Lazarus Ink

#72.12, Thursday, Sept. 25, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne

Before Alcuin signs off, he offers his own personal and political act in response to this tragedy.

The scholar adds, “I plan to go to him, [the king] and if I can then do anything for you about the boys who have been carried off by the pagans as prisoners or about any other of your needs, I shall make every effort to see that it is done.“

This letter becomes the mark in history. It explains why a stone at Lindisfarne depicts a marching army in the end of times going into battle but not fighting as seen in carvings on the triumphal Roman arches commissioned by the winners of heroic battles. This ending war has no image for after the end.

This monastery is left with the unsettling crisis of Jesus’ own teaching and example of pacifism pitted against the realities of a warring world. As I am now, and as I have been before in many other awakenings into life wearing the garb of a monk, I see this through the eyes of an aesthetic.

These Christian communities began as cells of dessert mothers and fathers, isolating themselves from the world for purity of prayer. But it soon was apparent in isolating for prayer, that amid God’s constant answer to every prayer the law is not only “Love God above all else,” but that can’t be accomplished alone with God in a dessert or wilderness. There is something more, more than thirst, more than hunger, more than any suffering or punishment, “Love God above all else – and…”

I’ve prayed it many times. Dear God, I love you above all else, beyond my human comforts and needs, I love you more than even the beauty of this desolation, beauty that you send over the grieving and the pained, even though we, here, I included, didn’t ask for beauty. We did get beauty. Yes, I love you.

Then Jesus answers, “feed my sheep.” And the aesthetic realizes the law is “Love God above all else and.” The “and” is “and your neighbor as yourself.”

The “and” calls people together for the song – Psalms sung climbing the steps to the Temple in ancient times – Chants in the catacombs and in the caves — a convergence of separate “oms” into song, and song into the shared voices of choir, and the oneness of all, then the oneness with the neighbor, and the enemy, the needy and the thirsty, belonging one to another in God. So, these communities of monks were just a natural response, not an army or a plan.

(Continues Tuesday, Sept. 30)

#72.11, Wednesday, Sept. 24, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne

The patrons and politicians, monks and pilgrims all expect to hear the scholar proclaim God’s side in the issue of the burial of a sinner among the monks. Alcuin’s letter does address sins as personal displays of wealth and drunkenness, but he doesn’t really speak to that one big issue some believe was God’s purpose in dispatching Vikings. There was an expectation for hearing Alcuin’s authoritative blame for a holy curse on Lindisfarne. But it seems, Alcuin listens to a God who is all loving and takes no side in political disputes. And now a curse is not a curse without the authoritative pronouncement of it – the “aha, I told you so.” ^[Footnote]

The scholar doesn’t curse the whole of this place, he concludes, continuing only with individual responsibility.

“Encourage each other, saying, ‘Let us return to the Lord our God, for he is very forgiving and never deserts those who hope in him.’

And you, holy father, leader of God’s people, shepherd of a holy flock, physician of souls, light set on a candle-stick, be a model of all goodness to all who can see you, a herald of salvation to all who hear you. May your community be of exemplary character, to bring others to life, not to damnation. Let your dinners be sober, not drunken. Let your clothes befit your station. Do not copy the men of the world in vanity, for vain dress and useless adornment are a reproach to you before men and a sin before God. It is better to dress your immortal soul in good ways than to deck with fine clothes the body that soon rots in dust. Clothe and feed Christ in the poor, that so doing you may reign with Christ. Redemption is a man’s true riches. If we loved gold we should send it to heaven to be kept there for us. We have what we love: let us love the eternal which will not perish. Let us love the true, not the transitory, riches. Let us win praise with God, not man. Let us do as the saints whom we praise. Let us follow in their footsteps on earth, to be worthy to share their glory in heaven. May divine goodness keep you from all adversity and bring you, dear brothers, to the glory of the heavenly kingdom with your fathers. When our lord King Charles returns from defeating his enemies, by God’s mercy, …

Fare well, beloved in Christ, and be ever strengthened in well-doing.”^[Footnote]

^{[footnote—source] Source: Alcuin of York, Letter to Higbald, trans. by S. Allott, Alcuin of York (York, 1974). Reprinted in Paul Edward Dutton, Carolingian Civilization: A Reader (Ontario, 1993). Scanned and proofread by Eric C. Knibbs, 2006.}

^{This text is part of}^{Viking Sources in Translation}^{. Unless otherwise indicated the specific electronic form of the document is copyright. Permission is granted for electronic copying, distribution in print form for educational purposes and personal use. If you do reduplicate the document, indicate the source. No permission is granted for commercial use.}

^[Ibid.]

(Continues tomorrow)

#72.10, Tuesday, Sept. 23, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne

As the messenger, I told Alcuin only that the Norse raiders had a ready market for fine fabrics.

The scholar wrote, “Do not glory in the vanity of dress; that is cause for shame, not boasting, in priests and servants of God.”^[footnote]

The richly dressed patrons seated in the front take no offense in this because they don’t consider themselves priests and servants of God. But Alcuin’s words set the monks atwitter with gossip over the ostentatious outfits of a few who chose not to return after the raid. Apparently, this had been an issue.

With the wine cellar raided, and barrels of ale taking my place on the longship returning to the fjords, drunkenness is not an immediate problem on this particular day, but the scholar chastises:

“Do not blur the words of your prayers by drunkenness. Do not go out after the indulgences of the flesh and the greed of the world, but stand firm in the service of God and the discipline of the monastic life, that the holy fathers whose sons you are may not cease to protect you. May you remain safe through their prayers, as you walk in their footsteps. Do not be degenerate sons, having such fathers. They will not cease protecting you, if they see you following their example.” ^[Ibid.]

I know Alcuin was working through the issue of human sin and God’s love, thoughtfully and prayerfully taking so many hours for the essence of this message. Alcuin binds love with sin, not as in the Pagan, superstitious way, but more as a touch point for God to humankind to open the channel for relationship.

“Do not be dismayed by this disaster. God chastises every son whom he accepts, so perhaps he has chastised you more because he loves you more. Jerusalem, a city loved by God was destroyed, with the Temple of God, in Babylonian flames. Rome, surrounded by its company of holy apostles and countless martyrs, was devastated by the heathen, but quickly recovered through the goodness of God. Almost the whole of Europe has been denuded with fire and sword by Goths and Huns, but now by God’s mercy is as bright with churches as the sky with stars and in them the offices of the Christian religion grow and flourish.” ^[Ibid.]

^{footnote: Alcuin of York, Letter to Higbald, trans. by S. Allott, Alcuin of York (York, 1974). Reprinted in Paul Edward Dutton, Carolingian Civilization: A Reader (Ontario, 1993). Scanned and proofread by Eric C. Knibbs, 2006.}

(Continues tomorrow)

#72.9, Thursday, Sept. 18, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne

The purpose of this gathering is to hear the letter read from the bishop’s friend, the scholar for the court of the Frankish King Charles, who, at this time, seems to be a greater king rising over all the kings of Francia and maybe even Northumbria and all the villages of the Anglo-Saxons — the teacher, Alcuin is in his court.

Alcuin addresses his letter to the bishops and the monks:

“To Bishop Higbald and the whole community of the church of Lindisfarne, good sons in Christ of a most blessed father, the holy Bishop Cuthbert, [Cuthbert being the bones in the shrine] Alcuin, a deacon, sends greeting and blessing in Christ.

“When I was with you your loving friendship gave me great joy. Now that I am away your tragic sufferings daily bring me sorrow, since the pagans have desecrated God’s sanctuary, shed the blood of saints around the altar, laid waste the house of our hope and trampled the bodies of the saints like dung in the street. I can only cry from my heart before Christ’s altar: ‘O Lord, spare thy people and do not give the Gentiles thine inheritance, lest the heathen say, Where is the God of the Christians?’

What assurance can the churches of Britain have, if Saint Cuthbert and so great a company of saints do not defend their own? Is this the beginning of the great suffering, or the outcome of the sins of those who live there? It has not happened by chance, but is the sign of some great guilt.

“You who survive, stand like men, fight bravely and defend the camp of God. Remember how Judas Maccabaeus cleansed the Temple and freed the people from a foreign yoke. If anything needs correction in your way of gentleness, correct it quickly. Recall your patrons who left you for a season. It was not that they lacked influence with God, but they were silent, we know not why.”^[footnote]

The bishop did recall those patrons mentioned here by Alcuin, to hear this reading. This is both the acknowledgement they awaited, reaffirming their “influence with God” as though rich gifts would make that possible, but also, the bishop’s earthly concern – that no one of means cared about the outcome of the monastery. He has gathered them here to see and hear it for themselves.

^{[footnote—source]}

^{http://unamsanctamcatholicam.blogspot.com/2021/06/alcuin-to-higbald-and-christian-view-of.html}^{Retrieved 10-8-24}

^Source:^{Alcuin of York, Letter to Higbald, trans. by S. Allott, Alcuin of York (York, 1974). Reprinted in Paul Edward Dutton, Carolingian Civilization: A Reader (Ontario, 1993). Scanned and proofread by Eric C. Knibbs, 2006.}

(Continues Tuesday, Sept. 23)

#72.8, Wednesday, Sept. 17, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne

The bishop is reading the gospel. Everyone agrees it should be done as grueling as it is. Now there is wonder – is this the reading of only one gospel? Or is the reading of “the gospel” the whole four of them? Two hours into it, with only a small portion of pages on the read side of the spine the bishop doesn’t look up from his reading. The words mush into a drone of parables and more parables, with no surprises or suspense even in the miracles.

The parts that are most interesting to consider are few and far between, but they are the prophetic words of the end times. Here in their own Northumbrian skies, they have already seen wonders and omen. Their own time of drought has passed, and some are missing now, taken up to heaven or to hell, God only knows. Or maybe Beelzebub has a counting of it. Truly this is the beginning of the great eschaton and all will be judged. Best to stand for the reading of the gospel. And they have made it through now to the foretelling of the destruction of the Temple – the rumors of war – expectation of earthquakes coming soon.

Matthew Chapter 24, the desolating sacrilege, then Chapter 25, the bridesmaids who ran out of oil, unprepared, missing the moment. How does the bishop read in near darkness, with only a strained beam of sunlight on the book? Only God knows. The judgment of the nations – sorting the sheep from the goats – here those wools that get saved again and then there is the pit.

Knees numb for the horrific ending they’ve all heard it read over and over in Lent – the season of the hard ending — the betrayal — the denial — the trials — the God forsaken — the death by torture. Even the “rest in peace” burial was disturbed with resurrection. Over and over again, the angels say “Do not be afraid.” Do the angels mock our fears?

The bishop reads, “… and remember I am with you always until the end of the age.”

Everyone is gasping along with it, “the end?” “the age?” is this the end of the age now?

The bishop pulls his face from the pages, and looks out over the guests, still staggering their stances.

“Thus ends the reading of the Holy Gospel.” Exhale. And clamor to the benches.

(Continues tomorrow)

#72.7, Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne

The bishop continues reading. In chapter ten of Matthew, the followers of Jesus are commissioned to go out like “sheep among wolves.” At this reading, these men listening are in the clothing that speak this metaphor accidentally too well. The monks wear the wools and these king’s men, pretending solemnity, keep their royal weasel hidden as the linings of their cloaks. The patrons and the pilgrims to the shrine smother golden chains in collars of wolf. Jesus was, of course using animals as metaphor, but here they are material. This message is current all these nearly a thousand years hence, and standing for the gospels continues to be tedious.

The wealthy and the powerful here are standing in the front rows of the benches because they came for the customary acknowledgements of their gifting. But then they are all beset with this reading from the Gospel. They didn’t come prepared for this.

The monks in the back of the room read from Luke more often than from Matthew. They expected instruction to love, even one’s enemies, and to live every day in the upside-down world, where the blessings are bestowed on the poor and suffering, but not as the world deposits blessings, mostly for the rich and powerful.

Usually, if the holy words drone on it is possible to find some beautiful distraction to gaze upon like fine brocades and golden boxes. Before the raid, the hum of somber reading could allow one to dismiss the words with wandering eyes, dancing among the golden reliquaries – slithering the dazzling pinnacles and jewels – castles for the eyes. But the relic boxes are gone now; in their places are simply barren boards. Even the sconces, once dripping tears of beeswax into puddles that counted the hours of the drone, are gone from the walls. The only treasure left is this one book not smelted by famous goldsmiths, but inked by a solemn monk.

The boards are stripped clean of the beautiful silks and satins with the intricate patterns and layers of colors. Once it was, that a wandering eye could follow a labyrinth of birds and snakes woven in amazing patterns of beaks grabbing tails and tails twisted in perfectly symmetrical knots. But the fabrics were raided. Now, the big-eyed monsters that play on the edges of things are only to be found in the pages of the book from which the bishop reads. And the bishop has the artwork pages turned down, so even he sees only words. Nothing is to do now but to stand and listen.

(Continues tomorrow)

#72.6, Thursday, Sept. 11, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne

The bishop orders, “Stand for the Gospel!”

When the worshippers are the community of monks, he never issues this order because the benches are stacked away and everyone is already standing, as are the monks today, standing in the back of the room. It is the dignitaries and guests for whom the benches were strewn. Maybe the benches were set out here to space the king’s men into tidy rows to thus stifle the chit chat among them. There is an assumption the reading of the gospel is only for the holy. Regardless, everyone is required to stand.

There are several hours before the ebbing tide allows the visitors to return on the land bridge. So Higbald has the entire four gospels laid out before him with only the first page turned over. He begins with the genealogy which sources an ancient hero king, David, among saints. Does anyone notice that some of these named patriarchs in Matthew are really matriarchs, and some even foreigners? Or are they all foreigners here for this audience of Anglia?

The king’s entourage is standing when the bishop reads the birth story, a night silenced by an omen of doom – when the local king orders the slaughter of the innocents. Matthew turns the ancient words of history back onto its later generations in this foreboding arrival of a Messiah, up from Africa, because the readers of the heavenly signs – those foreigners from another land – warned of the doom.

All these words from Matthew, are familiar phrases, but the meaning changes with the burials and the carvings of the stones, and the stripped away linens baring the wood of this altar.

As the Bishop reads on into Chapter 5, some, like me, always grasping for the love thread, imagine Luke’s telling of gospel is more consistent in telling of God’s grace. But here, as the bishop reads aloud deeper into Matthew, Jesus’s words seem pitted as human behavior ripening for the judgement from God. Hell is present and Heaven is a Kingdom offered as a rewarding experience.

One guard, on shaking knees, sinks back onto the bench for a moment, until the glaring focus of the bishop makes this disrespect conspicuous. So those beside him raise him to his feet. The fasting monk, fainting in the back gets less notice.

I deliver a cup of water to the monk, and another to the book stand for the bishop. The failing guard is dismissed.

(Continues Tuesday, Sept. 16)

#72.5, Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne

Visiting dignitaries becomes a procession of mourners as each visitor must ponder his own mortality and the fragility of life. Some here count the years until the charted end of the world – Doomsday – scheduled at the end of this millennium. There is the personal hope that this tragedy was only about the sin of the monastery, and not really about God’s Day of judgement. But truth be known, only the brashest of lies can argue these deaths are blamed on the burial of one sinning novitiate. The blatant liars of the political realm hope the bishop will take the blame for this because some believe the Viking attack was due to the late abbot’s decision to bury that sinful novice as though he were a rightful monk.

The bishop brings the letter from the acclaimed scholar Alcuin, which I already know lays the blame on everyone. Seeing the use of this letter Alcuin’s groping for sin and blame makes sense. These survivors need a reason.

Benches are arranged for seating because, apparently, the bishop plans to fill the hours until the next low tide for crossing back to the mainland, with his sermon. Higbald rises to speak behind the naked table, striped, as it has been, of liturgical cloths. He calls for all to stand for the reading of the gospel as he lays opened Lindisfarne’s true treasure, with the outer covers spread face down on the bare wood. Turning to the carpet page before Matthew, created here by the hand of a beloved monk, perhaps inking the images at this very table.

The bishop is silenced for this moment with the awe of the book. We’ve all seen these facing pages. We know this art, and we have felt the awe ourselves. We stand in holy silence knowing of the images he sees, the cross made of six connecting partial circles, with the one a perfect circle at the center, all amid a sea of vipers in their intricate patterns of coils and tail grabs.

Opposite that page is the beginning. The first letter, one form with three heads and each head is starring at us. ^[Footnote]

Having spent my hours while the squash soup simmers, waiting at this altar, mesmerized by this work of art, I am indeed an iconodule. I am grateful for the artist who, in the true image of Creator, illustrated amazement with creation for our human eyes to see.

^{[Footnote]Eleanor Jackson, author of The Lindisfarne Gospels: Art, History and Inspiration, The British Library Guide, provided a beautiful description, of “each incipit page… surrounded by a frame which seems not to contain the letters so much as retreat from them, allowing them to burst out of the top and escape through a gap in the lower right. With their apparent ability to metamorphose, expand, contract, progress and interact, the letters seem to be living beings, reminiscent of the interlaced and contorted creatures that are so prominent in the decoration.” p.59.}

(Continues tomorrow)

#72.4, Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne

Low tide opens the way for the great procession on the land bridge. The bishop’s guards set the walking pace, followed by the bishop and the people of his own household who come here often, I am told. The next to come are the wealthy patrons whose gifts support this monastery: representatives of the local king and others of worldly power and wealth.

Small rowboats, the currachs are rowed alongside the land bridge. These are usually kept on this shore but they had been used at the time of the attack to carry some away from the danger. I’m told the monk who keeps the kitchen is with those in the boats. Brother Ealdwin tells me he will know if the salt was hidden somewhere or if it was stolen. It will be missed in the soup I’ve set to simmer.

Everyone goes first to the Shrine of St. Cuthbert to pay homage. The repository for gifts is still intact. These dignitaries processing become, for this moment, humble pilgrims as they are blessed by the bishop receiving requests for special prayers.

But all the pomp yields to the intended purpose, as the procession moves to visit the cemetery. The brothers who have been hard at work carving forever stones to mark the new graves guide the visitors, not to the area of the old graves with that controversial burial of the unforgivable, but to the new place we’ve made where the winter squash had only recently escaped the garden wall.

Here are the new stones, the sandstone memorials to the named dead. But also, here are the stones carved for the welcome of Doomsday, scheduled soon in one hundred and a few years. Where other tombstones would have bas-relief showing the great works of the deceased or blessings of heaven in winged creatures – doves and angels – here is the story of an army with their weapons flinging above them as they march up into the ravage. And on the other side of that stone is the sacred explanation of the end times. Here is a cross, symmetrically, and balancing on each side a reaching hand, while the lights of heaven are foreboding from above. It is a stone that attributes the deaths to the first sign of the fulfillment of the Doomsday prediction feared to arrive in fullness in its time.

(Continues tomorrow)

#72.3, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025

Historical Setting: 793 C.E. Lindisfarne

The returning surviving monks continue their spiritual practice here. Some see Lindisfarne as the vanguard for the great turning of the millennium. There is the notion that this island was chosen to experience the Doomsday judgement first, expected in 999 C.E. The world has only a little more than a century to prepare.

The monks are fasting and carving forever stones to mark this spot in time, so I’m gathering up squash from the withering vines to serve a hearty meal to guests.

When the end of the world seems emanate, some of us carve stones, so that God and the angels, or maybe the next age of giants or sea creatures visiting here, will know what happened. Meanwhile, I am here, a borrowed monk, picking winter squashes off the vines we removed to make a new place for graves. I can make a spicy squash soup, a hearty meal for the visitors we expect here anytime now before the end of the world.

What is the sacred message in this? What is the value of being the first ever “last place on earth?” A shrine of an incorrupt body of a saint would seem the right place for the final judgment to start.

Dear God, I know you as the constancy of love, the never ending, always living, beauty of all Creation and the love, the listening to each heart beating. You have gifted us humankinds, said to be in your image, with imagination, yet we are unsettled and overwhelmed by awe of eternal, and so we seek the edges of what we can know as beginnings and endings. Guide me, as you always have, through these end times. Please bless the soup of daily life. Thank you for the hard-shelled squash that keeps so well for winter anyway. Amen.

Now when the land bridge rises in the tide, and the procession of visitors arrives, we will be ready. The bare spaces on walls where the sconces were torn away and stolen will be scrubbed of candle soot, and the bleak barren tables and rails where lost linens once marked each liturgical season will be polished clean of old dust. Why is it the dust always returns and marks the shape of the missing? Unused space is constantly being blanketed in the pale shroud. I wonder, do the angels continually dust the heavenly house of many rooms promised to be waiting for us? Or is heaven already laden in the grey shroud of dust. I will never know.

(Continues Tuesday, Sept. 9)