November 2020 – Notes from Bambi

Get well soon!

Dear Benedict,

Chapter 36 of your Rule is about the care of the sick, something which was for you a monastic priority. The chapter details how the resources of the monastery should be put to the service of anyone who is ill ‘as if they were Christ’, but also notes that anyone who is sick shouldn’t take undue advantage of this. The Benedictine tradition developed hospitals and new ideas in the treatment of illnesses including the use of herbs to treat sick people.

The concept that caring for sick people is a vocation is wrapped up in ideas of this sort. In my own family I saw this first hand as my mum and her sister were completely committed to their work as nurses.

My Aunty Betty (middle) in her nurses uniform

As health services have become more complex so our understandings of who is involved in health care have enlarged alongside the increase in resources we have committed to it. This is even more apparent in this Covid19 pandemic. The amount of work that has gone into developing the vaccines we have recently been hearing about is an example of this.

Chapter 36 even agrees that those who are ill might get better with an improved diet. For monastics in your day, that meant they could eat meat for a while. In ours it means consulting celebrity chefs.

Today I received a letter from a friend who had found his celebratory plate from the foundation of the NHS. It has certainly come a long way. Caring for the sick also means cherishing those who work with them and the sensible use of the resources needed to do the job. Chapter 36 is then a very timely reminder to us of the high value of this complex institution as well as an endorsement of the basic human act of caring.

Those of us not currently sick also have a part to play. It’s not about ‘clapping for carers’ but doing all we can to remain well. Indeed that had always seemed so obvious to me, bought up with family members working in the NHS, that I never expected to need to say it. Any risks we take may have a negative impact on the lives and well being of others. That was never more true in my life time than during this lock down.

And also women (remembered bible sick note).

Help me make caring my priority.

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

Seen locally during the first lock down.

Cook, eat, repeat!

Dear Benedict,

We all have to eat and in any community, even a small one, the logistics of this will need managing somehow. You turn your attention to this in chapter 35 of your Rule.

From this is gather that feeding people is a central part of community life, begins and is sustained with prayer, and is passed onto others in a continuous stream by the same means. Everyone gets a chance to serve in this way, whatever their abilities. Each person’s service is dedicated through prayer and upheld through the prayers of the community. By prayer too, so the tasks are passed onto the next team of servers. So a seamless round of gospel based serving and being served is inaugurated.

I enjoy both roles. I love to be be part of the serving team, getting the meal together and presenting it, and I love to be amongst those served, enjoying what is being offered.

There’s a proliferation of cooking programmes on the TV. Some are more communal than others with the rounding up of tasters and the served. Some are more solitary; the server and the taster are essentially the same person. These reflect the range of eating options in our society today. Some serve and eat in a group, others do so alone.

Creative ways of making a community of servers are being explored in lock down. One of our preferred ways of socialising is with food. How to say ‘pass the sauce’ or ‘anyone for seconds’ in a zoom meal requires some thought, but this is true of our whole lives. Thinking about who we serve by our social distancing and mask wearing, or how we are served by those who keep the local down rules is a challenge every bit as much as actually keeping them ourselves.

There’s a lot of talk about doing Christmas differently, which mostly means the eating thing. It’s interesting how central a role this seems to play in the lives of so many. Needing to recreate Christmases past has always seemed rather odd to me, even though I do try to humour my 89 year old father on this one, largely because I’d hate for him to be lonely. But change can be good and help us to think afresh. After all we don’t require all Christian women to give birth in stables, do we.

The main things about eating together at any time of year seem to be to be:

Is it fair? If not what can you do about it?

Are we grateful? If not what can you do about that?

From the remembered bible: God come quickly and help us.

From the remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘I am just another server here’.

Help me to be fair enough, to be grateful enough.

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

In Tandem!

Dear Benedict,

My husband and I used to ride a tandem together. Unfortunately I was unable to find a photo of us and want to assure you this was not us!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA: Not us on a tandem!

However, Chapter 34 of your Rule did remind me of our tandeming days. A tandem is a very just form of transport. Each puts in what they can and receives what they need as a result. Unfortunately our country doesn’t seem to run like a tandem. Too often the one on the front is putting in all the effort whilst the one at the back lays back and enjoys the ride.

‘Each one according to their need’ you write and it’s a good Rule. Only too often we inflate our need because of greed rooted in fear. ‘But what if we couldn’t have that?’ we wonder and as a result we order some more or take something that someone else really needs, or reduce our aid budget or …

One of the things that has been obvious to me during the COVID19 lock down is I don’t really need very much. I may have got used to having a lot and it may be challenging to reduce my consumption, but do I really need all these things? It seems not.

In your Rule you really challenge the grumblers too. Whoa! I’d love to see you on Twitter. Today I learnt what some people thought about a young woman, stripped of British citizenship, who is currently trying to return to the UK from Syria. She left UK after being groomed and radicalised on line when a child. One person wrote ‘I wouldn’t want to be her neighbour’. So I thought of this…

When I was young, being radicalised, were you there, were you there?

When I was young, being radicalised, were you there?

And the creed and the colour and the name won’t matter, were you there?

(Borrowed from Sydney Carter)

You might want to add your own verses: abused, groomed, trafficked, and so on. Where were we for children and young people like these? Where are we now? Living next door?

From the remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘which one was the neighbour??’

Help me live the life of a true neighbour.

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

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA Not me on the back either, but my daughter wearing my trousers!

Not mine!

Dear Benedict,

Yesterday I was walking through one of the short strips of woodland in the valley. Woodland like that is one of my preferred walking places whatever the season, and I was thinking, as I had been for a few days, about chapter 33 of your Rule. It’s another one of the short chapters, I noted, this time about personal possessions.

Now the one thing I’m quite clear about is I don’t own that stretch of woodland. Occasionally I do come across places that are labelled as ‘Private Property, Keep Out’ but fortunately not very often round here where a lot of the land is signed ‘Open Access’. And although I’ve sometimes seen ‘Woodland for Sale’ notices, I’ve not bought any because I don’t have that sort of money or the need to ‘own’ woodland. Provided the community can have access to it, as a shared resource, that seems to me the more natural order of things. It is after all, the natural world. I realise someone does have to care for it, which is why I favour the community ownership option.

And I think you would too. Like many people, I surely have too much stuff: a house full in fact, as I’ve already noted. But for this chapter I also need to think about what belongs to us communally and how we treat such stuff.

The natural world is not mine, but neither is the NHS. It’s a shared resource, something I have contributed to but I don’t have more rights to it than anyone else. Most people would get that even if they don’t understand that passing on COVID19 to people who in turn need hospitalising is a way of life that is not mindful of the communal nature of the NHS. Just because you won’t need it, doesn’t mean it’s OK to indulge in behaviour that might mean someone else does.

So too, other resources we hold in common, often referred to as ‘tax payers’ money’, though in fact much more than that. It continues to astonish me how many people think it’s OK to find a way not to contribute their fair share of taxes, as if they didn’t want a share of the communal things these fund and in addition encourage the hounding of the poor for their need to rely on such communally funded resources, like Universal Credit, as if they were the criminals. Unfortunately when the leadership of our society seems to include those that encourage the misuse of communal resources, it seems likely we are not in the presence of the kind of leadership that Chapter 33 describes as being able to allocate resources according to need.

From the remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘There was a man who had 3 servants and before he went on a journey he asked them to look after his money. To one he gave £1,000, to another £500 and to a third £10. When he came back…..’

Call me back, remind me: not everything belongs to me!

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

Tools for the job!

Dear Benedict,

I wonder if chapter 32 is the shortest in your Rule? In a couple of paragraphs you make clear that Benedictine spirituality extends to all aspects of life and work.

A few years ago I won a dibber in a local raffle. Today it had its annual outing, dibbing in some bulbs for the Spring. I have now put it away again for future dibbing. I am very fond of tulips. Here are some from last Spring.

But I won’t need my dibber again for a while. Much of the stuff I own is like this: seasonal or occasional in some other way. I try to treat them carefully and make appropriate use of them. I sometimes think I have too many things, but that’s another matter. It seems fine to have two of something, like cheese knives for two different kinds of cheese. They don’t take up a lot of room after all. But down sizing remains an issue in our small house and I can’t help thinking we still have too many of some items.

Being responsible about stuff is important. The world is neither an endless source of things or a bottomless waste tip. The inequalities by which some have too much and others nothing continue to exhaust me. As Christmas approaches I resolve not to buy stuff for folks that they don’t need and to spread out some of my resources to those who need more.

Meanwhile, I’ll look after my dibber until next planting time.

From the remembered bible: To everything there is a season… a time to dib and a time to put away your dibber.

Thanks for providing me with the tools for the job.

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

Fair shares!

Dear Benedict,

We live in an unequal world. It’s my first thought when reading chapter 31 of your Rule. Of course that was true when you wrote it and throughout human history. But that doesn’t mean we stop working for fair shares.

Each community should have a least one person in it who makes sure everyone gets a fair share, you say. Today, in our world, that concern needs to be more universal. Every person a Benedictine Cellarer, the name you gave to the sharer-outer, or maybe the quarter-master or mistress.

It can be difficult not to hoard or even just tuck something away for another day when we fear lean times. Poverty instils anxiety and so we keep a little back, or a lot depending on our access to resources. No one wants to go hungry.

In recent developments a footballer bought up in poverty who is now very well known has, I’m glad to say, managed to extract another U-turn from the government on the issue of child food poverty. And he has done so very humbly, sharing the appreciation he received with all involved.

So it is possible, even in a very unequal world. May we pursue such possibilities and feast together in hope of a more equal kindom.

From the remembered gospel: Jesus told them to collect up what had been left over. There were 12 baskets full.

Give us this day our daily bread.

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

Heal me!

Dear Benedict,

I write to you today about chapter 30 of your Rule, nearly about 1,400 years after your wrote it. Some say you were ahead of your time: your Rule is fairer, less austere and more balanced than other similar Rules. Times change and rules are reinterpreted. During your day, and since, many young people have been admitted to monastic communities for education. Not everyone who was admitted to a monastery wanted wholeheartedly to be there. Today’s selection processes will be rather different and due to safe guarding concerns there have been moves recently to separate the education of young people in schools attached to monasteries from the monastic community of adults.

But looking back on Chapter 30 couldn’t happen on a better day: the day Scotland has outlawed physical punishment of children and young people. No more smacking in Scotland.

There will be many different responses to this. Some with, like me, welcome it, others will see it as unnecessary, a threat to liberty and parental choice. I note that chapter 30 begins with the phrase ‘Every age and level of understanding should receive appropriate treatment’. The new Scottish law does just that. It says that it is no longer appropriate to use physical punishment towards children and young people. There’s no need to hit them and no justification either. Better and more positive options are available.

You knew that, which is why what you wrote was so revolutionary in its time. The purpose of such discipline was, you say, to heal people. Unfortunately physical reprimands rarely, if ever, achieve that. They are too often administered in anger, and so get out of control, and they usually lead to endless justifications on one side and resentments on the other. Wounds fester, mentally and spiritually as much as physically. I think you knew that too.

Whatever the wounds we each bear, whatever their origins, healing is something we all need. These difficult chapters of the Rule on discipline, show us that again. To make a community out of diverse individuals is difficult. You acknowledged this and we still do today, but we might take a different route, especially with young people.

We want to encourage. At a time when many faith communities have lost their multi-generational aspect those that still do have a cross section of ages needs to engage positively in active nurture, not just for the young but for everyone. I’ve visited too many groups in my time where children get hushed and tutted at and even openly criticised. Sometimes the excuse is ‘that wouldn’t have been allowed when we were young’. That’s not a way to heal anything, either yourself or those around you. A community that is serious about young people will be serious about everyone, recognising the healing we all need so that we grow and develop together.

A community is not a museum of the old ways, with its relics of ruler and slipper to remind us of old discipline. A community gets up in the morning to a promise that Christ makes all things new. Christ makes me new and the way I experience that is in a Christ centred community, one that explores faith and grows together, never thinking that age is the mark of spirituality maturity but that the Spirit fills young and old alike.

So that’s ‘No to Smacking’ and ‘Yes to smashing’ the limitations of our age-bound understanding.

From the remembered bible: God says ‘I will pour out my Spirit on young and old alike’.

Heal me!

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

Let’s dance!

Dear Benedict,

Me again, still on chapters 23-30 I’m afraid. I’m not sure what you make of this but I’m encouraged by those who have been in touch with me about this blog and the comments and thoughts they have shared.

When writing about the pattern of work and worship I said something about it being like a dance: together, apart, together apart. So now I’m thinking about this section on discipline and it seemed to me that the dance goes on here too. It’s a slightly different dance, with a graver tune perhaps.

I’m wondering what sort of faults put your monastics in need of discipline? In my calling as a minister I have sometimes been gifted the most amazing stories. I’m mindful of the personal cost to people who share their inner most thoughts and experiences with another person. I’m also aware how complex such episodes can be and how they reveal the depths of community life. We don’t really have that sort of detail about the communities you were writing for in the 6th century, which is one of the things that makes it difficult to understand your discipline process.

We have other stories of discipline, personal experiences or community observations. Each has their own context: part of a dance somewhere else. As I write this I think of a woman who experienced torture under Pinochet’s Regime in Chile, 2 women who came here from East Africa, one who got leave to remain and one who didn’t, of my personal observations of racism and sexism in the church and wider community and so on. Each one has it’s own backstory, each one is part of a dance.

I’m concerned we behave like adults which is difficult when our experiences of discipline begin and childhood and are often stuck there. These things lodge inside us, body, mind and spirit, and influence our steps in the dance. Some of what you write about discipline doesn’t sit well with adulting as I attempt it, and indeed time spent inside the church can sometimes reveal a tendency to infantalise and long for a nostalgic return to childhood. I am mindful that the words discipline and disciple share a common route. So too our understanding of the former depends on our experience of the latter.

I’m not a good dancer. I enjoy dancing but don’t practice enough to be confident. If I get it wrong the worst that might happen would be no one would ask me to partner them in the next dance. But I can imagine that sitting out dance after dance on the sidelines could be hurtful and lead to further alienation. Even so, the community can be damage by one, or more, who dance merry hell over everybody and everything inside the community.

I write as one who loves to sing and one of my favourite morning songs from my time as school chaplain was the hymn Lord of the Dance by Sidney Carter. You can here it sung from a church in Leeds here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04zd4kg

It’s a song I love: Jesus dances with us through his life and ours. I taught it to my Sunday School class when I was in my late teens, in Essex. One Elder told me it was heretical, because there was no mention of Jesus dancing in the bible. There is in mine and it’s an image of life in community, right or wrong, that I’ll dance with.

Together, apart, together, apart: let’s dance. Try this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5b15lTnGm0

From the remembered bible: Listen, wisdom is calling in the streets – and dancing too!

Dance with me, Jesus.

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

Right or wrong?

Dear Benedict

A large chunk of your Rule is about what action the community should take towards those members who go wrong (chapter 23-30). It’s a tricky section to interpret nearly 20 centuries after you wrote it. Social attitudes and culture have changed a great deal, as I’ve mentioned before. There are quite diverse views about punishment, and a move away from, for example, physical punishment especially for young people, should be noted. You use words infrequently used today outside church circles (and even in them) like excommunicate.

It’s a serious and strong word for you to use as we see from the examples you give. A person who has done wrong is removed from community in steps: at mealtimes, at prayer times and eventually those unable to amend their faults have to leave. Such steps are common in most communities because a community cannot be a community if there are disruptive rule-breakers inside. Our criminal justice system is supposed to work on similar lines. We may seek to guide and change such individuals but what if we can’t?

The issue has become a very challenging one in our time. The central notion of confession and forgiveness means we like to think anyone can be a better person. Yet we also see damage caused by those who cross the lines as far as acceptable behaviour is concerned. Yet looking back, we can also see where, historically, lines were crossed and nothing happened, lines were crossed and there was no transparency of action, or lines weren’t crossed but someone was blamed or disciplined falsely, perhaps due to inherent prejudices and bias. So even the community can get doing wrong, wrong, or even not get doing right, right.

When a community makes a mistake against another person and punishes them in whatever way for not doing wrong but other wrong doers get away without punishment, then a bad situation has been made worse. It is charges of this sort against the Church in its various forms, and covered up or defended by some insiders, that has contributed to a widespread lack of trust amongst some outsiders. If, for example, a regulation says, a rule breaker must appear before a regulating body within 3 months and this doesn’t happen for 9 months, there should be a good reason. If one person seems to have been given exemption from a specific rule that others have to obey, again it needs to be clear why.

But most of us prefer to keep our wrongs to ourselves, and at least out of the public space (harder today than you might imagine). We also prefer to select which rules we need to keep and which don’t need to apply to us. All of which is in the forefront of my mind as we approach a 2nd (predictable) COVID19 national lock down in England (other parts of the UK may follow different lock down rules). We will have different ideas of what communal priorities should be.

Having had several decades of emphasis on extending life expectancy across the population with various health campaigns, screening and so on, we’ve now appear to have hit a wall. First some people now think that some health conditions are not worth surviving with and others think some forms of older age are worthless. Both of these are very serious communal wrongs. But if they become widespread views how will we deal with them?

Economic stability has been pushed above personal vulnerability, mostly by fear. We have seen, in previous situations, how the poor are badly served. Their life expectancy, quality of life and health are all likely to suffer more than other sections of the population. None of us wants to be in this group so we grope towards economic stability and leave the poor to fend for themselves. The MPs voting against the extension of free school meals in the holidays recently had all got good reasons for doing so, and none of them was hungry. They played on the fear of many who had been hungry in the past saying we can’t make the money stretch for ever. As a result even some people who have been hungry backed the decision hoping they’d not be on the hungry list this time.

In Britain today, no one needs to be hungry.

A community is a challenging place to live. It’s not just about being nice to the people next door or picking up your dog waste. Sometimes we learn the most about community when we do get things wrong. Putting things right is often much more difficult.

From the remembered gospel: Forgive us the wrongs we do as we forgive those who wrong us.

Help me to get things right!

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