsemen.

I’m pretty sure this is not a season when Vikings will attack, with weather cold and stormy, unpredictable, and all the fickle changes into winter.  I know the Norsemen make careful plans before they cross the North Sea, so Ousbert’s order to set guards outside in this season is probably unnecessary, but who am I to say?  Besides, I rather enjoy the celebratory style of this noisy band of soldiers in the guest hall. Wilbert asked me if I minded their songs and drinking in their off-duty hours. I don’t mind at all. They bring the solstice celebration from the Pagan root, anticipating the rising light of a new year into the midst of all these long dark nights. We all need a celebration this time of year.

Dear God, thank you for this nature of your Creation that tunes the earth to celebration. Amen.

(Continues tomorrow)

 

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#75.6 Thursday, December 11, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

The King’s man, Ousbert, is also a lay visitor at Jarrow in the aftermath of the raid on Lindisfarne. Our purposes here are very different. I’m just looking for a history, but he’s looking for the vulnerabilities of coastal monasteries to make his recommendations to the king going forward. It’s a very different perspective, seeing a community as a long heritage of saints, or observing it as a future target for greedy marauders. Weren’t both views shaken by Viking attacks?

At Lindisfarne the Viking raid was blamed on lots of things, but none of the blame seemed to land on the Vikings.  One side was groping for the weaknesses in the Irish heritage of that community. Those who wanted to rankle the wrong in the Irish way couldn’t really blame the scheduling of Easter or a different tonsure, but they did find one little distinction between the Irish and the Roman that laid the blame for destruction squarely on the Celtic root. That was the first Church building not made of Roman stone, but it was made of oak and thatch.  The Romish fix was apparently covering it with sheets of lead. Footnote  But raiders were still able to sack the treasures from it before it was burned to the ground. The newer Romanesque stone construction, still stood, but the raid turned the lead a molten ooze over the bed of ashes.

Jarrow already has stone buildings, but here in the forests, unlike in Rome, there is an inherent appreciation for wood. So, despite the Roman exteriors, these interiors — the pillars and arches and rafters are tooled by local artisans in the warm, wooden ways of the Angles and the Saxons. And it should be considered that wood burns the same whether it is Irish, or English or Roman. The same wood that echoes our conversation just now and makes a simple monk’s choir into magnificent music, is flammable.

I mention this nature of wood to Ousbert but he ignores my concern. He has no wish to take this worry to the king, since the use of interior woods isn’t just in monasteries. It is in the castles as well.

It is terrifying to imagine that Vikings could raid anything coastal and the notion that Vikings could raid establishments even beyond the holy places, is something no one wants to consider.  In fact, until there was that written letter to Alcuin no one even acknowledged those coastal raids already happening.

Footnote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_architecture retrieved June 4, 2025.

(Continues Tuesday, December 16)

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#75.5 Wednesday, December 10, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.
 

The King’s man Ousbert is making a plan to save these coastal monasteries from the fate of Lindisfarne. Ousbert is asking for details of the cause of the raid, and since I was there, he’s questioning me.

         “People who put their trust in saints to be all powerful are blaming the enshrined saint for the failures to protect the monastery. A saint may offer spiritual protection but this wasn’t a spiritual issue.”

         I add, “And blaming is not the same as protecting.”

         “It is a dangerous vulnerability. The king is considering an edict that prayers can only be said within high walls with watch towers.”

         “Watch towers with armed guards?”

         “We’ve already offered guard towers here. But the abbot argues that armed guards stifle the prayers of monks and nuns. So why would all these experts in prayer need to gaze on the rivers and sea? Can’t they close their eyes for prayer, like everyone else?  After all, God gave us eyelids.”

         “Maybe the spaciousness of nature provides the spiritual sanctuary they seek. City walls with guard towers seem antithetical to prayer.”

         “You sound like them now. Even the most vulnerable, the holy women of St. Peter at Monkwearmouth are opposed to watch towers.”

         “Posting armed guards to keep watch really does seem like an imposition to the very nature of a monastic community.”

         “Whatever. My report to the king will push for a visible military guard. Swordsmen would’ve saved Lindisfarne?”

         “It is always the conundrum of what is saved and what is lost. Armed guards can save earthly treasures. But swords don’t save lives. The best a sword can do is terrorize and slaughter selectively.”

         Ousbert says, “Ugh! But here in the real world, if guards are at these doors then all the prayers and them that prays them will be safe.”

Our argument echoes in the high arches of this ceiling. In Jarrow the buildings are stone like Rome, but we aren’t in Rome. The outside may be stone, but English use flammable wood everywhere. This high ceiling is supported with wooden beams and the wood paneled walls carry every sound to the rafters. It’s no less vulnerable to torches than was the first building of Lindisfarne made of oak beams and thatch.  Then it was covered over with sheets of lead to be more solid like the Roman stonework buildings.

I ask Ousbert, “What if the Vikings bring torches?”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#75.4 Tuesday, December 9, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

The Lindisfarne raid raised concern throughout the kingdoms for the safety of all of the coastal monasteries.  Wilbert introduces me to Ousbert who serves the king as a military advisor. Ousbert has questions about the raid on Lindisfarne. We step out of the library hall, to talk more freely in a gathering place, though here this great hall echoes our conversation into grand pronouncement. It isn’t private.

         “Brother Wilbert tells me you’ve just come from Lindisfarne.”

         “Indeed. I was there at the time of the raid by the Norsemen.”

         “The poor fools, holy men, trusting a dead saint to save them. The king wants Northumbria to be better prepared with a force of armed guards to fight back when the Vikings come calling again.”

         “I think the monks of Lindisfarne believe they’ve always been well cared for by the Shrine of Cuthbert. But you’re right. I’ve also heard those grumblings that they believe St. Cuthbert should have saved them.”

         “So you agree it was Saint that let them down? Or, could it actually have been the monks who lacked military training?”   

         “Considering the hazards of earthly sins warring could befoul a monk so, for the soul, a saint seems a safer choice.”
 

         “This was a completely different kind of danger for a monk.”

         “There is plenty of blame — Alcuin, the scholar blamed sins of drunkenness and greed. Others simply attributed it to the wrath of God.”

         He asks, “As one who saw it, what do you think was the cause of it?”

         “I think it was the Vikings.”

         “Of course, but what caused the Vikings to cause it?”

         “It was definitely caused by greed, with a chaser of strong drink. But whose greed and whose drunkenness are to blame? That’s the question. Alcuin was blaming the brothers of Lindisfarne, but honestly, I still lay the blame square on the Vikings. There was plenty of greed and drunkenness among the Vikings. At Lindisfarne, their barrels and kegs were stolen, and their earthly treasures are gone, so any possible continuation of greed or drunkenness at the monastery is null.”

         Ousbert says, “As an advisor for the king, my assignment is to prepare the coastal monasteries, Jarrow and Monkwearmouth, so they can save themselves, should there be another attack.”

         “Still, preparation for any attack would need to consider the greed and weaknesses of the Vikings. They are, this very hour, trading the treasures of Lindisfarne. This is definitely about greed.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#75.3 Thursday, December 4, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

         In the water walking allegory, stepping out of the boat is called “faith.” But then the word “faith” was usurped by religion as a uniform requirement for belonging —a shared creed. Back when faith was still raw and personal, Jesus told Peter he needed it. Then by religious use, faith changed its meaning to define the boat — the belonging to a shared religion. But faith is still personal for some water walkers.

         Dear God, you know my heart.

         I’m one who would drift free or maybe simply sail with the wind. But religion happens when the direction of the wind isn’t trusted and the captain calls for the oars then we all row in unison.  It is so Roman, this galley with oars, called religion. But sometimes it takes me where I need to go. When I dress as a monk, I expect the human being at the tiller will steer as God asks of us.

         As I read through Bede’s history, Christians are always groping the changing winds with steady oars for uniformity and order.

         So it is, when a Synod or a Council gathers within religion and the purpose isn’t to compromise, rather it is called to name a singular order. Even though the Synod of Whitby [footnote] was convened by Hild of the Irish tradition, it was purposed to establish a singular direction or rule. Those who could flex, yielded to those who could not. For the Irish, the side I’m drawn to, the internal, personal relationship with God isn’t by creed or calendar or rule, so on matters of rule the Celts flex. They fall in line with order and uniformity. Some argue, others, like Hild, do whatever we can to hold to the Irish tradition but an inflexible order apparently gives the pope authority over random currents and shifting winds of individual prayer. The Synod of Whitby eventually went along with the pope’s date for Easter and all the sameness implied in that.

         Jarrow wasn’t founded by an Irish bishop so the buildings are of stone, and the style is Roman.  It was, after all, Pope Gregory the Great who assigned Augustine and his band of missionaries to bring Christianity to East Anglia in the first place. This history of earlier centuries is well-known here, and it is also recorded by Bede in this history that I still have laid opened on the bookstand. Taking the pope’s side is as old as Christianity for these people.

         Just now a man signing in at Wilbert’s table is also a layman.  And he is asking Wilbert about the attack on Lindisfarne.

[footnote]Synod of Whitby, Chapter 25, p. 153 (Bede The Ecclesiastical History of the English People: The Greater Chronical, Bede’s Letter to Egbert (Oxford press, Edited with an introduction and notes by Judith McClur and Roger Collins. 2008.)

(Continues Tuesday, December 9)

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#75.2 Wednesday, December 3, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

         It could be that God is speaking to everyone all the time. But what one hears depends on listening. Sometimes I listen. But my experience in hearing God is always personal and never credibly shareable. Maybe it is out of fear or awe, but people – at least speaking for myself — learn to close ourselves from listening. I keep a secret plea always in the background of my personal prayers — “This I pray, but please God, don’t answer me too hard. Only tell me what I believe I am able to do. Set the bar as low as I do.”

         Listening to God speaking is a courageous dare that is deep and personal.  It is not something I can receive from another’s instruction for obedience, or even a saintly sermon or teaching. Even the greatest teachings only guide me toward the spiritual depths. So, the one-on-one with God speaking is always personal. It is the life of an ascetic — a lone mystic in the wilderness. But that is but a moment — the touch, the jolt to consciousness, the “ah-ha.” It is the driving force, but not the whole of life. Beyond the cave is the wind and the fire and maybe the loneliness calling — a still small voice craving people, and people muddle in chaos without organization. I reach for religion, order, politics, some kind of social unity.

         Religions are a human response. Religion is earthly organization of spiritual likenesses. Spirit flows as an invisible sea, an atmosphere, breathed in, and exhaled individually unique, but also a shared love, a unity. The things of Spirit we share become our religion founded in social human tradition, experience, music, art, religion. It is not a singular epiphany granted to one God-selected saint or pope.

         Religion is the boat in the water-walking allegory. But the walking on the water is an individual experience. Hearing God speaking, belief, faith, whatever earthly name we give it, it is shareable with others only within the boat. Faith is personal, and religion is communal.

         Peter was out there gathering the nets of fish into the boat. For Peter, it was outside the boat where things went deep. Even when Jesus himself was walking on the water telling Peter he could do it, it had to be personal for Peter, one on one with God. [Matt. 14:28-33] Religion is the boat that floats us above the everyday turmoil, but stepping over the side, bare feet, bare soles against the surface of the sea is one-on-one, deep and personal.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#75.1 Tuesday, December 2, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.
 

     Since the third century, when I first left Ephesus to heal from the persecutions, I’ve seen the pattern of religion moving from personal individual mystical experience to a community following an earthly rule as a religion. This thing that my sister and I had been given by a mystical teacher was the deep and personal love for God and all Creation.

      People don’t hear God speaking because someone else is telling them what God is saying, even when it is the saints who are telling us. God among us is a love story, a poem or a piece of art, a song, a dance, a shared silence, but rarely a pedantic lesson. Art is untitled and faith is without definition.

     It was the political opposite of autocracy. But then we lived in a world dominated by the politics of hate so our private prayers were answered with our political conscience, God’s love for all people. Just the simple first rule of love for God and love for neighbor and ourselves, set us in the political controversy that led to the crucifixion of many Jews, including our own teacher as well. 

     At first, what was a personal wandering in spirit put us in political opposition with Rome at that time, setting up their crosses for executing political dissidents. We were left trusting only in the invisible, spiritual life of love for one another even in a hating world. Beyond the political milieu was the simple grounding — the love and the beauty – the handwork of God who is love. With the temple plundered and Roman propaganda and lies making good seem bad and love seem sin, we, who followed the Jesus way kept love the priority. So, we moved to safer cities beyond Jerusalem.

         In times of autocratic plundering on earth, prophecies of end times came with more and more specific details. But, like death, any human glimpses of end times are, at best, individual hopes. No universal nature of these things can be known by people. Endings are always unknown or they wouldn’t be endings. Even when God, all loving and invisible, speaks to the prophet, the message is always all loving and invisible and very personal. The wings, or fires, or monsters, or precisely numbered events birthed in human imagination are at best, metaphors to transfigure a personal spiritual experience into shareable, speak-able terms. Amid cruel political times doomsday is the hope, not a threat, seen as the promise of new Creation.

         Peter’s water walking lesson is a poignant explanation of this faith problem.

(Continues tomorrow)


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#74.12 Thursday, November 27, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.
 

         Bede’s book unwinds with the story I came here to understand. When Bishop Aiden, the founder of Lindisfarne died, his successor was Finan [651 C.E.]   also “consecrated and sent by the Irish.” Finan constructed the church at Lindisfarne in the Irish method of oak and thatching. The Roman way would have been with stone. So later, Bishop Eadberht [688 C.E.] had the whole church, roof and walls, everything, covered with sheets of lead. (Now the new main building there is of stone.) You would think everything done in the Irish way was done away with, but no. Bede writes, “There arose a great and active controversy about the keeping of Easter. Those who came from Kent or Gaul declared that the Irish observance of Easter Sunday was contrary to the custom of the universal church.”

         Bede calls Ronan a “violent defender of the true Easter, who, though Irish by race, had learned the true rules of the church in Gaul or in Italy. In disputing with Finan, Ronan “put many right, but could not put Finan right; on the contrary, as a man of fierce temper, Ronan made him more bitter… and turned him into an open adversary.” [Footnote 1]

         This history lists bishops and monks, kings and nobility of East Anglia, and Northumbria, all struggling with the problem of two dates for Easter.

         A synod was called to decide this issue once and for all. This was at a monastery at Whitby where Hild was abbess. Bede called her a “woman of God.” What else is known of her is that she was of noble birth, and was guided in her faith by Irish Aiden, who ordained her as abbess. The list of church dignitaries attending the synod included the Irish. They were represented not only by Hild and her following, but by Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne and his clergy. But as I know from seeing this same issue in an earlier time, it isn’t resolved by allowing each his own way. In Roman style, it can only be one way in the end. So it seems the random strays from another Island are always just pitted against the pope.

         “First King Oswiu began by declaring that it was fitting that those who served one God should observe one rule of life and not differ in the celebration of the heavenly sacrament seeing that they all hoped for one kingdom in heaven: they ought therefore to inquire as to which was the truer tradition and then follow it together.” [Footnote 2]

         There wasn’t really room for compromise.

Footnote 1: Bede, The Ecclesiastical History of the English People Oxford World’s Classics 1969.  Pages 154-157.

Timeline https://www.angelcynnreenactmentsociety.org.uk/home/lindisfarne-pages/bishops-of-lindisfarne—list (the lack of info, even A-I assisted Google, affirms the footnote on p. 397, “little is known of this Ronan.”) Retrieved 5-25-25

Footnote 2: oop. cit. Bede p. 154.

(Continues Tuesday, December 2)

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#74.11 Weds., November 26, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

         I came to Jarrow looking for the hate words I thought Bede had planted in the written history of Lindisfarne.

         Those who gathered for the reading of Alcuin’s letter to Bishop Higbald were talking among themselves in search of the sins of Lindisfarne. Alcuin’s letter offered some sin options: greed and drunkenness. And there was that matter of the sinner buried among the saints.

         Then Bede’s history re-issued the misguided, narrow view of the ways of the Irish founders of Lindisfarne. Blame words for the disobedience to the pope’s edict requiring a certain date for Easter and what Bede called ecclesiastical matters, were referring to Roman rule. Whatever the sin, the tragedy of Lindisfarne set a devastated community searching itself for its own need for repentance.

         Sin needs to be acknowledged when a Viking invasion is understood as a doomsday kind of judgment against the community. Blaming the victim seems harsh, but finding something repent-worthy also empowers the victim to turn around and make it better. Never mind the crimes of the marauders, by changing from sin to repentance there comes the possibility for the community to control the holy judgment.

         The conversation of the visitors over the unsalted porridge blessed Lindisfarne with an abundance of sin. There were plenty of opportunities for repentance.

         This writer of the history, Bede, was a monk here at St. Paul’s of Jarrow, having lived his life in the deep and abiding love of the brothers. As a place that values learning, he was not only immersed in the book collection that started this library, he also used his opportunity to listen to others, particularly those who traveled to Rome, to draw his expressed conclusions on the power of the papacy.

         Wilbert knew Bede as a mentor and a friend. So now the stories of Bede’s life and work allowed me empathy for Bede, when I had clearly come with a dispute. Now my argument is soothed with wider words to be a lingering difference of opinion; Bede described it as “a great and active controversy.”

         Over the centuries I’ve seen this. Those who follow the Irish tradition call it a difference of Rule. But those from the Roman tradition put righteous truth on one side, against the so-called wrong-headed Irish. It is still political, though I say I came looking for the holy.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#74.10 Tuesday, November 25, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

         A technique to practice love in the work of learning to love God and neighbor and self, and even love for “enemy” is a technique of working through words of fear and hate, then widening the disparaging words to be positive words.  This exercise doesn’t pretend love, rather it discovers honest love through more complete understanding.

         1. The first step is easy: name the narrow angry hate words — those adjectives of blame and hurt that define the enemy and make the unlovable “other” appear as evil. Afterall, enemies are made of words — hostile; hurtful; greedy; lying; snooty; deceitful… hate words are everywhere. They are narrow and definitive.

         2.  A word cloud expands and broadens the narrow word. “Greedy” can  be said as “selfish” “inconsiderate of others” or maybe even “needy.” This expanding collection of synonyms widens in all directions, even into empathetic understanding like “needy.”

         3. Grab onto this thread of understanding, and when the reach for love emerges the pattern of escalating hatred loses power.

         When “needy” is a wider word for “greedy,” “the need” offers an opening to understand and care for an enemy. Perceiving the “greedy” as “empty” “longing” “needy” “grasping at anything to fill his void” “starved” “hollow.” Compassion for the suffering nature of greed emerges from the wider words until it becomes possible that honest love can overwhelm the hate. So, this one labeled, “enemy” mostly needs to share my pot of porridge with me.  Maybe he doesn’t even know that; but I know it.

         “Dear beloved enemy, come and eat with me.”

         And so I offer him the nourishment over and over again, until he sits at my table.

         This tool, widening the hate words into understanding realizes the Jesus command to “love neighbors as self.” It even works for the loving of self. In this way it is honestly acceptable to know that God loves me. It takes practice. Loving and being loved is a truth and not a hollow aspiration demanded in fear of judgment. Love is asked of all of us by God who is love. This tool for broadening hate words to caring, widens the possibility. It is actual love, not just an “ought to.” Love of self and others makes real the relationship with God who is love.

         The love sermon is still a hard one because the simplicity ignores and over powers the fearsome control of hatred.  No wonder the Romans crucified Jesus. They just couldn’t bear the love.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#74.9 Thursday, November 20, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

         Both styles of monks, the Irish and the Roman, are beloved by God. And maybe God answers the argument when a monk from the Roman Rule happens to lose his hair without even shaving it, but only in the front, giving this Roman Christian the Irish tonsure. And the Irish monk goes bald in the top, back of his head, so any hair he may have seems to be a crown. Our Creator judges with humor.

         This little joke told by nature in the ways men loose hair is an earthly metaphor for a heavenly truth. It is possible for a thoughtful, prayerful person to learn empathy for another they might deem as enemy, or more lightly, unlikable. This intentional thought pattern can offer an honest window on fearless love.

         Here, I am visiting a monastery staying in cell for travelers, in a less than hallowed hall of this community. Just outside this door I hear two novices dredging up old secular hates.

         “Arrogance! That’s what it takes to copy off my tablet then lay it before Brother Cowen and claim it was your own thought, Brother!”

         “Who’s to say it wasn’t my thought also? Obviously, my work was superior, with each letter perfect and nothing overwritten or scraped off as was yours. I handed our teacher a far better display of writing.”

         “May your demon friends curse your whole deceitful tribe!”

         As a stranger here, I don’t know what to make of these people. There may be a deep animosity already between them. Apparently, one novice had reason to call the other “arrogant and deceitful.” And the other eluded to the first fellow’s imperfections — poor lettering and strikeovers. Only God can intrude with the missing love here. And maybe one day these two novices will be brothers together and will find that love.

         But there are ways to find human understanding that releases the hurt, prayerfully, relentlessly begging for the power of love. One way I find for understanding is an intentional technique for widening narrow words of hate. The hate words between the novices, “arrogant” and “deceitful,” are narrow and negative apparently drawn from a history of tribal hatred.  But by searching for synonyms for these rigid hate words, little glimpses of understanding can emerge. “Arrogance” is a neediness and “deceitful” longs for forgiveness. There can be a wedge of understanding instead of rehearsed, on-going hatred. Actually, even this word “hate” widens into the word “fear” and “perfect love casts out fear.” [I John 4:18]

(Continues Tuesday, November 25)

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#74.8 Wednesday, November 19, 2025

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)