Re-imagining Re-imagining Early Medieval Britain

Several followers of this blog are family members who, bless their hearts, read my dense academic prose with forbearance.  In response to my previous post, some asked could I not write without all of the jargon and say the same thing?  My immediate and admittedly defensive response was, well that would be a different essay for a different audience. 

But as I thought about it, I realized I was not practicing what I was preaching.  One of my points was about how western, often Latin-rooted, words and conceptual categories sound objective and scientific, but they actually inhibit our ability to view our world differently, to think outside those boxes.  Indeed, two Indigenous thinkers I quoted were objecting to “ontologies” and here I was going on about them using those same boxes.  In addition, a second purpose of my blog post was to explore ways to “reverbiage” the narratives we tell, with an eye to how I can write a historical fiction novel about Aldred in tenth-century Northumbria with contemporary English words that would convey a different spiritual landscape than our own.

So with thanks to those family members for their graciousness, I humbly offer here a reworking of that blog post without the jargon, which has resulted in a very different essay.  In the process I hope to sound less like the kind of objective expert the post condemns, and more like a human being struggling to listen to the wisdom of others and understand different ways of being in the world.  Perhaps this is a first step in altering my “omniscient narrator” voice in Aldred’s story.

[Post-colonial and Post-secular] Insights from African-American and Indigenous Studies

            Everything seems to be post- something these days:  post-modern, post-colonial, post-secular. But we won’t truly be free of whatever “it” is until we no longer have to talk about how to get over it or after it, that thing that is bothering us–whether the “it” is modernity, colonialism, or secularism, or all three, because they are all tied together.

            “Post” movements engage in what is called “deconstruction,” taking apart or dismantling a system or way of thinking that is thought to be damaging or limiting us.  Usually it is something so ubiquitous that we have accepted it without naming it, and once someone names it, debate begins.  It is, in an analogy popularized by David Foster Wallace, a “fish in water” problem.  In his 2005 Kenyon College commencement address, “This is Water,” Wallace tells a joke where a grandfather fish sees a pair of younger fish swimming by and asks, “Morning, boys, how’s the water?” The young fish ask each other, “what is water?”

Brendan’s Coracle

  It is a dangerous question: like pointing out the emperor’s new clothes, people get uncomfortable at their nakedness.

          However, the goal of naming and taking apart certain beliefs is not to shame or harm, but to heal. Although the process of overturning embedded systems is necessarily messy, the purpose is to produce new ways of thinking and being.  This principle of deconstructing to rebuilt and repair applies to many current debates about such topics as racism, policing, immigration, economic inequality, or Indigenous sovereignty.  To take one example that will surely get me in trouble, recent theories identifying the racist waters in which we swim are being contested by those who deny the existence of systemic racism, in a “what is water” kind of way.[1]  These waters are polluted by certain assumptions rooted in American culture and white evangelicalism that need to be called out, but when called out provoke a defensive response.  

            The “post” being taken apart in this blog post is “secularism.” Secularism is one pillar in these modern assumptions that needs challenging.  The whole notion that there are two separate things called “secular” and “religious,” is a western invention dating back to the Enlightenment era, and also embedded in our American notion of “separation of church and state.”  Many mistakenly assume that separating the institutions of church and state means that we also can separate secular and religious, physical and spiritual in our daily lives, bodies from souls.  These pairs are examples of “binarisms” in western thought: categories that are mutually exclusive (you can’t be secular and religious at the same time) and often hierarchical (visible physical things are more real or important than invisible spiritual things, which are private and relative).  Sometimes this mutual exclusivity harms both sides, as in the false notion that science is opposed to religion and vice versa in the American culture wars over evolution, climate change, and the sacredness of Indigenous lands.  The binary terms of debate have to be overcome first if we are to address these issues.

We need to tell a new story.

            To get outside of these boxes separating bodies from souls, we can turn to cultures that have a different way of seeing the world.  I have found sustenance in more holistic visions from Native American, Hawaiian, and African American thinkers, among others.  One of the divisions in my own experience is between my personal faith life and my scholarly work—a necessary separation of domains of activity at an institutional level (separation of church and state is vital). But ultimately if I am to remain a “whole” person, everything that I see and do, read and hear, say and write are intertwined and influencing each other. 

            This blog is an example of that uncomfortable space of the personal and the professional:  I am a professor of history writing historical fiction (fair enough, others have done so), but I am also infusing matters of heart and faith, as well as activism on social justice issues.  I cannot isolate the process of telling Aldred’s story based on academic research into early medieval Britain from contemporary issues that consume my attention and are changing my thinking and my faith experience as a Jesus-follower, especially this last 18 months at the conjunction of a pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and the protection in Hawai‘i of Mauna Kea as sacred.[2]

What is sacred? 

That is a question well within both my academic expertise and personal experience as I am listening and learning from those who swim in different cultural waters than my own. Consequently, I have an obligation to speak and act within my circles of influence, whether on campus, in the community, or in scholarly conversations.  Nor am I alone in this endeavor, despite some resistance to the notion of including contemporary and personal beliefs in “objective” scholarly discourse.

            Tarren Andrews, the Bitterroot Salish scholar whom I cited in the previous blog post, defines what it means to have a “good heart” for medieval scholars entering into conversation with Indigenous studies:

            The idea of xẹ st spúʔus is the foundation of Indigenous relationality. Unlike the bēaga bryttan (ring giver) of Beowulf’s world, who gives gifts in exchange for martial loyalty, Indigenous kinship and all other forms of Indigenous relationality are predicated on doing, being, and giving without the expectation of reciprocation. Acting in xẹ st spúʔus cultivates an ethic of relationality and kinship that is contingent not on a regular assessment of exchange or a balancing of scales but on continual proof of intent, motivation, and communal goals. Beginning with something like xẹ st spúʔus destabilizes the Euro-Western epistemologies of capital, property, and the gift economy, creating space for Indigenous ways of knowing and being to have a sincere and material impact on medieval studies.[3]

This potent critique and invitation speaks back into our understanding of early medieval Britain.[4] The elevation of Beowulf as a quintessential representation of the values and beliefs of the people who lived in that time and place, is also a distortion:  whoever composed, modified, and transmitted the story and then the poem between the seventh and the eleventh centuries, the single manuscript artifact we have recording this poem represents only one elite perspective and set of values. Moreover, the selection of Beowulf by early modern English scholars to represent their ancestral culture speaks as much or more to their values as it does those of the early medieval poet and their audience.

            You might detect here that I do not like Beowulf, and frankly I do get a bit tired of its prominence.  I have accustomed myself to teach it by deconstructing its history as a tool for exploring the ways we look at the past.  But my reading of other texts and artifacts from early medieval Britain suggests that Beowulf—and other seminal texts like Bede’s Ecclesiastical History, or King Alfred’s translations—are not all that representative of the lived experience of people inhabiting those cultural landscapes.  Many of my colleagues have and are making the same point while studying less well-known materials or by reading between the lines of the famous texts. 

            To give one example related to Tarren Andrew’s point about the nature of gift giving in Beowulf:  Stephanie Clark in Compelling God demonstrates how we misunderstand early medieval gift exchange in prayer because we read it through a lens of capitalism where everything is a commodity for individual possession, rather than seeing prayer as a relational gift between and among people with their divinity, involving reciprocity without a price tag, as it were. [5] Both Andrews and Clark point out to us, “this is the water we are swimming in” and also “here is a different type of water others swim in.”  From these and other thought-provoking essays and books, I realize how the material commodity economy in which I live affects the way I understand both the early medieval people I study and my own understanding of prayer and reciprocity in community.

              Thus, the idea of kinship and community has been on my mind lately in relation to the sacred:  how kinship manifested in early medieval Britain, how we might cultivate it among scholars of early medieval Britain, but also how I live in community locally. These three are inextricably intertwined in this body-soul person.

And in this he showed me something small, no bigger than a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand, and I perceived that it was as round as any ball.  I looked at it and thought:  What can this be?  And I was given this general answer:  It is everything which is made. I was amazed that it could last, for I thought that it was so little that it could suddenly fall into nothing.  And I was answered in my understanding:  It lasts and always will, because God loves it; and thus everything has being through the love of God. 
Julian of Norwich, Showings (Short Text Chapter iv).

In the last year and a half, I have participated in a number of virtual pilgrimages, webinars, and discussion groups at various intersections of social justice and spirituality.   Most were quite intense and personal, as we journey together toward healing of broken relationships and repair of unjust systems. I ask myself:

•             How should I choose my words more carefully and thoughtfully?
•             How should I act locally and globally?

As is evident from citations and quotes in previous posts, what I hear and see from African-American, Indigenous, and Native Hawaiian Christians de-colonizing the Gospel and resisting systemic racism looks and feels more like Jesus and the Bible than what is coming out of most contemporary US white evangelical churches.  Moreover, “reading the Bible through non-western eyes” in this way resonates with my own efforts to study early medieval Christianities free of certain modern blinders. I hope to infuse these new understandings of prayer and kinship into my portrayal of Aldred in tenth-century Northumbria.

Aldred at the Battle of Brunanburh, hallowing water:

“why don’t you hold the sieve, while I pour the water.”  He thought the boy’s hands too unsteady to pour, so he took the jug from him and let the boy hold the sieve lined with finely woven flaxen cloth over the basin set on a small table beside them.

            As he poured, Aldred began to chant, “Exorcizo te, aque, in nomine Dei patris omnipotentis….”

            When he was done with the exorcism prayer, timed with the pouring of the water, he set the jug down and motioned the seive away.  Then he began the benediction of water, “Deus qui ad salutem humani generis maxima…,” asking God to purify the water with his divine grace so that wherever it be used, it would bring cleansing and healing, freedom and protection.

            The boy watched him with awe.  The water was now still and clear, the sieve having removed the debris and any remaining impurities sunk to the bottom of the basin.

            Through the whole procedure, it seemed that Aldred and the boy had stepped for a few minutes into another world.  The sound of Aldred’s voice cancelled that of moaning men, the water running and pooling seemed peaceful and comforting.  The two of them remained motionless for several minutes, staring at the water. 

           It seemed silly, in some ways, to take such slow care over this procedure, while men were dying all around them.  And yet, God was there in the water.  It had the power to cool the heat of battle and quench men’s spiritual thirst.

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[1]  For some excellent guidelines on having these conversations, see Smithsonian Talking About Race  especially Being Antiracist.

[2] See blog posts Silence is not an option, “I Can’t Breathe,” and Reimagining Early Medieval Britain.

[3] Tarren Andrews, “Indigenous Futures and Medieval Pasts: An Introduction,” English Language Notes 58.2 (2020), pp. 1-17 at pp. 2-3.

[4]  See also Catherine Karkov’s “eutopia” in the previous post.

[5] Stephanie Clark, Compelling God: Theories of Prayer in Anglo-Saxon England (Toronto:  University of Toronto Press, 2018).