Dear Benedict
My biggest vice is chocolate, although I do try to make it fair trade. Of course actually, my biggest vice is joining in with all the other things and behaviours we 21st century humans think are indispensable to our existence, but I’d choose the chocolate every time I’m afraid.
In the 2nd paragraph of chapter 1 you mention anchorites or hermits, neither of which is likely to be familiar to most ordinary people. There are still some about, I know, but the idea of solitary living is more of a fashion choice those days than a spiritual discipline, except for those for whom it is not a choice at all but just the way life is. So I’m going to suggest ‘Live life’ for this section.
I know you tried the solitary religious life before you gathered together those first monastics. I’m not exactly sure how that came about or why you left it behind, but you seemed to decide that living with others and creating community that way was your calling. You’re not really anti-anchorites or anti-hermits but rather warning people off thinking it’s an easy option. I’m pretty sure it isn’t.
However, it does have its appeal at least as a part time option. If you’d ever been to the Farne Islands in the Spring it’s obvious why Cuthbert chose Inner Farne as his hermitage at the end of his life. He might have had to dodge the dive bombing terns but the gentle eiders, his very own Cuddy Ducks, were there too as well as some amusing puffins and I’m sure it would have been brilliant for a few months of the year.
The cell that is cut into the stone bank of the river Coquet near Warkworth is less appealing. It’s less clear who lived there, but I once sang the Magnificat there to the tune of Waltzing Matilda. Julian’s cell in Norwich was destroyed by bombing in WW2. The rebuilt version tries to convey the atmosphere of one who may have fielded repeated enquiries like ‘Have you got a light?’. In your time people looked to the desert for inspiration in the spiritual life. The fens of East Anglia, a muddy river bank in Northumberland or a post-industrial valley in Derbyshire might not have been part of the spiritual imagination then. They are now.
When I retired I got my Bambi Camper Van as my hermitage. Time alone as a positive choice can be a very meaningful thing and maybe each of us has something of that yearning in us. Forced solitary experience, however, whether the hostages in Iran or those kept indoors shielding from Corona virus are more destructive. But that doesn’t mean we should avoid the opportunities we can find for positive solitude.
Meanwhile my real vices remain and it will take a life time to winkle them out, in or out of community. I think of this section as ‘Live ‘Life!’ and I suggest ‘A guide to being really human’ as a subtitle for the Rule.
From the remembered bible: Be still and know that I am God.
I’m still here.
From a Friend of Scholastica’s and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.