#75.4 Tuesday, December 9, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

         “I think it was the Vikings.”

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

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

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

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

(Continues tomorrow)

#75.3 Thursday, December 4, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

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

         Dear God, you know my heart.

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Continues Tuesday, December 9)

#75.2 Wednesday, December 3, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

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

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

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

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

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

(Continues tomorrow)

#75.1 Tuesday, December 2, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.
 

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Continues tomorrow)


#74.12 Thursday, November 27, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.
 

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

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

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

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

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

         There wasn’t really room for compromise.

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

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

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

(Continues Tuesday, December 2)

#74.11 Weds., November 26, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Continues tomorrow)

#74.10 Tuesday, November 25, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Continues tomorrow)

#74.9 Thursday, November 20, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Continues Tuesday, November 25)

#74.8 Wednesday, November 19, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.
 

         I’ve come to Jarrow following my own curiosity about what I, as a mere lay person, judge as wrong-headed. Obedience to the papal edict is demanded when it is actually the voice of God that calls us in the dark of night.

         I came here to argue against Bede’s historical writings that barely excuses the Irish founders of Lindisfarne for holding on to the traditions of Celtic Christianity. What I found here, visiting this library is Bede’s student, Brother Wilbert, still grieving for his beloved teacher. He is telling me of Bede’s life, while I came, only to measure Bede by his judgmental verbiage in his history of the neighboring community.

         My hackles, were I a bird or a wolf with actual hackles, are riled up whenever I read this style of religious authoritarianism, calling one with different traditions an “open adversary of the truth.” [Footnote] Judging  each little external difference of religious practice as divisive among Christians. Yet, here I am, judging the judge. I came here looking for an argument, but I found a human person in Bede simply doing his best to straddle the line between the voice of God calling him in the darkness and the obedience to the religious head, a pope. He would never even meet the pope. For Bede, the pope was mythical — more than mortal human —acclaimed to be infallible. I came to find Bede, an imagined adversary, and now I find a better understanding of Bede, the person.  The mysterious Jesus way of love washes over diminishing narrow divisions, not with better rules and stricter obedience, but with a simple, broader understanding.

         The monk with the Irish tonsure, with shaven forehead back to a line center from ear to ear, looks at the tonsure of the Roman Christian monk, and judges that the little circle of hair he wears as a crown, as a prideful flaunting of royalty. Then the monk with the crown looks at the Irish tonsure, and judges that man flawed, disobedient and unwilling to wear Christ’s crown of thorns. So where is God in all this so-called “truth”?

         I only see with human eyes, but God sees from the vantage point of Creator, all-loving.

         Dear God, grant me a wider view of your own beloved “others.”  Amen.

[Footnote] Bede, Ecclesiastical History of the English Oxford University Press.  pp 153

(Continues tomorrow)

#74.7 Tuesday, November 18, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

         Perhaps Samuel, in particular, caught Bede’s interest as he, like Samuel, was dedicated to the priests at a young age.

         Samuel, whose mother, Hannah, gave him to the temple priest to fulfill her promise to dedicate her child to serve God. As young Bede served Ceolfrith, young Samuel also served an elderly priest, Eli.

         My own house with children was a simple house with few rooms, and a sleeping child is near enough that he can call out in the night for his mother, and my wife or, at times, I would go to him and take him in my arms to comfort him, wipe away his tears and promise the sun will rise again on a new day.

         But in this story, young Samuel awakens alone in the darkness, and he is the one called from sleep with no parent answering, comforting, he stumbles through the darkness alone to answer the summons of the blind old priest and finds Eli still snoring. The child touches him to ask what he needs.  He awakens, probably annoyed at first, then aware of the child asking him what he needs. Why did Eli call him?

         “I didn’t call you. Go back to bed.”

         I expect little Samuel goes back to that strange dark room again that echoes the emptiness, maybe thinking of his own mother, who we know from the story was also thinking of him. Every year she made him a new little robe to wear in these cold dark times. That was what she could do when she couldn’t rock him in her arms and sing promises of morning to him throughout each dark night.

         He was probably less able to fall asleep again, when he very clearly heard that priestly voice once more calling his name. Again, he went to the old man’s bedside. And again, he awakened Eli and asked what he needed. This time, the old man realized that the child was answering someone.  The old priest told little Samuel to listen to the voice of God calling him in the night.

         Surely, Bede’s commentary on I Samuel was impacted by his own relationship as the once small child, serving the Abbot Ceolfrith, answering the call, himself. Bede was at work on his commentary on Samuel when he was so deeply pierced by the accusation of heresy, and Ceolfrith was no longer available to answer his fears.

(Continues tomorrow)