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#80.3 Thursday, May 7, 2026

Historical Setting: sailing at the mouth of a river, 794 C.E.

We are following a wide river from its mouth at the sea, upstream to a place Cloothar believes will be an established market in an old Roman city — Ludenwic — it has a name. This river does seem more marked with houses and all the other vestiges of human dwelling.  We pass by a church in clear view of the river. He notices my interest. Did I let my loneliness show? How does one, always focused on fabrics and markets, possibly notice what interests me?

         “Eleazor, there are churches all along this way.  You should be so happy to find that Ludenwic has turned Christian.  I’ve heard from others on the river who know, and this place has a grand church.  In Ludenwic there is a palace for bishops. You will love the Christian nature of this city!”

I answer his advertisement with a grunt.  I know he’s trying to sell me on this side-trip where we are. And I know we are only further from our intended destination on the Celtic Island of Mull.  For me, finding a palace of bishops is completely the opposite of finding humble monks inhabiting the thin places of nature.

We come to a wide bend in the river and here is a mooring bay with other small river craft. I row to the pier, and Cloother climbs ashore taking with him some samples to sell. He instructs me to stay with the boat, since he hasn’t secured a safe mooring here.  So much for my visit to this new city.  He trudges down the path toward the city markets. 

To make good use of the time I string a line from the mast to the prow to hang up the black wool robes in the sun and air them out before he tries to market them. It is a perfect day for airing fabrics. Cloothar will be pleased I’m only airing them and not soaking them in lye water as I would prefer.

Now I find, under all the monk’s robes, is another chest just like the empty chest I’ve been using for a rower’s seat.  But this chest is locked and weighty, apparently already filled with coins. Of course. This is why Cloothar protects this spot with the heap of moldy fabrics, never sorting or airing them while he continually cares for the commoner’s rags. He’s been guarding this chest from my sight.

(Continues Tuesday, May 12)


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#80.2 Wednesday, May 6, 2026

Historical Setting: London, 794 C.E.

 These weeks are mostly spent rowing, rarely sailing along the wooded coast of Anglia. This journey seems to yield little in new markets for Cloothar. Yet we make our stops on land wherever he catches a glimpse of fishing buoys or a whaft of smoke rising, marking the presence of people. He trades fabrics for firs and perhaps a meal of whatever was hunted that day. And if the hunt failed, we join people in sharing a pot of thinned stew. [footnote]

Cloothar is good at finding us food and shelter, but he is no brother — neither by family or monk’s vows. I would like to call him a friend, but he has trouble quantifying friendship in his way of understanding. He doesn’t expect me to be a source of comradery and he assumes that any friendly chatter must be purposed with some material ending. Yet I yammer on.

         “Did you learn your merchant’s trade from your father?”

         “What matter is that to you, Eleazor?”

         “I was just wondering the source of your gift.”

         “Knowing things of a person gives you power over them. Do you hammer me with questions because you think it will make you the captain of this ship?”

         “No, of course not. I was just…”

In this silence between us now, I can only enjoy the humor of his miss-understanding, imagining myself taking over control as this so-called ship’s “captain.” That would only mean I would be privileged to tell him when to draw the oars.

Since I am longing for conversation, I find our stopping places a reprieve. I’m already comfortable with the language of the Saxons and we share stories.

One would think my prayers without ceasing would satisfy my need for conversation, but neither does the merchant offer me his own company nor does he yield the tranquility of sanctuary. When I put my complaint in a prayer I ask God for solitary time, and also, to retool Cloothar into a friend. I believe that prayer was answered, but not by changing Cloothar. Rather, God answered by changing me to accept him as he is.

After this long journey following the shoreline south, the rivers flow into the sea with the fresh water mixing with the brine, and each river entices Cloothar to follow it in search of a market.  Rumors among merchants tell of a town rising from the old Roman walls of a city, now a thriving marketplace. [Footnote]

[footnote] https://www.thehistoryoflondon.co.uk/ (retrieved 9-2-25) organizes the history of the rise of settlements and urbanization in Southeastern England broadly by periods of occupancy. The late eighth century after the Roman occupancy crumbled, and before the Vikings made their lasting settlements in the mid-ninth century and on, this area was under Saxon rule.

(Continues tomorrow) 

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#80.1 Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Historical Setting: The Eastern Coast of Anglia, 794 C.E.

Setting out with Cloothar, I know this fellow’s purpose is the market yield. Always used clothing needs airing, not cleaning.

I planned to travel to Iona on the other side of this island of Anglia. Like Lindisfarne, Iona is an island monastery. Most would travel between Jarrow and Iona on land, but I have no horse, or purse or coin, and Cloothar offers me this journey and a silver penny for my help at sea. He deals in gold and silver in the major markets, so I am pretty sure I won’t have to take my due this time, simply by trading up my own cloak for a better one.

Neither of us has taken this sea journey along the eastern then southern shores of Anglia and north again to Iona. But he has choosen this route hoping to find new markets along the way. Today, on the first leg, we find long forested stretches sparsely inhabited. The clusters of houses are at the mouths of rivers. In these villages Cloothar trades in simply spun fibers, with no tailor’s touch to any of the garments. Most of his bounty is in the center of this little craft as heaps of moldy rags.

But he knows his customers well. At first glance he can see if someone is a buyer or a gawker. He recognizes people by their wants and takes account of their station and wealth even before a word is spoken. All he really notices of people is the bulge and brim of their pockets. His guise of empathy is always purposed with making a deal. As Cloothar’s traveling companion, I should simply consider myself alone. He spins no stories that don’t end in a deal for him. He sheds no tid-bits of wisdom of life and love… And he sails south when he means to go west.

I guess I shouldn’t expect him to fill my need for a companion. All he needs of me is help in rowing when the winds are calm. I suppose I just have to let him be as he is. And in the silence, I have my prayers.

Dear God, thank you for all these new wonders of the lands and sea. For the tender season, newly green and flowering simply by nature I am grateful always, I know you are near in the beauty of new places. 

(Continues tomorrow)

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#79.14 Thursday, April 30, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.
 

I’m not sure I need a merchant to fill my emptiness. My spiritual need isn’t like a cloak or a hat. I am missing the thin places, or the beautiful window where I meet God.

It’s Cloothar who tells me of Iona, a monastery founded by the Irish that is set apart from the politics of kings.

         He says, “Iona is a place that needs these black monks robes I’ve collected. Some brothers on this side no longer find refuge with the saints, and are shedding their holy ways as well you understand.”

         “And Iona needs you to supply them with monk’s robes?”

         “Just come with me to Iona.  You will like it.  It was the school that sent the first Celtic fellow, Aiden, to establish Lindisfarne.” [Footnote]

     “And you need an extra hand to sail that far?”

     “You read me too well, Eleazor. I’ve never sailed that far west. I don’t know what it will be. I may need a hand at the oars.”

     “You would think a monastery as old as Iona would already have a trunk of old monk’s robes.”

     “Ah, but they aren’t the newer standard of black. Their robes are just anything. You see how it is, Eleazor, they have the Celtic Rule still to this day, and it doesn’t follow the rigors of the papal communities.”

     “You mean it doesn’t follow the Benedictine rule.”

     “And oh, how I’ve heard you argue against that rule.”

     “I didn’t know I’d been so vocal about it.”

     “Don’t you remember how you were wound so tight on our little trek from Lindisfarne when you wanted to wash the old robes in lye water, and shrink them up into useless rags, when all they needed was a good airing?”

     “I remember our arguments over new monks in old robes. And now you want to go to Iona and trade the black robes for whatever the novices happened to have on when they took their vows?”

      “Not exactly. The rumor among the markets in the north lands is that Iona has riches.  I will meet with the abbot and make one good trade and sell all these black robes for gold coins.”

Cloothar has an empty coin chest just waiting. I can use it as a rower’s seat. He said he learned of Iona’s riches in the north lands. So, apparently Iona is already a target for a Viking raid.

      Dear God, watch over Iona. Amen.

[Footnote] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iona retrieved 8-27-25

(Continues Tuesday May 5)

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#79.13 Wednesday, April 29, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

Weaponry and wars make no happy endings, because there are no endings, just changes in populations and power structures. But, of course, mortals, by the very nature of mortality, draw conclusions, set goals of completion, grope after legacy and prepare for whatever afterlife their religion dictates. No mortal person has touched an angel strutting among the clouds; but even I, in my persistence in earthly life, often experience being touched by the Creator love that surrounds us. Thank you, God for being present with us.

So, now, as a repetitious mortal, I imagine a destination. It is a place where the earth ends and heaven begins. It is a thin place shared in the Irish way of mysticism. I know of thin places, and I once knew an Irish mystic who established monasteries across the land of Gaul to offer the tranquility of thin places far and wide. Now, again, I am looking for this veil of heaven as I do in these spiritually needy times. It feels like the vision of mortal life has come to a solidly opaque barrier — an ending, as though there is nothing more. Then I find a spiritual place, and this seems to be the translucency of mystery allowing me a contemplative passage through. What is thin in a thin place is the barrier between me and God, not between life and death, or good and bad, or any of those other mortal walls.

I didn’t find it in the library of Jarrow. So, I come now, down to the little harbor where boats await the rising tide to access the river. And as I’d hoped, Cloothar’s little craft is still moored here.

He seems welcoming, as though he thinks he knows my need. Maybe I am allowing myself to fall into the snare of this professional profiteer. But Cloothar, the merchant of used dry goods, first told me of that distant place I’d never been.

         “Eleazor, my friend, what do you know of Iona?”

         “What is there to know?”

         “It is an Irish monastery on the other side of this island, a long haul by donkey on land, but with the right wind, it can be reached by sea, in days counted on fingers.”

         “More simply, you mean ten days.”

         “But you like the obtuse do you not? It is my business to read the minds of men, and know their naked need. Afterall, I am a highly successful merchant.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#79.12 Tuesday, April 28, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

The Viking raid on Jarrow was swift and the tragedy was mostly on the Vikings’ side. All of the preparations for attack worked: the rocks across the river at the place of the tidal rise; the guards hidden in monk’s clothes; the swords and daggers sprinkled throughout Jarrow.  Lindisfarne’s painful warning served Jarrow well. In the stillness of aftermath, Ousbert is in his glory, and by his very nature he is well rehearsed in glory. He rallies his men for a headcount. He stops the killing of the last of the captured Vikings, holding them back from the Halls of Valhalla, this time, because he has an earthly use for them.

These prisoners are bound and waiting with the beached longboats. Ousbert’s soldiers disarm the dead, collecting up the swords and shields, stripping the bodies of helmets and chains. Then the last living dregs of these marauders are set loose to dispose of the corpses at sea.

Even among these Christians ordained as holy monks, there are no bodies anointed and no prayers needed for these dead. The prayers are only of gratitude. The deaths are bleak and unforgiven. The survivors take the oars of their burdened boats and slip away into the deep. Ousbert glories.

         Dear God, may my own prayer not begin with my usual gratitude because just now, the thanksgivings I hear around me, maybe rising for you to hear, seem to be about saving the treasures of the monastery and sending the dead Vikings away for burial at sea. I’m not grateful for a win for one side or the other. I’ve seen enough crucifixion, warring, marauding, angry spears and deaths at human hands to know violence is no different from any other plague or mishap, except that this hurt is by the hands of the very species that also suffers the grief of it — your own beloved humankinds. Guide us in your wide loving way, Amen.

It is still an intimate secret that God is the Creator and the love force that set the stars in place and moves the planets. God’s judgment lifts up the beauty, the life and the love; it does not diminish it with punitive measures. It isn’t the nature of an omniscient God to sort people into teams of righteous winners and wicked losers.  In this euphoria of release from fear, the prayers rising thank God for the win. But in all the lifetimes and deaths I’ve known, God’s compassion doesn’t choose sides.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#79.11 Thursday, April 23, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.
 

At matins I chanted with the monks. Now in the full light of dawn, I walk with the monk-clad guards from the river to their posts at the sea. The tide is high and the river into the sea is roiling and deep. The heap of rocks that become the footpath at low-tide are deep under the tidal waters that will soon surge against the river’s flow. On the sea, the swells from the depths heap into shore — waves, peaking, breaking, foaming then rising again, churning up from the depths to again break on the shore. At first, I think the dark lines on the sea are debris from a distant storm, then I realize what we are seeing.

The guards shed their monks’ robes and draw swords. I turn and run back to warn the people in the monastery and the woods and the villagers of Jarrow, but faster than I can run the longboats are slipping up the river past me.

I shout it at the monastery, and the monks are going into hiding, except one nimble young novice who joins me in alerting others in the countryside. Our warning was meant to give people a chance to hide, or run, but everyone along the way is drawing swords and taking up knives.  When we hear the bell ringing from the tower alerting all of the danger, the warning is complete and we return to the monastery.

Some of the Viking ships are abandoned on the shore at the place where the Don runs into the Tyne. The tide is receding carrying ships sparse of men at the oars smashing them against the rocks laid across the river exposed in the ebbing of the tide. [Footnote] At the monastery, it was said thirty swords greeted the marauders and now many are dead.

The watchman posted at the sea this hour killed the Viking leader as the marauders came ashore, leaving the attackers driven by nothing more than personal greed. As one, who is a stubborn pacifist, I would think that lives on both sides could be spared with letting go of earthly treasures for the sake of saving lives. Maybe there is the necessity of taking prisoners and holding trials. But fear offered no place for conversation. Any kind of reconciliation did not happen, and now Jarrow celebrates keeping some of its treasure.

Prayers of thanksgiving rise over the bodies of dead Vikings. I have no understanding of warfare on either side.

[Footnote] https://www.heritagegateway.org.uk/Gateway/Results_Single.aspx?uid=1579441&resourceID=19191

(Retrieved 5-28-25)

Only one footnote is needed here, because the noted source analyses a variety of theories about this attack. This blogger, being a fiction writer, considered the discrepancies among the later written accounts, and the lack of archeological evidence of storm battered ship wrecks, based this telling of the story on the likely preparedness of Jarrow, after Lindisfarne, and the excellence of the ships and the seamanship of the Vikings, inventing the notion they were snagged on a low-tide rock wall used as a walkway to Monkwearmouth. 

(Continues Tuesday April 28)

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#79.10 Wednesday, April 22, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

I’ve been listening to the talk of the old fellows who gather here in the mornings to consider the state of all things.  Some come disgruntled, regardless of the events of life. But Tam comes with a resilient, joyful spirit despite his losses. It is the simple allegory of Job.

Here in this place where people gather, the murmurs and gossip are not about Job and the trials intended to threaten his faith. Here the talk is of Tam. Here it is Tam’s friends and neighbors who envy his good life and expect his faith to be tested when he faces difficulties and grief. But, Like Job, Tam is persistent in faith. And Like Job, his neighbors don’t fully understand the source of his gratitude.

The real tragedy that visited this deposed ealdorman’s house, or call this a “castle,” was the abuse of a young pauper and then the death of her infant. Apparently, the ealdorman who served here made it his task to sit in this place and measure the wealth of the neighbors, accepting bribes in place of fair judgement, leaving him envious of achievement that seemed beyond his reach — made more conspicuous with the simple joyful spirit of Tam. Envy set the ealdorman searching, and he thought he could name his emptiness “legacy.”

It is some weeks now, when we are well into Springtime.  Ousbert returns with the ealdorman, judged innocent and now restored to his place here. Ousbert and the ealdorman will find the coffers empty, because I’m not very good at collecting tithes, and I don’t make judgments based on bribes.  I suppose I’m not a worthy ealdorman. So, it is probably a good thing all around that I won’t be doing this task any longer. The ealdorman returns to an empty, but clean house.

Now, I am weighing a plan to visit another monastery that is rumored to continue in the Irish rule — Iona.  One of the regular merchants visiting Jarrow is Cloothar, with his traveling market for used garments. He brought me down here from Lindisfarne in his little boat, as he often trades among monasteries. He knows of my appreciation for the Christian communities rooted in mystical Ireland, and he came here to Jarrow making a plan for that long sea journey to Celtic Iona. He is inviting me to go along with him.

While we prepare for the journey, I’m staying again in the guest quarters of St. Paul.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#79.9 Tuesday, April 21, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

Comparing the things in our lives with others is always a false gauge for happiness. Envy and greed are closely linked to each other. It seems all these seven dwarves of “deadly sins” are false paths to love for self and neighbor, and these things leave us spiritually hollow, not hallowed. That is because envy and greed are always reaching, never grasping. Greed is always chasing after more, never with enough to fill the hollow space, and envy also sets an unreachable, ever-shifting goal based on what someone else has. Envy and greed are moving targets — a mythical leaping stag always escaping into the woods just ahead of the arrow released.

Defining one’s own actual needs and goals is a completely different way of thinking than these motives of persistent emptiness. Jesus explained the respite from this endless chase simply as the Kingdom of Heaven. [Matthew 5:1-13] But then frailties of greed words and envy words moved this kingdom from available here and now to a far distant place in the clouds. To assure it would always be distant and unreachable the Kingdom of Heaven morphed into the folklore of an after-death reward, like Valhalla.

The variety of happiness Jesus spoke of starts simply with gratitude — noticing the goodness of what is already. It is based on abundance, not emptiness.

         “Thank you God, for…” Like the child’s prayers.

         “For mother, father, family, home, enough food…”

Pretty soon all this thankfulness widens to cows and friends and trees and birds, and on and on, until all of Creation can be named, then the asking prayer is simple.

         “Give us what we need to live today.” (our daily bread)

         “Take away the worry so that enough is complete.”

The asking prayer becomes the opposite of envy and greed. The hollow space that isn’t envy is compassion and that becomes the healing power.

So, in the mornings the old men gather on the benches, some with hollowness, loneliness, hopelessness, anger at what is not in their control — like the tithes and taxes and the people who mandate them. They come to the benches to complain. But if Tam shows up with his gratitude in-tact for his sons and daughters, for his cows, and for the grass that feeds them in the spring after a bare-bones winter that left him grieving for a calf that failed, and of course his own father passed this winter. Even in his grief he comes with a sense of joy for his neighbors and friends, who are these other men gathered here.

         Thank you, God.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#79.8 Thursday, April 16, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.
 

He asked about the infant, and I asked the question back to the three old fellows gathered on the benches here. 

         “Why would an ealdorman keep a baby here?”

The man with no teeth answers first.

         “He thaid it were hith own thun.”

The owner of cows, Tam, still smelling of fresh milk from his morning chores has an explanation.

         “He envied those of us with children, and said he also needed a ‘legacy.’

         Toothless said, “He took one look at Tam’th richeth — cowth and five thunth and nary a tithe needed pay for them and he envied.”

         Tam said, “He’d collect the king’s tithe from me in churned butter and straw bales, but my sons are a value far better than land or riches. Children are better than all the riches of earth. They promise a future. I think he saw I was rich in legacy and not even paying the taxes of a rich man.”

         “Let me guess” I added, “without the ealdorman here now, you’ve delivered the butter to the monastery.”

         Tam answers, “The monks came for it themselves.”

         The other says, “The ealdorman’s envy ate him up. He told everyone he thuffered from luthting for legathy.

         Tam added, “He weren’t seeing the value in the wife or daughters, just the legacy of sons.”

         I ask, “Didn’t he expect a son would come with a mother?”

Toothless belts a laugh.

Maybe they know what I know. The ealdorman had no comprehension of family. The tiny infant that was conceived, not in love, and most likely not even in lust, was the object of greed. Legacy through sons wasn’t a taxable treasure, and the ealdorman took this tax loop-hole very personally when his greedy eyes fell on Tam with three cows and five sons, and apparently, he decided the inescapable emptiness of his life could be filled by legacy. He had no notion of his own need for love.

Envy miss-leads us so easily.  We see simple happiness in another and we give our envy the name of whatever it is that person has.  Tam pays the king’s due for his land, and yet the ealdorman saw Tam was happier than others. And he wanted what Tam had. Tam had a legacy. Tam had sons.  But envy is always a flawed map to happiness.

Dear God, release us from the measure of the neighbor’s stuff, that we may see beyond the treasures and find the happiness in the love itself, for neighbors and selves, and for family.

(Continues Tuesday April 21)


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#79.7 Wednesday, April 15, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.
 

At the ealdorman’s house, Ousbert left the desk and the chair, the empty shelves and the sleeping mat which I have washed in lye soap and refilled with fresh straw. And in the first room are also some benches lining the outer wall.  I thought the benches were for people waiting to make their required payments — but then, why would they come here and sit and wait to do that?

Now I find the benches are a gathering place each morning for the town elders. It was the baker yesterday with his bread bribe. Today some old men come in and sit and talk chewing long stems of green grasses. They tell their old stories to this new ealdorman, complaining over the power structures, and they fill me in on all the history and happenings in a whole different way than Bede told it, but with the same variety of bias. Here history comes as gossip.

The real work of this ealdorman’s post is supposed to be collecting the tithe for the king, while the Church manages collecting the tithe for the Church. It is all called a tithe, from the old land divisions naming the worth of these lands in terms of “hides.” [Footnotes]

How do I, a stranger to this land know of this? It is because these benches seat the tradition of the old men of the morning gathered and telling all there is to know of this place, truth or gossip, whatever.

Ousbert told me some things: that the ealdorman receives a third of these fees for the king; and that is how he’s paid. And I can see, that since the military and the monastery are exempt, this post thrives more on bribes for justice than on the portions of payments, since this doesn’t happen to be a wealthy corner of the earth for collecting a lot in tithes — and with the king and the church each expecting a cut, paying up the taxes is no simple inconvenience for these people.

I’m still waiting to talk with Ousbert again so that I can report to him the thuggish behavior of the soldiers he posted. Now I can also understand the tension between the abbot and the posted guards there. It is why Ousbert did not ask to have a monk temporarily assigned to this ealdorman’s post.

So, the first question these old men perching here have for me is, “Whatever happened to that other fellow’s little-un?”

Footnote: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tithing — retrieved 8-17-25

(Continues tomorrow)


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#79.6 Tuesday, April 14, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.
 

The baker came here with the sheer terror of Hell. I thought the issue was simply a matter of a miss-understanding about payment for bread. The abbot affirms the monastery doesn’t requisition their bread from local merchants.

So, who is it that shows up every week and demands an abundance of fresh loaves, then offers only a blessing?

         “Which blessing is it?” the abbot asks.

         “I don’t know one blessing from another. It is all in the — magical incantation–holy and unsuited to a simple layman’s understanding.”

         The abbot asks, “So what do these monks look like?”

         “Of course they look like monks. Monks always just look like monks, except the particular monks that order the bread don’t have shorn beards.”

         “Eureka!” The witness identifies these blessing giving, sword bearing monks as the monks with beards.

         I answer, “I will speak to Ousbert regarding the behavior of his men.”

I leave the baker with the abbot to make his confession.  I don’t find Ousbert in the monastery today. But I do find my holiday drinking partners. They aren’t disturbing the sacred halls with carols right now. In fact, they are slathering fresh bread with butter. They have a big pot of butter and their dagger tips are slimed in the oily sweetness.  The bread is common, though I know it’s source.  But the butter…the butter is nothing that is served in this place, even to the guests. And I’ve seen no monks at the churns with this rendering of butter from cream for this fine feast. 

Here is all this butter and only a few days ago I was hearing a poor man arguing with nuns over the availability of a fresh cow to be milked to feed the infant of a needy family. In the gapping chasm of miss-understanding between the rich and the poor, the nuns assumed borrowing a cow from a neighbor was a simple solution to nurture an infant, but the poor man knew of no neighbor from whom he could borrow a cow. And now, butter is wasted for the mere pleasure of soldiers.

(Continues tomorrow)


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#79.5 Thursday, April 9, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

         To the abbot I say, “Assigned as I am to temporarily fill the place of the ealdorman, this man has a concern that needs to be settled. He is the village baker and every week he brings bread to this place, and the monks receive it, offering him only a blessing, but no earthly payment. Yet the bread is of earth.”

The baker gave me bread as a bribe, of course, so he expects I will take his side in this dispute. But I don’t need to take his side just because I was gifted bread. This has a simply a matter of justice, regardless of the bribe. 

He presents his complaint to the abbot. I expected he will tell the abbot that he delivers bread to monks with swords at this monastery each week and that he is not paid for it. Then, I expect the abbot will know what has happened here, and will summons those so-called “monks” with swords to pay for the bread.

But the baker amends my simple plan to solve this.

         “It isn’t that I don’t need a blessing. In all your holiness you know I am a sinner. And that is why you’ve sent your monks to judge me and taunt me. Of course, the bread is my humble retribution for my sins. I know it is my required payment if I am ever to enter into heaven.  I should be glad in the opportunity to give all the bread I ever bake, freely to God as required for my sins.”

         “Have you come here to make a confession?”

         I say, “We came to discuss the marketing of bread?”

The baker is not simply awed by the holy, he is terrified. It is as though I brought him to the gates of Hell. To a layman looking at the church from the outside, the distinction may be blurred.  No wonder the abbot is confused, and my assessment of the problem is far too simple. 

I suggest we talk first, about the payment for bread, then I will leave and give the baker his privacy to confess his sins if that is what is needed.

         The abbot says, “It would be a simple issue, as Eleazor suggests, but for the fact that we raise and mill the wheat and bake all the bread we use. We neither buy nor beg bread from local merchants.”

(Continues Tuesday April 14)

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#79.4 Wednesday, April 8, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

The baker and I are waiting to meet with the abbot in the monk’s chapel of St. Paul. Here the window is leaded with pieces of colored glass. The places in this room where shadows would nestle are not shadows at all, but little patches of dancing light, though the room seems shaded in a solemnity and placid, like the cool depths of a summer forest.

Here the windows don’t reveal the awesome grandeur of vast panorama of Creation, rather the sun comes as a kind of inner light — a Spiritual presence. While I find it peaceful, the baker does not.

         “He sees us, doesn’t he?” The baker says. “God is watching. He sees us when we’re sleeping, he knows when we’re awake, and he knows every sin! There is no hiding from God.”

I let the baker reminisce over Psalm 139 finding God everywhere, even in the depths of Scheol. While my own prayer of thanksgiving is silent.

         Dear God, when I feel you near, I have a sense of peace. Thank you for your nearness in times of trouble, always present with comfort and assurance. But I am in here in your sacred presence with a man who has been harrowed with the rumors of Hell. I know that some people who represent you are known to find power in punitive abuse. So called, holy men threaten retribution for innumerable sins heaped onto a poor soul with mere human guesses threatening an afterlife filled with horrific punishments, though it has never actually been witnessed by any living person. He suffers an inescapable guilt gnawing at his conscience. Maybe he is only a victim of human power-plays and rumors. May your truth-filled judgment bring forgiveness and…

         “What? Are you praying? Are you bringing the Holy wrath down on us?”

         “Has ‘holy wrath’ come down, or is it mercy that surrounds us here?”

         “Devils lurk.”

         “God listens.”

         “God knows we are all born in sin.”

         “God set the land and the sea and the sky with life, and said ‘It is good.’ God didn’t create sin.”

         “Then, by one man, Adam, sin came into the world.”

         “Adam is only everyman. Original sin came into the world on the lips and the quills and inks of early church fathers — The once pagan Augustine remembered it and wrote it to be copied over and again.”

         “The Church Fathers were Christian Saints.”

         “They were also people — wise men, maybe, but people.”

The monk who showed us to this room comes to tell us the abbot will see us now.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#79.3 Tuesday, April 7, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

The baker and I are waiting in a monk’s chapel near the river, with the monastery gardens all around. Just beyond the wall is the place where the grasses grow and grains are harvested. 

But here I am with this commoner, a baker, a village merchant who has a very different notion of fearing God than do I. I think of the “fear of God” as the experience of being overwhelmed by grandeur, like seeing from a mountain top — the earth and the sky and even the oceans stretch out in one view, with the details of life, the houses and even the great towers of a fortress or a church become miniaturized by the wideness of view. Recognizing God in the grandeur is what I call awe.

But then, I suppose, the smaller view of awe could be fear. And this man truly “fears” God. He puts onto God the worst notions of an earthly tyrant. And the worldly view of the ordained humankinds — the monks and priests. This does nothing to dissuade the notion of God as a human-like earthly man filling in the office as a visible representative of the invisible God. I don’t share his fear.

We are assigned this empty chapel as our waiting place. It would be a large enough size for choirs of monks and a procession of people receiving the elements of the mass, but it is not a well-lit sanctuary where a priest can be clearly seen presiding over worship.  The window in this room casts an unusual light, filtered as sunlight but transformed by the window itself. Like a holy man, who speaks for God, but is not God, this window speaks of light, but interprets the light to cause earthly amazement.

This window [Footnote]  is itself, an art piece as fine as any glazier could set, with glass sections carefully cut and sized, and set together to fill the frame with lead between the sections. A glass window allows a Roman styled basilica with its arches for light but without a view beyond the room. It makes its own view. The sunlight streams in through the tinted glass in colors. It is as though a mosaic is laid in tile but with sunlight coming from the outside dancing the light in colors that fill the room.

[Footnote] https://stephenliddell.co.uk/2018/08/22/st-pauls-monastery-in-jarrow-and-the-oldest-stained-glass-window-in-the-world/    retrieved 6-23-25

(Continues tomorrow)


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#79.2 Thursday, April 2, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

The baker and I set out to call upon the neighbor in baker’s complaint but apparently, this neighbor is the monastery. And the baker suffers a dreadful fear of God. Worse yet, he can’t distinguish between God and men of the cloth. He walks behind me with his head bowed.

In this temporary assignment, this is my first venture into this kind of justice. It can’t be that complicated. But the baker has an apparent warped perception of holy wrath and fears God’s judgment.

         “Haven’t you heard of the wrath of God, Eleazor?”

         “God made us, and holds no more hatred for humankind than you have hate for the bread you bake. We’ll just talk to the purchaser of supplies and get you a fair settlement. And I always thought this monastery was self-sustaining, raising and grinding their own wheat to make their own bread.”

         “I know well where I deliver the bread. It is always received into the depths of God’s own chambers so well-guarded by monks with swords.”

I know this monastery has gardens and a grain field. It would make no sense for them to call on the village baker to supply bread. But his notion of “monks with swords” hints the clue.

         I say, “I’ve been staying here and as a guest and of course God is here as in all places, but I never thought of God hidden away in guarded chambers.”

We reach the abbot’s door. If Ousbert had been on good terms with him the abbot would have assigned a monk to this temporary task as ealdorman. We are invited to wait for the abbot in the side room — the monk’s chapel.

Ousbert thinks this abbot is unreasonable because he expects soldiers to behave as monks. But that is Ousbert’s issue. Here and now, I expect this baker can’t distinguish between monks with beards and swords and actual brothers.  Mostly the baker is terrified, awestruck and intimidated by any holy authority as he fears the omnipotence of God.

         “This is not like asking justice from the king.” he says, “When a king turns fickle, he can put an innocent man in the castle dungeon for the rest of his life but the king’s prisoner could always hope for salvation. Here, there is no hope at all if God is the fickle master?”

         “God is not a fickle master. I can assure you, in all my years I’ve never known God to be a fickle master, but of course, I haven’t met the abbot.” 

(Continues Tuesday April 7)

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#79.1 Wednesday, April 1, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

Today I rule a cottage known by the very poor to be the “castle.” It is the assigned post of the ealdorman. Ousbert, the king-appointed captain of the guard in this region found the ealdorman who was here to be corrupt, and had him removed to await the king’s judgment. So, I’m here temporarily, filling this post of the judge and tax collector. In lieu of any written laws I plan to simply rely on the love laws Jesus taught, as I do anyway.

Yesterday the baker brought me a fresh loaf of bread just when I was hungry for bread. And today, the baker comes for his basket to tell me his side of an issue he has with his neighbor. Before I even have a chance to obtain ink and quill to make a report for the king, he’s at the door.

         “I appreciated the bread” I tell him returning his basket empty now.

         He says, “I have a wicked neighbor who demands I supply bread without payment. We’ve just come through a terrible drought and wheat is scarce. It is costly to meet this demand.”

I wonder if this bread was delivered to me yesterday, not as a bribe as I had assumed, but for me to provide the payment for it. I worry the ealdorman receives the bread regularly and actually was that negligent neighbor, so I ask.

         “Was the ealdorman the unpaying neighbor?”

         “Of course not. I gifted that bread to you so you would rule in my favor and demand that my neighbor pay for the bread.”

Good. It was just a bribe. And it hardly seems a complicated issue. May all my judgements be so simply solved. We should just visit the neighbor and I will demand fair payment.

         I say, “Although I appreciated the bread, I don’t intend to rule by bribes. I promised the king’s man I would try my best to be fair, so if your plea is righteous, I will freely judge in your favor. Now let me go along with you to your neighbor, and I will speak up for you, and demand the payment for the loaf you bring him.” 

         He says, “It isn’t one loaf now and then. I’m required to deliver two score loaves, every week.”

         “That seems like a lot for one neighbor. So why do you continue to deliver it?”

         “They have swords and they own my soul.”

(Continues tomorrow)

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#78.13 Tuesday, March 31, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

The ealdorman’s assigned house, (or “castle” if you are a pauper and have never been in a simple cottage) was purged of the fellow who had been appointed to this seat. The log book he kept for the king was taken away as evidence against him, along with all his personal belongings — all loaded onto a wagon and gone now. 

There is a tattered broom left in a webby corner, so I sweep out the floor of cob webs. What else was left here was more dust and dirt, table, chair, oil lamp and straw tick for a sleeping mat. First thing, before nightfall I shake out that linen tick and acquire some fresh straw from the public stable. The stable hand also lends me a rag for wiping down the near empty book shelves, and he offers advice.

         “When your work is as mine, dealing with the public, you have two masters: the king who owns the building, and the strangers and villagers who come to you. Do as the villagers say because they come with food and the gifts. The king just demands things from you.”

         “Thank you.”

Listening to that, I can understand how it is complicated serving two earthly masters.  For me, I serve only one master who is God. It would all be so simple if I wasn’t famished and didn’t just now find the baker bringing a fresh loaf of bread, then asking if he might come tomorrow to speak with me about his complaint against a neighbor. I find I am enjoying the bread, though maybe it was a bribe.

The bread is so fresh and soft the fragrance of yeasty warmth fills the house and overtakes the rancid of the old dweller who was here once. When the baker comes for the basket first thing tomorrow, the bread will be gone and I will be completely at the mercy of hearing his side.

On this new morning, the baker is at my door again and I return the basket he brought, empty now. But I tell him I will need to listen to his complaint with his neighbor later, because this morning I have to go to the monastery for supplies of parchment and prepare the inks and quill to begin this work. He says I really need to know who his neighbor is. He will be back.

         Dear God. I intend to judge fairly. Enable me to see beyond the tastiness of the loaf. Amen.

(Continues Wednesday, April 1, 2026)

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#78.12 Thursday, March 26, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

Asking Ousbert for a King’s law written for ealdorman to know and use, he scoffed at what he calls an “outdated” reliance on books, reminding me in these times kings are made on the battlefield, not amid the dusty law books. Kings are, after-all. appointed by God.

We differ.

I can only wonder how history can advance if books are outdated and rulers are only named by wins in war. If we don’t value the old, a book or an ancient tool or a story repeated and kept from one generation to the next — the foundations for future good will simply be lost. Building new ideas on old wisdom is how human beings are different from the wolves and the whales. Books have a power that wars fail. Wars don’t keep us human.

         He argues, “The really good books tell about wars.”

Dear God, in your holy ways every creature and individual is beloved, but humankinds accumulate ideas from one generation to the next. We are always striving, reaching, building those towers of Babel. Forgive us, and give us peace.  Maybe remembering is our human nature, if the tower rises to heaven or if it crumbles into a stinking heap of bitumen we still gather up the understanding and pass it along. We so easily lose sight of goodness and justice, empowering the novelty of the shiniest oddity. Teach me the endurance of simplicity once again, that I may see more clearly…

Ousbert interrupts my silent thoughts and prayers just now.

         “Surely, Eleazor, you can make righteous decisions without the use of a book. You have far more wisdom than that man who was taken to the dungeon and is awaiting his trial for grift.”

         “I guess I was looking for a higher standard. But if the king didn’t choose to write down his law, knowing books as I do, I guess I can just rule by biblical mandate of love for neighbor.”

         “That sounds good. Just use whatever the old bible says is law. That’s what a monk would do if we had a monk to fill this post.”

         Ousbert leaves me here to go manage the work of this office until the king sees fit to send a newly assigned ealdorman, or perhaps until, sadly, the previous ealdorman would have his charges dismissed and returns.

(Continues Tuesday, March 31, 2026)


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#78.11 Wednesday, March 25, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

Ousbert wonders why a temporary ealdorman, whose task is to settle minor disputes and send everyone’s taxes on to the king, should want to find a dusty old book of laws?

         He asks, “Why a book, when we have a God appointed king?”

         “How will I know what is considered fair? Take the case in the log book where two villagers were seeking a fair settlement over using the King’s road for a livestock path– how can I know the king’s mind on that without any record of the King’s law?”

         “The king’s righteousness derives from his divine power to access God’s righteousness.”

         “I would think it should be God’s rule first, then the King’s interpretation of it. But even that seems random and fickle when it is this earthbound human, who I am, trying to discern righteousness.”

         “And you think that if the king wrote a book, and if every ealdorman over-seeing every little forest and village had a monk’s copy of this book, that would make a difference to how you fill the ealdorman’s place here?”

          “I was thinking a book of King’s laws would be usual here.  I was reading in Bede’s The Eccleasiastical History of the English People that already two hundred years ago, king, Æthelberht, who ruled over Kent, at the cusp of English Christianity, wrote down a Code of Laws so in his new holy rule he would follow the Roman way. [Footnote] I guess I assumed that every king thereafter would provide a written law for the subjects to know and follow.”

I can see this request is nonsensical and exasperating to my friend.

         “And you think a two-hundred-year-old notion is useful in these new times?”

         “I guess I was expecting something I knew of history to be a grounding for these times, so that when one thing is useful we could build from that and we would always be bettering ourselves, from one generation to the next.”

         This soldier argues, “We better ourselves across generations because Kings are chosen by God, they are winners in wars, so they are always stronger and bolder than the last, so kings are always better than before.”

         That is exactly as I had feared.  Here in this raw nature, humankind believes human advancement can be made through warfare. But if people don’t use books or runes, or works of art, inspired, to carry forward the advances made from one generation to the next, the goodness of old isn’t a  foundation for betterment in the new. We simply relive old hates through wars.

[Footnote] Bede, The Eccleasiastical History of the Englis People, New York: Oxford Classics, pp 78

(Continues tomorrow)


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#78.10 Tuesday, March 24, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

The king’s man, Ousbert, assigned to Jarrow to protect this monastery and village from Viking attack is now focused on saving the village from the graft of an ealdorman also assigned his post by the king. Yesterday this ealdorman was carted away to the king’s dungeon along with the evidence of his injustice to await his trial before the king. The immediate need for Ousbert to properly serve the king requires a temporary replacement for the vacated post — someone honest, fair and literate.

I think it would be best for Ousbert to speak to the abbot of St. Peter and St. Paul, and fill this vacancy with a monk. But Ousbert is on tenuous terms with the abbot after he placed his soldiers as armed military guards over the monastery. Dressing them in monk’s robes didn’t really preserve the tranquility of the monastery. Regardless of their misfit appearance, the presence of swords is anathema to the abbot here.

So, here I am, a foreigner with a Hebrew name, Eleazor, dressed as a scholar and a guest of the monastery just to use the library.  I’m surely exempt from local politics. But Ousbert sees me as the perfect temporary ealdorman. I remind him I am a Frankish foreigner here.

         I argue, “How would I know these people to judge them fairly?”

         “Knowing the people only tangles the grift.  It’s good to have a stranger in that place — fresh eyes. You can be fair.”

         “And I should stay in that tawdry house the paupers call a castle?”

         “What? You think an ealdorman’s mansion is beneath your dignity?”

         “I already know too much of the hurts and horrors of that place.”

He ignores my reluctance. And now I find a temporary assignment here more and more repugnant as I learn the duties not only entail being a fair judge for disputes among neighbors, but I am assigned the task of tax collection. Ousbert shows me the method for keeping that record. This is a different book than the log book. This is a property ledger noting the land parcels and the taxes that are due from each of these peasants.

         “But, Sir Ousbert, the book I don’t find here is the one that tells me the king’s law. How will I will know what is fair? I really need to know what the law is.”

         Ousbert asks why.

(Continues tomorrow)  

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#78.9 Thursday, March 19, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

         On this morning, my new “best friend,” Ousbert, is tapping on my door.

         “Eleazor!  Wake up!  I have a great idea!”

         “I was already awake.”

         “Let’s walk back to the ealdorman’s quarters and I will tell you what I have in mind.”

         I wonder, why me? His mind is always on the assignments for soldiers. So why am I the first one in a morning to hear this military officer’s mind, inspired as it may have been by the matin hour of inspiration.  Of course, Ousbert isn’t a holy man, so how would he know that inspiration is assigned at the darkest hour?

         “What’s on your mind, Captain Ousbert.”

         “Well, yesterday I spent the day picking through the ealdorman’s log book, knowing what I did about his untamed ability for discretion.  I worried all night about that vacancy, and the present king’s lack of concern for justice in a simple peasant village.”

         “Yes, I would suppose the king has more immediate and deadly concerns, being thrust, as he was, from battles and murders into the seat of divine authority.”

         “Yes. Whatever, but I fear he will be slow in appointing a temporary ealdorman as busy as he is. And what’s worse, anyone who knows that post will assume the nature of the work is to use that charge for his own personal advantage by whatever means he wishes.”

         “I know what you mean.  If he decides he needs an heir to extend his power, even though no woman would have him, he just plucks a girl from the pauper’s woods to serve his purpose.”

         He explains, “And what would stop the substitute ealdorman, knowing the history of that post, from himself taking similar advantage? I considered begging the abbot to loan us a monk, temporarily, to fill the vacancy. I know he won’t. But then I had a thought!  I could take the post myself. These guards I’ve posted know well the pattern of their duty. But then, how can I abandon my duty to the king and my true assignment.  But here you are, literate with the clarity of a stranger’s vision. Think of the good that can be done by bringing fairness to this post that only requires someone who can read and write; and I already know that your own handwriting is so fine as to impress the king.”

         “I can’t take that post.”

(Continues Tuesday, March 24, 2026)

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#78.8 Wednesday, March 18, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

Ousbert and I return to our cells in the guest quarters. Tonight, I don’t light a candle. There is nothing I need to read and nothing else that needs to be written. I can just sit here in the darkness and sort through the shady corners of this day — the ealdorman’s empty house — the pauper’s wood– the letter, bartered for a girl giving permission to the paupers to hunt rabbits. But for the illiterate, a letter could be anything. So, the paupers believe it is from the king and it gives them dominion over the whole woods.

I know so little about dominion. Is it God who assigns kings their dominion?  Or does God just get blamed for the fact that the most ruthless one on the battlefield wins the throne? Or why, in that Genesis story, did God hand off dominion over all of Creation to mere humankinds? Dominion over all the earth would, it seems be far better handled by the gentle sea creatures. But who am I to judge? Or maybe this is a case where humankind miss-read the letter, believing we owned the whole woods, when actually, all we were given was permission to hunt rabbits. We do seem to assume human beings rule over all the forests and the sea as well.

My questions become my prayer.

         Dear God, once again, I guess you are reminded of human striving whenever you hear our prayers: we humankinds try to make ourselves sound favorable to you by bowing low, and addressing you with superlative honorifics fluffed to be whatever we can only imagine is beyond our own understanding. Awed we say, “Creator,” “High King of Heaven,” “Wonderful counselor,” “Almighty,” “Your Majesty,” always high and above. But I know you also as knowable love — a loving parent or the hen who stretches her wings to cover the chicks sheltering us from the shadow of the eagle.

I see that even through my own ignorance I don’t need to yield to any high rank simply to create humility. I am already humble. Now I’ve come here to this land of the Anglia and settlements of Saxons, and I see with every division of land, people seem to think a king is necessary. And with every king comes more definitive divisions between kingdoms — borders and defenses — us and others.

So how can love prevail with so many little human kings always in need of enemies as proof of power?

Surely, we miss-read the dominion permission.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#78.7 Tuesday, March 17, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.
 

Ousbert and I are walking back to Jarrow passing through the pauper’s wood, this night. This is the path no one chooses. It is that dark place, imagined, but never visited — a wilderness of poverty that wilts the wings of angels and dirties the hems of their gowns.

We’ve been confronted with an elder in this tangle of vines who claims to have a letter from the king granting him dominion over this place. He unrolled a scrap of parchment he claims is from the king.  It is written in the scrawling hand of the ealdorman. This letter was apparently traded for the orphan girl and now, this fellow claims the letter gives the paupers dominion over this entire wood — “to rule every tree and beast and man crossing over this path.” By the light of the lantern, we are able to discern what it actually says: “Permission is granted to hunt rabbits here.”        

And who would deny them that privilege particularly when the dead rabbit he has draped in his sash is actually a rat?

The pauper begs a “toll” from Ousbert and me, claiming that collecting tolls is his privilege of dominion. So Ousbert picks a sticky blob of beeswax off his sleeve. It was sticking to him there after cleaning out the drawers of the ealdorman’s desk.

         “What’s this?” the pauper asks.

         “It is a valuable seal that we can give you now to grant us passage on this path.”

         “It’s all sticky.”

         “This once had the stamp of the king. It was a seal used on an important document. And now it is yours. You can use it to seal your letter.”

The gnarled hands of the pauper are ill-suited to sticking a blob of gooey wax to the letter. Ousbert helps him. And now he seems pleased that his precious letter sticks closed, and it unsticks for the unrolling. This was a valuable toll to collect from us, and it allows us not only to walk the path through the wood, but allows me to ask the questions I have for the pauper.

         “Who is Old Ma? And was the orphan girl beloved, here?”

I learn these people are glad to be rid of her. When she was an infant here, she was adored. But the elderly paupers were not prepared to deal with the needs of a teen. They’re happy she is gone and apparently, the letter traded for her was a blessing all around. They await the return of her as a wealthy princess now.

(Continues tomorrow)

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#78.6 Thursday, March 12, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

We are approaching the pauper’s wood, now in the dark. It is our instinct to follow the river more closely here to avoid crossing through this dreary wilderness at night. Watching our steps with the light puddle of the lantern, Ousbert’s soldier’s boots and my finely stitched shoes seem ill-suited for a visit to the paupers. Yet we carry a lantern and speak in our normal chatter so we must be a bold bright noise interrupting anyone who would be sleeping here this night.

We are confronted immediately. An old man is standing in our path, leaning on a stout, pointed stick, either a cane to support him, or a weapon to ward us off — I’m not sure of the purpose of that stick — but it is a solid branch.

     “Ahh!” He speaks. “Not the King’s wood now. ‘Tis ours nee!”

Ousbert hands the lantern to me, as his right-hand rests on the hilt of his sword. He answers calmly.

     “These forests are all the King’s lands.”

     “Nay, no more! See this letter from the King?”

He reaches into his sash as though he has a dagger prepared for a confrontation. But Ousbert chooses to listen before he brings out his sword. And that’s good, because what the old man fumbles to finally bring forth is no knife. It is a scroll of parchment, dirty and tattered as is the man himself. He unrolls it and holds it up for Ousbert to see. Oustbert reaches for it, but the man pulls it away from him.

     “It’s upside down.”

     “It is a writing from the King.”

     “May I see it?”

He holds it closer to Ousbert. By the light of the lantern, even though the man is holding it upside-down, it is easy to see it is written in the same hand as that ealdorman’s log book we’ve just been reading.

     It says, “The king permits paupers to hunt rabbits in this wood.”

     The man says, “Ye can’t read? It’s them scrawls in King’s ink that say the woods is ours. It were a deal we made.  We traded the orphan girl for a King’s litter given every tree and beast in this wood to us. So let any man or beast that walk this path, beware!”

     “It says the rabbits, in particular, should beware.”

     “No, it says now we takes the toll from thems that passes this way.” 

(Continues Tuesday, March 17, 2026)

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#78.5 Wednesday, March 11, 2026

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 794 C.E.

Ousbert and I make our way through the dark, step-by-step with only the light of his lantern. We are considering the nature of the King’s justice.

         “So, you would say that the people who know very little of this king trust him to judge righteously; while you, who are his own man don’t trust that judgment to be fair?”

         “It would be so fine if every soldier could trust his king.”

         “But that isn’t so?”

         “It should be. It should be true that if a man defeats a king, or even his brother, in a battle, the will of God can be seen in that victory, so the King has the divine rite; and the proof of it is that he rises to take the throne. It was true for Clovis and Constantine.”

         “So, whoever has the throne, represents the will of God?”

         He answers, “So they say, but who am I to know the will of God?”

         I say, “In the old stories from the days of Samuel, God’s prophet, visited the house of Jesse, prepared to anoint one of his sons, apparently pre-selected by God to be King. David was anointed by Samuel, [I Samuel 16] then in the next verse David slew Goliath [I Samuel 17].”

         “I know. I’ve heard those stories.”

         “But in Christian times the sequence seems to be the other way around. First comes the win in the battle, then comes the anointing by the bishops. So, this supposed holiness of a king is won with the sword, not given by the grace of God. I have to wonder why anyone would trust a King to rule justly.

          “The people don’t see that. They believe a King’s justice is the same as God’s justice, simply because it is the King who makes the rule. They think the king speaks for God.”

         “And you don’t?”

         “I obey the king because I’m a soldier. Then I live with that gnawing issue of God’s will. I sometimes worry I am like Uriah chosen by a king’s human greed to die a hero in a battle. But gratefully, I don’t have a beautiful wife, and I am not a threat to take the power a king would want for himself, so maybe the King’s orders I obey actually are the will of God. I guess I just have to trust.”

         “And yet you make your reports to the King to appeal to his compassion and care for the poor. You did trust his judgment and this time it was righteous.”

(Continues tomorrow)


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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)