Lazarus Ink

#74.6 Thursday, November 13, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

I stand before the book stand that holds Bede’s ecclesiastical history, considering eschatology or thoughts of end times as a circle. History tries to be linear with a beginning and an end, a head and a tail, as a line, with only an untapped option to circle for eternity, biting its own tail.

Notions of end times are, by the mortal nature of living beings, always just guesses. Whether creative guessing or hypothetical calculation with the guesswork in the premise, the imaginary begs for validation in reality. Prophets of end times can never say, “see I was right after-all” because if end times are an end, there is no after-all. There is no need for fact, only for followers of the prognosticators.^{[Footnote 1]}

This becomes significant for Bede and his writings because he had to answer to a critic, Plegwin, accusing him of the heresy of putting Christ in the end times, and not in the linear now, in the argued calculation for “the sixth age” (which is the now). To Bede, historian who looks to papal decree for the facts of calculating epochs of history, his critic’s accusation of the heresy of getting Christ in the wrong epoch must have been devastating. That’s what happened. He answered the accusation of heresy with a letter. [^{Footnote 2]}

Heresy, or unfounded here-say, would be a horrific charge for anyone who names every opinion as either righteous or flawed depending on its source. If a pope said it, it is infallible. If it was spoken by a monk with an Irish haircut, it can’t be trusted. How then, does Bede hear God speaking? And how is he a trusted authority on God’s truth?

The old man who once sat with Bede at his death comes back now to further guide my understanding of his mentor. I thought Wilbert’s intentions were to instruct me on the proper reading of the Venerable Bede, but actually, he wants someone to be an interested visitor who will listen to his own reminiscences of his saint. Maybe he doesn’t even mean to pester me by defending the writings.

Wilbert says, “Bede’s teacher was Abbot Ceolfrith. This first abbot at the founding of Jarrow was Bede’s guardian and teacher from childhood, on through this crisis over an accusation of heresy. In Bede’s commentary on I Samuel he references the departure of Ceolfrith, considering his own first childhood teachers.”

^{[Footnote 1:] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Ages_of_the_World}

^{Retrieved: 5-8-25}

^{[Footnote2:] https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2018/05/the-real-venerable-bede.html }^{“The accuser claimed that in Bede’s Chronica Minora, he denied that Christ had lived in the sixth age of the word, as was commonly believed. Instead, Bede argued that Christ had lived in the seventh age. In the letter to Plegwin, Bede wrote: ‘If I had denied that Christ had come, how could I be a priest in Christ’s Church?’ (translated by F. Wallis, Bede: The Reckoning of Time, p. 405).”}

^{Retrieved 2-20-25}

(Continues Tuesday, November 18)

#74.5 Wednesday, November 12, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

My thoughts stray from Bede’s commentary on the history of Church among the Anglia. He wrote in a room with narrow walls. I was expecting to find in this history of the Lindisfarne the actual beating heart and spiritual energy of the creation of that community. It was stolen from them in the deaths of its monks and burials in the earth with saints sharing their earth space with sinners and this driving love force was overlooked in the history of the politics of rule and obedience.

Dear God, is it all vanity to look for you in the closed circles of eternal repetition? Recently I’ve been gathering stones together with the survivors of Lindisfarne. And they were chiseling a gravestone with a raw circle for sun and a raw arc for moon where time is measured against notions of a doomsday. It’s an eternity of wandering paths in a labyrinth, circles within circles and the other way around again, longing for clarity but not for conclusion.

I’ve also been to the casting away. I’ve been to death and back again. In the sorrow lies the promise of joy. In the cruelty of greed, lies the promise of empathy, lifting up the lowly. Time is measured in the repetitious pattern of circles — the tail grabbing. Help me, guide me, release me from the futility of circle into to the vast unknowable eternity of Creative Love. With each circle expanding we find an eternal newness in pattern, restoring, resurrecting from earth stuff to life stuff to unstuffed spirit. Guide me, let me walk the labyrinth free of stagnation that confines imagination. Amen.

Is it a longing or an observation: eschatological time, or the “end times” or “doomsday” or “the seventh and the eighth ages of the world or Word or “Ragnarök” which can never be now. It always must be then, and never visited by the living. If God speaks of it, human discernment of those utterances are as deeply personal and subjective as any mystical encounter. It isn’t actual prophecy. Time in human understanding is linear. Eternity is circular. This is a very ancient wisdom. In time, one thing happens after, or before another. But in a circular pattern of eternity the now is also the then, and maybe it is a present fullness, not so much an after and done kind of event — a circle — the endless tail grab. Always, by its very nature, the eschaton is unknown and unknowable. It is a page un-written.

(Continues tomorrow)

#74.4 Tuesday, November 11, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

Now, as I contemplate my own motives for searching Bede’s writings, I find myself clinging to the losing side in a petty debate over haircuts and calendar calculations. I’m still arguing matters of political opinion while I claim my reasons for studying Bede are purely for learning the history.

The thing the Vikings didn’t steal from Lindisfarne was the Gospel. In another time, the same as this time, a monk inked each letter of St. Jerome’s translation of the familiar words “in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was …” and the contemplation of Word put that monk’s mesmerized spiritual state at work on the page marked with the grid of dots awaiting illumination. Dots and dots were laid out for guiding the wandering inks into a maze of creatures, patterns of human labyrinth, an uncountable continuous pattern of circles of birds with folded wings and grid-dot eyes, with their beaks grasping tails in an eternal grounding of more circles than could become a cross if a cross could be of circles.

When I read Bede’s ecclesiastical history it is the frustrating sameness of politics– flightless birds grabbing their own tails in eternal repetitions. The serpent politics is always taking superficial issues like hairstyle and calendar days to chop up the universal holy love of God. There was this slicing and dicing into a threesome, the human concept of one God who is eternally beyond human comprehension, and setting anyone outside the law who doesn’t conform to the edict that attempted to define God. The relentless repetition of tail biting makes ancient circles of eternity. It is the Ouroboros. ^[Footnote]

It wasn’t the Viking raid, as earth time was nearing the 9th century, that made Lindisfarne the vanguard of Doomsday. This notion of Ragnarök (a legendary end of times from Norse tradition) was woven into the art of the gospel inked at Lindisfarne well before the raid.

Our human approach to the ouroboros is as we read Ecclesiastes. With each event of human existence offered as a time — “a time to reap and a time to sow, a time we may embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing,” [Ecclesiastes 3:1-8] with all these cycles perceived as “vanity,” is a human pointlessness, futility, observed by the poet. But there is a human point of view, and from this viewpoint a time of sorrow also promises a time of joy. Therefore, in the bliss of joy, there is always that sorrow when the circle turns again.

^Footnote:^{https://www.petmd.com/reptile/conditions/behavioral/ouroboros-snake-bites-its-own-tail}

^{retrieved 3-10-25}

^{An article by Nick Keppler explains the legend of the tail-eating serpent, the Ouroboros in many cultures from ancient times. One is Norse mythology, the serpent is Jörmungandr, an enormous sea beast and one of the monstrous children of the god Loki; a being so large it encircles the whole world, holding its tail in its mouth. One day, prophecy says, it will release its tail from its mouth and rise from the ocean depths to harken Ragnarök—the end, and rebirth, of earth.}

^{This is posted on PetMD.com along with articles like “How to tell if your lizard is sick” and “How much do turtles} ^{cost” including ads for reptile creams to sooth an itchy tail.}

(Continues tomorrow)

#74.3 Thursday, November 6, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

I have a personal stake in this history, because, in all my years, I’ve felt the sense of belonging in monastic communities before there was a Benedictine Rule at Tours and at Ligugé. Then my need for community for sharing faith was met with the Irish missionary, Columbanus, who eventually established eight monasteries throughout Burgandy and the Italian Alps.

St. Columbanus finally accepted the Benedictine tonsure and the Roman Rule for the Easter date as a concession for the blending of rules to include things that he felt were more essential to the depths of faith than hairstyle. For example, for Columbanus, obedience to God was first and foremost, over the obedience to the human hierarchy of Church.

This is where the time-freeze of Bede’s writing frustrates me. In a world where scribes and authors pay homage to saints with fantastic stories of miracles and signs, the historical record of political controversies also becomes tainted with subjective opinions. I call them subjective opinions, but when an opinion is accepted as fact, even wars can arise over seemingly meaningless differences. Opinion serves people better in debate where all sides are said with the fulcrum of the balance posting the resolution.

Bede mentions the Arian controversy, not a controversy in these times. It was said to be settled once and for all at the Council of Nicaea in 325 when it was made official that God came in three parts. Trinity perfectly suited Christians, newly received from paganism where many gods do seem to rule. It also offered a decisive explanation made of functional human words, which, to the rising earthly emperor, Constantine, was a perfectly reasonable way to explain an invisible God with an unspeakable name.

Well, actually it was settled again and again and not really once and for all even at the Council of Chalcedon in 451, when nuances of the relationship of “Father” and “Son” seemed a worthy reason for clobbering unbelievers with wars. The wrong-headed, or losers in the wars that followed, divided people who were all nurtured in the teachings of Jesus, into the righteous and the flat-out wrong. Arians were the wrong, because they followed the wrong guy at the Council of Nicaea, and Arians didn’t accept the interpretation ruled by the “one universal Church.” Arians were anathema, and viewed as worse than pagan. Since it was the Church that owned the vellum, the Church’s edicts of righteousness became facts of history.

(Continues Tuesday, November 11)

#74.2 Wednesday, November 5, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

Bede lived his life in the monastery confined by walls with books as his window on the world. His doorways were the travelers to and from Rome as he always kept current with papal decree and edict. He valued the pope’s intention to bring unity to the whole wide Church. Bede put the highest priority on papal rule, which I suppose is how a child nurtured in monastic Rule, once designed to fill the void of parental guidance, would grow. “Truth” ^[Footnote1] as Bede called the pope’s proclamation of a proper date for Easter, was not simply a choice to make among human traditions; but this date for Easter was a defining foundation stone of “righteousness.”

The first chapters weren’t tainted by his personal judgement, since they had the objective distance of time. He named ancient traditions and Roman rulers over these islands, including Ireland. Ireland was never Roman but it was Christian. Even the grasses of Ireland sprout Trinitarian. So, in times when the sorting of peoples as Christian or heretic based on acceptance of the Trinity, the Irish were clearly not the heretics. But in matters of monastic rule, where the Irish and the English differed, as in the tonsures of monks and the calendar date for celebrating Easter, Bede’s words are flavored with his own Roman warp.

Aiden, the founding first bishop of Lindisfarne, came to Northumbria with the Celtic Rule. But his supposed erroneous observance of the Easter date was “patiently tolerated” while he was alive, “because” as Bede said, “they had clearly understood that although he could not keep Easter otherwise because of the manner of those who had sent him, he nevertheless laboured diligently to practice the words of faith, piety, and love, which is the mark of all the saints. He was therefore deservedly loved by all, including those who had other views about Easter.” ^{[Footnote 2]}

So, Bede’s grace toward Aiden didn’t extend to his successors, also from Iona with the Irish tradition. This apparently had gone too far when the King had Easter one day, and the Celtic Queen on another.

He spent a whole chapter of his Ecclesiastical History on these lurid details of Lindisfarne’s sin. ^{[Footnote 3]}

My own opinion, this was not without his personal bias.

^{[Footnote1] Bede Ecclesiastical History of the English Oxford University Press. Book III, 25 pp.153}

^{[Footnote 2] Ibid.}

^{[Footnote 3] Ibid.}

(Continues tomorrow)

#74.1 Tuesday, November 4, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

I came to Jarrow for this library known to have a notable collection of books including the works of Bede. Bede was a scholar who had lived here since childhood, now revered by the patrons of Lindisfarne for his Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Wilbert, the now elderly student of Bede, once served him as a scribe. He attended Bede at his death. Today, Wilbert oversees this library and has taken me aside into this anteroom, because of my interest in the collection of Bede’s works. ^[Footnote]

I came here because I’d heard so much talk at Lindisfarne. The clergy and lay who went back after the Viking raid carried their grief on a sin-seeking pilgrimage. If God allowed ravage and plunder of a monastery how could anyone be safe? Alcuin’s letter offered best practices for avoiding sin and its consequences but not much practical advice about avoiding Vikings.

I’ve seen both the greed of the Norsemen and the display of wealth by the Christians so Alcuin’s emphasis on the material displays of wealth as “sin,” in a pragmatic way, is some protection against greedy pagans. His letter is being read aloud now for the very audience he intended. They came looking for sins of others, to place the blame for God’s wrath somewhere beyond themselves.

The survivors arrived with all their rumors and small talk about Lindisfarne’s sin in burying a sinner among the saints, and Alcuin’s letter simply ignored that. He mentioned their own greed and warned these rich patrons, uncomfortably, against flaunting that wealth. Still, they persisted at laying the blame elsewhere. They were reviewing the old controversy over the proper date for Easter. Some believed that Lindisfarne was always on the wrong side of that one because it was founded by the Irish from Iona.

For me, this is personal, so I’ve come to Jarrow to explore the root of the revival of this old controversy. In another time and place I was a follower of the Irish hermit, Columbanus who came to Gaul with a small band of monks and started communities at Anngray then at Luxeuil under the Celtic Rule. The Roman bishops were relentless in their opposition to the date he used for Easter and in opposing the Celtic tonsure. Columbanus saw these outward differences as less important than the depths of spirituality, so he yielded on these matters but with revisions for a shared Rule. Again, the rift of rule still seems an opened wound here.

^{[footnote] Bede is known as an early historian. Wilbert is a fictional name here as this blogger found the name of Bede’s attending monk inconclusive.}

(Continues tomorrow)

#73.14 Thursday, October 30, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

My plan to read the works of Bede has begun at the end of his earthly life, as told to me by his student Wilbert.

Wilbert says, “Then at the ninth hour he gathered everyone together and gave away the earthly things he treasured — pepper, incense and a swath of linen. Then he said, ‘The time of my departure is at hand, and my soul longs to see Christ my King in His beauty.’ “

“When he had declared it finished, he asked me to raise his head so that he could see the church where he used to pray. He chanted, “Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit” ^{Footnote 1}

“So, he left his pepper and incense and a piece of linen, and all these books and books of words describing all of earthly time, everything in the world revealed to him in a tiny earthly room.”

I ask Wilbert why he thought Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People begins with the Romans and not with Creation or with the birth of Christ. Apparently, that is a delicate issue here at Jarrow, and Wilbert thinks my concern over ages in time is just picking at an old sore.

Wilbert argues, “You are referring to an old accusation made of heresy.”

“Heresy? No, I am surely not accusing Bede of anything at all against God. I mean, I haven’t even read his books yet.”

“He already dealt with that accusation made by that lewd rustic Plegwin accusing Bede of placing Christ in a Seventh Age of the Six Ages of Man. I myself, and others of us here have prepared copies of Bede’s letter in response to the accusation. ^{Footnote 2}He makes it very clear, because if Christ were born in the Sixth age, the sun and the moon would set all of the measures of time awry, and the date for Easter would not be as the pope in Rome declared it to be.”

Oh, so that’s what this is about.

I answer the old librarian, “I only intend to read the history not to argue it’s alternative.”

But maybe I did come here looking for that argument. The controversy that seems narrow and set like an old Roman stack of stones in the midst of a spring garden, has spread to the great concentric realms of heaven, so that the blame for the wrong date for Easter is the edict of the sun and the moon, beyond human control.

^{Footnote 1: https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2019/05/27/103796-venerable-bede-the-church-historian Retrieved 2-20-25}

^{Footnote 2: https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2018/05/the-real-venerable-bede.html Retrieved 2-20-25}

(Continues Tuesday, November 4)

#73.13 Wednesday, October 29, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

By the time I can begin reading I will be so knowledgeable of Bede I might be able to read this history with his own voice. Now Wilbert says he, himself, was the scribe for the elder monk on his death bed.

“I was called to his bedside with parchment and inks, expecting I would be writing down the summation of his life — his last words. But the venerable Bede was finishing up his translation of the Gospel of Saint John. So, there I was, for the long night of it, writing down reference material for a bible scholar. Those of us who were his students loved him and really would rather hear his parting personal words for us.”

I’m just listening to Wilbert’s ramblings, having nothing more to say. But I’m glad now, I used my Hebrew name to sign in as “Eleazor” since I’m curious about Bede translated John 11, “Lazarus” as he was nearing his own death. I’m glad now to keep a secret of my personal interest in the Lazarus story. Was Bede one of the translators who had so little regard for my sister, a wealthy follower of Jesus, that he picked up the label of prostitute from the Luke writer thinking a prostitute could obtain an expensive burial perfume? These gospels are personal stories for me. The flask of pure nard was purchased for my own first funeral that never was completed.

Wilbert said he sat with Bede wanting the personal touch of his teacher. And maybe I, too, only want a personal touch of my teacher, Jesus.

Wilbert rambles on. “The saint would often quote the words of Saint Ambrose, ‘I have not lived in such a way that I am ashamed to live among you, and I do not fear to die, for God is gracious’ (Paulinus, Life of Saint Ambrose, Ch. 45). ^{Footnote 1}

“After a sleepless night, Saint Bede continued his dictation… At the Third Hour, there was a procession with the relics of the saints in the monastery, and the brethren went to attend this service, leaving me with Bede. I remained taking down one more chapter to be written in the book which he was dictating. I really didn’t want to disturb my dying teacher, but he said, ‘It is no trouble. Take your pen and write quickly.'” ^{Footnote 2}

^{Footnote 1:}^{https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2019/05/27/103796-venerable-bede-the-church-historian  Retrieved 2-20-25}

^Footnote2:^{Ibid. Retrieved 2-20-25}

(Continues tomorrow)

#73.12 Tuesday, October 28, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Continues tomorrow)

#73.11 Thursday, October 23, 2025

Historical Setting: Jarrow, 793 C.E.

Wilbert, the elder serving the library, sees my interest in Bede’s books of history and has taken me aside from the large hall to tell me something of the life of this man — his own spiritual guide.

“The venerable Bede was delivered to the abbot at Monkwearmouth a couple of years before this part of the double monastery was complete, so he knew the saints of our foundation very personally.”

Wilbert’s old fingers flip through pages of the book I prepared to read, he finds some particular chapters.

“Bede was left in the care of St. Benedict of Biscop, then it was St. Ceolfrith, who came after Benedict, here.”

These are the ramblings of an old man, gazing off as he lectures me in the names of saints.

“I think it was Ceolfrith who was here at the time of the plague. It spread through the whole choir of monks taking away every last one of them who sang with the angels in worship. Only the child and the abbot were spared. Then, as young as Bede was, he saw so many others off to their deaths. It was possible he actually had a glimpse of heaven, even as he lived on earth.

“They all feared that the singing of the antiphons is what brought down the deaths because it was the whole choir it carried off; so Ceolfrith, in an effort to save the monastery, ruled against singing antiphons after the chanting of the psalms. Bede felt the loss of the lives of the monks, but also, he grieved for the music.^[^Footnote]

“When I was brought here as a young child also, a new assemblage of monks was filling the emptiness and the music was fully restored.”

“I can only imagine the grief he endured as a child, called to care for the dying, then losing the music from worship.”

“Of course, what would a common scholar know of this? For someone ordained in holiness, the prayers and the music of worship surround us every day with the full witness of angels.”

I am so tempted to argue from my place, oddly knowing this wider and deeper, but I say nothing. My years of chanting those same antiphons and that nearness of God is not just a privilege for brothers with tonsures shaven as crowns. People touched with the holy are everywhere.

^{Footnote: https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2019/05/27/103796-venerable-bede-the-church-historian — retrieved 2-20-25.}

(Continues Tuesday, October 28)