Dear Benedict
The season of wandering is nearly over for this year. We are back on Greenwhich Mean Time and the evenings are now darker as the light part of the day shortens. I’m back to my thoughts about wandering.
I think you took against it because by the time you came to found the community for the Rule that bears you name, you’d done your bit of it and were happy to settle down. God help the rest of them. You wanted them to experience stability and that’s all very well but it can be stultifying.
Of course I understand that wandering has its downside too. No roots, shallower relationships, a whole host of questions. But maybe this was just what your community needed. I’m back in the valley after my final wanderings of the season and I’m full of observations, questions and feelings of being unsettled. Maybe that does make it harder to re-integrate into a solid settled community. I can imagine the whispering: ‘Who do they think they are, coming back here with all those ideas?’
Of course most of our communities are not that settled these days. Poverty and inequality, for example, are unsettling. Newcomers need attention and understanding. What should we tackle first?
I settle back to the tasks I’ve taken on; a bit of soup making, reusing and recycling unwanted items, and observing the changes that the seasons bring to the valley. About now many more geese are on the move, from their summer to their winter nesting round. Hundreds at a time fly high overhead to find the right place to spend the winter.
I will spend the winter here. It’s my winter nesting ground. I’ll walk and write and pray in this valley for a few months. I think about the observations and questions that came from wandering. This week I think of the souls and the saints, old and new, their stories of wandering and stability, their homecoming. May they rest in peace and rise in glory.
From my remembered bible: I will walk through the valley without fear.
I am thankful for all the saints, even the most unlikely ones.
From a Friend of Scholastica living in Longdendale, 3rd November 2023