Month: October 2020

Move me!

Dear Benedict

I’m a wanderer. I use that word instead of gyrovague, because although I think it is a particularly super word, it’s not a 21st century one. Not using words in common use is one of the things that makes spiritual texts like the rule accessible only to initiated people, those that know and understand the language used.

So, I repeat, I am a wanderer. I have and do wander, both physically and spiritually. I was in my 20s when the local vicar, hearing my story about searching for a way in my vocation in the local reformed church, suggested I visited an Anglican Benedictine Community for women. Now you need to understand that in the reformed church of my youth, liturgy was very different as was architecture and the notion of community very different indeed. So this was a big change for me, but it was also a very welcome one. It was there that I first read your Rule and saw it lived out. Perhaps if I’d never wandered that way I wouldn’t have encountered it. But I doubt I contributed very much, if anything, to that community myself.

Later I wandered off to other communities, including one in South London and another in North Yorkshire. I can see that any community has to get a balance between welcoming wanderers and living as a community. It can’t be easy. Whilst I have not contributed much to any of those communities I have visited they have given me a great deal.

Perhaps it was like that in the community you knew: too many visitors visiting the high profile monastery to sustain community life. There has been an increase in wandering. Forward to the 21st century and we can see the patterns left by wanderers criss-crossing the globe and the unlooked for effects of all that wandering on culture, language, commerce, climate and our fellow human beings. It’s a layer of human activity that it seemed impossible to strip away until COVID19 came along. Suddenly all our plans were on hold. We were, and still are in some places, in lock down, restricted to our local community or even quarantined in one small space. With so much riding on our interconnections, some things began to grind to a halt. Fewer aeroplanes crossed the skies.

If there were some benefits to this reduction in wandering, it was soon apparent that many resented such restrictions and wanted to get back the freedom to wander. ‘We are a freedom loving people’ said the UK Prime Minister recently, about this. But surely not at any cost.

The Mobile Chapel of St Scholastica looking out to Holy Island.

In 2019 I wandered the length of Britain and once again I learnt a lot. Again I took much and gave little but can we be so sure that our presence as wanderers does give little to our hosts. How will a community practice hospitality if it doesn’t welcome visitors? How will it be open to new ideas and experiences if it doesn’t have an open door? These questions apply not only to monastics but to this whole island. Imagine a monastery that had a sort of little sub cell several hundred miles away, damp and poorly provisioned, run by another set of tired and jaded folks, where it sent unwanted visitors. It might deter people I guess, but would that be Christian welcome? Of course the idea of using Ascension Island for unwanted asylum seekers was just blue sky thinking, wasn’t it?

I’m a wanderer and I want to learn about community. So I have wandered into the Lay Community of St Benedict and I’m trying not to let my ‘will and gross appetites’ get the better of me.

From a remembered psalm: Lead me in your ways. May I follow your path.

Move me.

From A Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.

Fill me!

Dear Benedict

I get the feeling you had little time for the ‘sarabaites’. It’s not a 21st century word so I’ll call them ‘the apathetic ones’. Possibly the most judgemental paragraph in your Rule, these are the ones you feared the most. By their very existence they undermine the Rule and those living by it.

The idea that two or three people might live in an unregulated community and actually manage to follow Christ’s way didn’t seem possible to you. You judge what they do what they like: ‘anything that strikes their fancy’. I assume you mean they have abandoned the work and worship patterns of more formal monasticism. They call anything ‘holy’.

It’s difficult for me to bridge a gap between 6th and 21st centuries, however I try. There are 6th century gems I go back to time and again, like the Breastplate of St Patrick for example: ‘Christ before me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger’, but this section of your Rule is not one of them.

Apathy is common to human beings. We get worn down, frustrated, disappointed, and apathy creeps in somewhere. It’s been a common stumbling block in the Church through the ages, as has the unexplainable need to defend any sort of criticism that might uncover those very things in the Church itself and thereby might deter followers. As a Reformer yourself, you’ll know why reform continues to be needed and you must have met a few good ones.

Perhaps when you wrote this you had some specific places of apathy in mind. Maybe some you had valued chose to leave the community and set up like this. There’s certainly passion here and that only comes from personal engagement. These apathetic ones had been your friends and you felt betrayed by their decision to enter the unregulated sheepfold.

Me, I’m pretty much unregulated. After 1,500 years deregulation has continued on and on, one reform after another, some more successful than others. The branch I have previously belonged to has been dwindling for nearly a century and for all its strides forward, for example with the leadership of women, it’s a hot bed for apathy. These days I call many things holy: I walk the way trying to listen but also questioning. I do get frustrated and I have walked away from some of the more frustrating tangles. I wonder if any of those apathetic ones came back to the community of the Rule?

Even so, this paragraph has its place, witness to the struggles to build community and to dissent. There will be some more dissent later, and as a Daughter of Dissent I can only welcome that.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA: Mother and daughter walk on in 2003

From a remembered psalm: As a deer longs for water so I long for you, God.

Fill me.

From A Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict

Live Life!

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.

A female eider duck on Inner Farne

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.

Make community!

Dear Benedict

Let’s push onto chapter 1, it’s one of my favourites. So I missed a bit out: it is quite long you know. I may come back to it. I did wonder when you wrote it all and how long it took?

There are four kinds of monastics, you say. I doubt most people these days would think of monastics as coming in four kinds. But to get to the bottom line, you’re basically saying there are people who want to make community and people who don’t, mostly because they don’t know how. You are keen on the community makers and that’s what the rule is about.

So let’s start with that: ‘Make community’. As far as this section of chapter 1 is concerned, in the beginning was the Rule. Only of course it probably wasn’t. You had to live it first before you could write it. Community is a big word in the 21st century too. At the beginning of the COVID19 pandemic there was a lot of talk about community and how we would all support each other. Now the pandemic is still out there and interest in community has come and gone and still hangs about here and there. So too with the Rule. That there are, 1,500 years later, communities that still live by the Rule, is amazing. Just as it was informed by other earlier rules of life, so too it has also led to the development of different examples.

I grew up in a village; it was a community.

I got a job as a speech therapist: I was serving a different community.

I went to ministerial training college: we were urged to try to be a community.

I served as a minister in several places. In the first I was the unpaid community minister and in the second the group of churches were said to be particularly community orientated.

I did my PhD: it was about a community response to families of children learning to talk who were growing up in poverty (the very phrase is long enough to indicate what a meal we make of community).

I was a school chaplain: my role was to gather and nurture the school community.

I have retired and moved to a different place and a different community.

I belong to the Lay Community of St Benedict, it even has community in the title.

In the last of these (LCSB) we keep things as simple as possible. Our promise, which you can see on my t-shirt on the previous post, goes like this:

“In response to the call of Christ we seek to live

holy communion, create holy space and offer holy service.”

laybenedictines.org

For us, that is what community is. It is a Christ centred holy space in which service is offered and relationships can develop. It has no walls because we are a scattered community. We do what we do ‘as we are able/as we are enabled’.

Each community has its own pattern or flavour. Your rule tried to sort out the things that help or hinder when making a community and the fact that the Rule still does this suggests it includes a great deal of positive energy. But it won’t suit everyone. I’m not sure that it suits me completely. As we shall see later in the next bit of chapter 1, I’ve got quite a lot of characteristics of the other three types of monastics that we’ve not visited yet.

But one thing that’s clear about community is that you’re not alone. You can’t be a community of one. In a community there’s always more than one. In a scattered community it might be a challenge how to connect, but there are others on the same quest. In a gathered community, the others are closer, more apparent and may be difficult to live with, but they are there. In the 21st century, this pull and push in community is still very apparent. During COVID19 we’ve seen people get connected in many different ways and try to bridge divides and make communities. We’ve seen people left out and alone and noted how that has such negative effects on human beings. As far as the Rule goes, ‘Make community’, seems to be in line with human inclination to a certain extent. Until we reach a point, not necessarily determined in advance, where it starts to get wobbly and we want out again. Much as we want in, we may also want out.

21st century people will probably be wondering if we need a Rule to make community work or not? Other people try different ways: a constitution is popular with some, a pledge or promise does for others. Many will just think it happens on the back of culture and habit. Other may say following the Gospel is enough. As a 21st century person I’ve been collecting many kinds of spirituality during my life time. For those who haven’t tried it yet, the rule is there to explore. Monastic or not, we can try it.

From the remembered Gospel: Jesus said ‘Come to me’.

May I make community too.

From a Friend of Scholastica’s, and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.

To Benedict (3)

Dear Benedict

Even after 3 days it’s a challenge to write to you again! Developing positive habits isn’t easy for a 21st century woman. Much easier to turn over in bed again, look at my social media or eat chocolate, so it’s good to be reminded to ‘Stir yourself’.

I’ve known communities of people that didn’t seem able to stir themselves. Passionate about nothing, unengaged, going through the motions of worship and service, I found them draining me too. It didn’t seem to matter how much of my own passion and enthusiasm for the gospel I poured into such situations, it all just soaked through the cracks and disappeared. The realisation that I was gradually becoming more angry in such contexts was eventually enough to enable me to walk away.

And try again.

I remember having depression about 20 years ago and how I struggled to stir myself. A thin grey blanket shrouded me and the workings of my mind and body were gradually replaced by woolly stuffing. I struggled to connect with my family and friends and with the world around me. I shut myself away in our small house and hoped it would go away. That there was, one evening a turning point, amazes me still.

It was sunset. The sun had gone down behind the ridge line of the hill and the dark night curtain was creeping across the land, much as the darkness seemed to have crept over me. But the sun had not entirely gone. There was a line of yellow, orange and purple reaching up from where the sun had been. The vivid colours arrested me. I could only gawp at them. And then I got some pastel crayons and paper and swept those colours over it, rubbed them with my fingers and let the amazement grow.

After that, I did it again and again. More colours, more paper and ever so gradually the light came back. I had stirred myself in response to something that had stirred me.

In these COVID times often think of Julian or Norwich, agreeing to become an anchorite in a small church in East Anglia in the 14th century. After all of Europe had been decimated by the Black Death, and possibly her whole family had died, she took a vow to remain sequestered for the rest of her life. I know that you don’t promote the solitary life in your Rule (maybe it never worked out for you, maybe you were just called to a different project) but she has often inspired me, as the first recorded woman to write a book in English. I think of her in her cell and what it might have meant to stir herself as she went about her day in such a small space. Probably she had the hours of prayer and worship to give her day some structure and she had people who called to speak with her. Maybe she had a cat.

I’m not a cat person but I don’t begrudge one to Julian. And she probably had a candle. So there she was alone with cat and candle and thoughts. As the darkness came on, maybe it would be time to stir herself and light the candle, or stroke the cat.

A proverb: It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness (the origins of this proverb are uncertain).

From the Gospel: The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never extinguished it.

Stir me.

From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.

To Benedict about the Rule (2)

Dear Benedict

Another note from me about you Rule, from someone trying to live ordinarily in the 21st century. I say ordinarily because I don’t live in a monastic community, although I have visited a few. I try to live as a Lay Benedictine, mindful of the legacy of Benedictine spirituality of which the Rule is the foundation. Like others on the Benedictine way I open the Rule. There’s quite a few translations out there. Attempts to help others like me find their way through what is quite a long document. And I’m sure other means of access are now available like podcasts, apps and so on. But some bits of me are quite old fashioned so I write letters.

Because it’s quite long, most writers break it down into shorter sections. I use the shortest sections possible: one word or short phrase. This is because I’m mindful that ordinary 21st century people prefer to keep things short. So yesterday I wrote to you about one word: ‘Listen’. Today I’ve chosen a short phrase from the second section of the prologue which I translate as ‘Pray first’.

Prayer is still a widespread thing. Research shows that even people who don’t believe in God may pray. Prayer has many layers, both simple and complex a bit like a quilt (I love to make quilts). I don’t remember exactly when I first prayed though I must have been quite young. I haven’t stopped yet although my prayers have changed. So ‘Pray first’ makes sense to me. Whatever you do. ‘Pray first’.

As an adult most of my life has followed that pattern, at home, in my profession as a speech therapist, in my ministry as a school chaplain, prayer was always there first. Nowadays I’m not doing lots of thing. In quiet COVID19 days, inside and out, as I write and sew and walk and cook, almost like a mini-monastery, I pray first.

At different times in my life I’ve used different forms of prayer. I welcomed the rhythm of Benedictine prayer when I first encountered it in a monastic community as a young adult. At different times in our lives different styles and manner of prayer may emerge to nurture us and challenge us.

When I set off on my End to End walk last year (see https://foowr.org.uk/lejogblog/) I didn’t know how I would pray but walking and prayer can work well together. I still do that most days.

You end this section of the Prologue with a word about angry parents. One of the limitations of seeing God as parent is that we may shut ourselves into an image that restricts our range of experiences of God. ‘Angry parent’ may be something we’ve experienced and yet it’s hardly the beginning and end all of God. Although Heavenly Father was a Christian revolution in prayer it was not suggested to limit prayer. In order to really understand Heavenly Father we may even have to leave the idea gently aside for a bit and by coming round by another route, find through new images and relationships, a renewed expansion of what the original idea could mean. Thus the mighty Oak is the parent of the acorn, the Albatross lays the egg, and the mountain crumbles into pebbles, but they do not look alike.

From Psalm 121: Look at the hills; the work of the unsleeping One.

Here I am, praying….

From a Friend of Scholastica, and a member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.

A letter to Benedict about the Rule

Dear Benedict

I’m just getting in touch about your 1,500 year old best seller, ‘The Rule of St Benedict’. Still read around the world today, I am one of those would-be readers. I admit it’s challenging. For a start, I don’t live in a monastic community and of course our contexts are different in other ways too. However, I’m determined to give it a go and find a way of opening it up for me and others like me, a dissenting woman of the 21st century, and maybe others too.

I like the beginning. Everything needs an introduction and your prologue is just that. Simple enough to start with, the first thing I remember is ‘Listen!’ Sounds easy but it’s often much harder than that one word suggests. Our world is probably noisier than yours was. Having said that many traditions both religious and secular value listening. Like your Rule, they recognise that true listening gets under the surface of things.

We’re currently suffering from a viral pandemic and in my small corner of rural England, listening has many dimensions. First there’s physical listening: I love to go outside and listen to the sounds of the country side. We know this is a good healthy thing to do, but even this simple step may be difficult for some. Such listening can certainly be easily interrupted by other sounds added to our environment. We live in a constant tangle between what is good for us as people, what keeps us healthy and what we think is good for us who want to better standard of living. High above me is a flight path to one of the UK’s regional airports. Along the valley one of the busiest arterial roads in this county. At the end of the road a building site offers affordable housing and construction noise. It’s a struggle to know what is best for us.

Then there’s another side of listening: listening to speech and attending to what is really being said. In our pandemic times there’s a lot of speech travelling round the world. Some is honest and straight forward and some is not. We have to pay attention to sieve one from the other. So we are agreed, in your time and in mine, listening is essential.

I have spent a lot of my professional life as a listener, but all of us can learn to listen better. Maybe we should each try to make a note of some of our listening and see what we really hear.

From Proverbs chapter 1, a remembered version:

If you’re wise you can still learn more by listening again: even experienced people can learn something new.

Make me a new listener, ready to learn new things.

From a friend of Scholastica’s, and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.