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)