janet – Page 10 – Notes from Bambi

Not giving up!

Today is Shrove Tuesday, or pancake day, the day before Lent begins. I am not giving up pancakes today, or any day if I can help it.

The part of the Christian tradition from which I have come is not very strong on giving things up for Lent, so I never knowingly have. This year I will be keeping the same practice of not giving up.

This year I will not give up on being human. Each day I phone my dad, who is getting very deaf and as we shout at each other down the phone he tells me he is still breathing. I’m hoping he’s not going to give that up for Lent either.

I’m on Twitter but I shall not be giving that up for Lent. I know it has its dark side but I’ve found a lot of friends and encouragement there. I meet mushroom people and talk about fungi. I discuss writing projects, nature and walking, finding pebbles and creative arts. All this has helped me to not give up on being human.

In the Rule of St Benedict I find a lot about being human. Some of it sounds very sixth century of course, hence my weekly letters to St Benedict, but in general I meet some human issues and am helped to apply them to my own human life. The Nuns of Twitter are a great source of encouragement in this.

Each time I visit the social media platform I am invited into the lives and concerns of other humans. I hear about the struggles on the NHS frontline or the daily emotional roller coasters that challenge mental health or just getting by. Too often I learn about those who have died or who are dying from COVID19. All this is only a breath away. So for this Lent I’ll not give up on trying to be human. I hope you’ll join me.

From the remembered bible: He lived in the wilderness for 40 days.

Keep me Human, Wilderness One.

Janet Lees, a Friend of Scholastica, resident in Longdendale. On Twitter as @Bambigoesforth

Happy Day!

Dear Benedict

Today we celebrate the life of your twin sister, St Scholastica. Of course even as I write this I am making a whole host of assumptions about her, you and the story. Some wonder if she really existed, some wonder if she really was your twin sister and some wonder if she had a story of her own.

I’m a great one for wondering. It gets me by. I’ll go with Scholastica as sister and twin for the purposes of wondering. That tradition has it that she lived a monastic life and that her community used your Rule, as do so many still today. It would be obvious to any who knew me that I’d borrow St Scholastica’s cover story for the Mobile Chapel of which I’m the unconfined hermit.

Bambi, the Mobile Chapel of St Scholastica, in her winter coat, January 2021

The idea that both twin communities were following the same rule gives it a greater strength. It was being tried out and lived with in different circumstances. Although the scholar in me would like to have more words actually attributable to Scholastica, I think there are plenty in the Rule that are probably hers. You heard her and it would have influenced what you wrote. As I write to you I try to find a short title for the day, and I attribute that search to Scholastica: an urge to find a few words that resonate with contemporary life.

Bambi, the Mobile Chapel of St Scholastica, in Longdendale in the summer of 2020

I also learned that Scholastica is known as the patron saint of children with epilepsy. As one who worked with children who have epilepsy and their families for many years this is dear to me too.

From the remembered gospel: At the bottom of the mountain, Jesus meets a family of a boy who has seizures. This child’s father says to Jesus ‘I believe, help my unbelief!’ The mother is silent.

So today I once again think of all those silent through the ages, not necessarily by choice, but often by convention. I remember the silent unrecorded ones, those who’s words were not written down or remembered. I remember all those who have helped my unbelief.

Like Scholastica, may I follow The Way.

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

Late!

Dear Benedict,

Being late has consequences, that’s one thing we learn from chapter 43. That’s because it’s not just ourselves who are affected by lateness. Your instructions about what to do with late monastics show how inconvenient lateness is in a community. Frustrations, resentments, anger all boil up and when they boil over other things result: isolation, exclusion, insularity to name a few.

Keeping a community going needs a lot of thought and attention to the common good, something that individual human beings seem poorly equipped to handle. For many of us the punishment for being late will take us right back to the naughty step and some infantile encounter that left us humiliated. It will not be character building but we will feel exposed and possibly ridiculed: ‘You couldn’t even be on time!’.

But what if being late is a much bigger thing? Late to wake up and smell the coffee may mean more than just cold coffee. Late into lock down and the consequences run to thousands. Late into quarantine and we need a different set of vaccines. Late to understanding the fragility of democracy and the step we find ourselves on is much bigger than the childhood naughty step.

So, don’t be late, even on zoom (last night I took my goat to a zoom meeting for the first time, see footnote for explanation). Understand the consequences of lateness and work to include not exclude so that ‘late’ and ‘on time’ have adult interpretations rather than evoking the humiliation and ridicule of childhood in ways that cause as to sulk rather than amend our ways.

From the remembered bible: The time is coming….

May I be timely in what I think and what I do.

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

Goat Note: I was glad to see that a new habit of taking a ‘surprise goat’ to zoom meetings was flourishing in some places. I have always struggled with meetings, whether zoom or physical ones. Eating jaffa cakes only goes so far, particularly on zoom, but taking a goat to meetings seemed worth trying. You may see me with my goat at further meetings. It’s possible that there’s a chapter in the Rule about this.

Goat explanation here:

Silence

Dear Benedict,

This week we saw the death toll of those people in UK who have died from COVID19 go above 100,000. To this news there is only, initially at least, silence. There may also be weeping, anger, denial, and many other things, but respectful silence at this loss of life is fundamental, whatever we do next.

Indeed there are many kinds of silence. Even if we are silent that doesn’t mean other things are not happening around and within the silence. Your Rule recognised this in chapter 42. Silence has many important functions: to rest, to listen, to affirm, to show respect, to indicate agreement or awe for example. And of course silence may be our only response if our voice has been taken away.

It is partly because of the complexity of silence that we must examine it again and again. It is too simple to say we live in a noisy world and therefore we all need silence. What kind of silence we might need and what kinds of silence are unhelpful need to be considered.

It is now well known that the silence that follows abuse of different kinds (but which are essentially different aspects of the misuse of power one over another) is a damaging kind of silence. Unfortunately no institution, not least the Church, can claim indemnity to this kind of abuse. Some of that silence has included the silence of unquestioning loyalty or fence sitting as well as the silence of cover up, threat and complicity. These may not have been the kinds of silence you were writing about but they have crept poisonously into many communities and we have to be alert to them. Many have been damaged by them and that damage is still causing havoc in people’s lives. A traumatised person said :’Every time I retell my story I am traumatised again’. Thus the breaking of silence also creates its own traumas.

It was my work as a speech therapist that first bought me face to face with many layers of silence and was one to the things I bought into ministry. However, it has never been a comfortable gift. Even this week, considering when to keep silent and when to speak have been once again on my mind when faced with evidence of the effects of unhealthy silences on people in different places. It can be a heavy thing to carry, which is why the Great Silence is so important: a time and place to put even silence down.

It is like that action a cook takes when folding flour into beaten eggs and sugar to make a cake. The dry mixture is folded, not beaten, into the wet and you can see them meeting each other, one gradually becoming the other, as they are folded together. Try it and see what you make of it.

And as you do, in this week of all weeks, let your silence take up the unspoken names of those affected by the current Pandemic and in other ways, in memory of those caught up in the holocaust and other genocides, those survivors of abuse and any who are unable to break out of unhealthy forms of silence. May the silence we enjoy be true silence of the embrace of the Holy One. May it be the ground of our being and the strength from which we emerge to serve the world.

From the remembered bible: Be still and know God.

I crawl into your silence.

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

Time to eat!

Dear Benedict

In setting down a time to eat you were concerned that people ate enough and in company and that the time together was also an important part of communal life (chapter 41). The community was governed by the natural order of day and night and being in the northern hemisphere, the way it changed during the year, so you made allowances for this. Furthermore, people worked in daylight so food needed to be available to fuel that work. It all makes good sense.

In our day time is a different thing. It rushes past or drags us down. We may have company or we may not. We may have work, too much too little or none. Thinking about a chapter like this, there are so many ways in which it addresses our lives. A rhythm to daily/yearly life is important. A good one can keep us healthy and in communion with each other.

Lockdown is not like that so it’s not surprising if some folks want to bend the regulations or use their own judgement. A TV interview with a person from China about Lockdown recently revealed the view that ‘We are used to doing what we are told, you are not’. It’s certainly food for thought.

I have found different patterns developing in Lockdown even in our small community of two.

There’s a time to walk and a time to be still, a time to work and a time to rest, a time to eat and a time to prepare for eating, a time to think and a time to pray, a time to sleep and a time to wake up. There’s a time for everything in Lockdown.

From time to time, there’s also a time to worry. This doesn’t seem to have a schedule but arrives out of nowhere almost and sows its own chaos. It may change the times we had set up for something else. It can scramble up our thinking, doing and being. Having a timetable can help with getting back on track. Each thing has it’s time and place, each activity makes a space for us to enjoy that one thing.

The local shopkeeper told me that when he first got a shop it played havoc with his eating times: he’d eat all sorts of stuff any time. I took it to indicate that the new shop was a stressful experience. I remember my great uncles, who ran the fish shop when I was a child, had strict times for eating, each one coming up for his meal at the specified time, to keep a sensible rhythm, to keep healthy habits.

The communal habit of eating in local lunch clubs is something I know some older people have missed. The rhythm of the day and time and the company was helpful and nourishing as much as the food. It’s a part of old normal that we need to rethink for new normal.

Where possible, it’s sensible to have a time to eat. If we can’t do that or it seems to elude us sometimes, we need to think why that might be and see about getting back on track if we can. We need to help each other to stay healthy clearly announcing when it’s time to eat or offering opportunities for shared eating times where possible.

From the remembered bible: There’s a time for everything under heaven.

Help me to stay healthy.

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

Remember me!

After last evening’s Communion Service with LCSB on line, here are the prayers I used for those who want to see them again.

Welcome

This is a piece of wood, cut from a tree, much like a carpenter would use.

This is a cross, cut from a tree, where a carpenter would die.

This is a candle, a light to keep faith alive:

faith in the world turner, the cross wise one, who speaks to us through the wood.

Prayer of delight

God of all we rejoice at your delight!

At your delight in the world you created,

at your delight in Jesus, your Son, baptised and ready to go,

at your delight in us, affirmed and ready to follow him.

Invitation to communion

Birthed in a manger, a wooden box where cattle feed.

Brought up in a workshop, a place of wood where he learnt a trade.

Brought out of the River Jordan, baptised by water and the Spirit,

Jesus, the cross wise one, invites you all to his table.(

Prayer after communion

Companion Christ, True Vine, we have eaten heavenly bread, we have drunk the wine of promise.

We commit ourselves to a life of kinship.

Sustain us on the road that in partnership with the poor

we may travel on to eat and drink in justice and peace in the vineyard of the Vinegrower.

Blessing of the trees in the woodland

A blessing from the larch and the beech;
May they shelter you in their season.
A blessing from the hawthorn and the willow:
May they delight you in their season.
A blessing from the hazel and the oak;
May they supply you in their season.
May you ever be sheltered, delighted and supplied in this holy place,
By the power of the Holy Three.

Great God, who made the darkness for rest,
Surround us this night
So that our words, our thoughts, our breath,
May rest in you.

Janet Lees for LCSB 10.01.2021

Drink up!

Dear Benedict,

Having given due consideration to food, in the following chapter (chapter 40) of your Rule you give equal thought to drink. It’s that I’m writing about today. In your time and place that drink was wine and you were happy to endorse it, in moderation , of course. Time passes, culture changes, wine ages, and here we are in the 21st century with lockdown contributing to an increase in the consumption of alcohol in Britain over the last year.

For some this will be Dry January, a thing that actually only originates from 2014, and is more popular, it seems in France, Switzerland and Britain, thought Finland had a version in 1942. Of course in this meaning ‘Dry’ means no alcohol not ‘no liquid’.

That meaning of the word has a longer history. Many small Congregational Churches (before becoming the United Reformed Church in 1972) were ‘Dry’ in that sense. Their practice had been influenced by the Temperance Movement in the 19th century. This social movement developed in response to concerns about the effects of alcohol consumption on health, family life, social cohesion and so forth. Interestingly, local leadership was often in the hands of women. In these small churches it lead to a prohibition on the use of alcohol on their premises for worship and social occasions. I grew up in such a community and have served as minister in others.

Your reflection ‘Wine makes even the wise go astray’ and your thought that God will reward those who abstain seems to accord with such practices. It seems a good time to mention that on Sunday I will preside at a ‘dry’ Eucharistic service for members of the Lay Community of St Benedict (on zoom).

From the remembered bible: Think of your stomach and take a little wine.

I’m not sure whether in the correspondence here, the emphasis was on ‘stomach’ or ‘little’ or just the fact that the water wasn’t all that clean. Chapter 40 sends with the simple suggestion: ‘Don’t whine about the wine!’

May I not whine…

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

Food!

Dear Benedict,

Chapter 39 of your rule, like many sections is both comforting and correcting. In this chapter about food you begin by making it clear that good healthy food should be available everyday for everyone in shared meals, but you go onto say ‘Overindulgence is inconsistent with the Christian life’.

21st century Christmas in UK is our feast of overindulgence. There are endless advertisements for all the good things you can have in abundance. There is continued emphasis on how special food fits a special time of year and how much of it we should all crave. Of course it’s quite likely that from our prehistoric ancestors onwards this midwinter time has always been used as time to get together and eat as much as possible.

At the same time there is real food poverty in the UK right now. These extremes are signs of our dysfunctional communal life and we find it a real struggle to set the balance right. Whilst we give out awards to those who try to feed the poor, we still seem not to want to ask why the poor have no food.

Our personal attempts to contribute to a better shared food pattern include buying local products from local people and buying Fair Trade products where possible. It’s only a small thing but if the pattern were more widespread it can make a difference, as the network of Fair Trade Towns bears witness. It began in Garstang, in Lancashire, a place I walked past on the Lancaster Canal on my End to End, and has spread across the whole country. We even past through the Fair Trade zone of North Ayrshire.

North Ayrshire Fair Trade Zone on my End to End in 2019

About now is the time for resolutions for the year ahead. How about a food related resolution?

From the remembered gospel: ‘Don’t worry about what you need to eat’ and ‘Give us this day our daily bread’. Are these two rememberings in conflict? How do you think they relate to chapter 39 of the Rule?

May all be fairly fed.

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

A rota anyone?

Dear Benedict,

It’s a few weeks since my last letter to you and today I’m writing about chapter 38 of the your Rule. It’s about the practice of having someone read out loud during meals in the monastery. You are, of course, very thorough about the requirements, as I’d expect. You cover all the basics: how to feed the reader, and how they should prepare and carry out the duties and how the community should respond. Indeed this is a mark of all your advice about roles in the community. Most particularly with this you remind us that reading and singing is not a vanity project but ‘for the benefit of the community’.

I come from a tradition that has, in many places, been floundering on rotas. No sooner than you put your nose in the door and someone has your name down on half a dozen rotas. Of course every community needs participants to take part and it’s not a community if there are more observers than active members but as with everything, it’s balance that matters. As our churches have aged and dwindled in many places the names on the rotas have got fewer and fewer until the rotating is between only a couple of people but the list of tasks has become almost endless.

In small communities the same people may find themselves bound to the same place in the rota for what seems like a life-time. The joke about changing the light bulbs ceases to be very amusing when your name is the only one on the light bulb rota, you’re knocking on 90 and the ladder’s defective.

The plus side of the rota thing is planning. No last minute hitches or ‘can someone just….’ which can be disconcerting, as well as excluding. Once again a consideration of the Rule should help us discern a middle way which also has a radical edge: the task lasts for a set, short, time and is not dependant on rank. Listen then if you have ears.

From the remembered bible: May I open my mouth and use my lips to praise God.

Have mercy and spare us from endless rotas.

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

A Dancing Day?

Today’s letter is to Mother Julian of Norwich, the first woman to write a book in English that has survived, from the 14th century.

Dear Mother Julian,

I imagine you missed them. How could you not? If the Black Death was anything like we understand it, then it was horrendous and to lose you family to it, dreadful. Other plagues would come and go. I’ve visited Eyam, for example, where there was plague in 1665, and seen the place where one woman buried her whole family, one after another. It’s here: https://historicengland.org.uk/services-skills/education/educational-images/riley-graves-riley-lane-eyam-6974

I often think of you in that simple space, made holy by your constant prayer. A quiet and austere stone cell, I have my own aluminium equivalent, but I also have the choice to open the doors, be inside or out.

Inside the Mobile Chapel of St Scholastica, Bambi.

I wonder what took you there, as I listen to contemporary stories of loss and grief, anxiety and sadness, of the missing and the missed, the lonely and the alone: was it like that for you?

Or did the stones seem warm and welcoming, resonant and reflective as you readily embraced this lone existence? Time to think, to remember, to grieve, to renew, to celebrate; we all need such times and places.

I first read your book about 40 years ago. It astonished me. It confirmed me as a woman of faith in ways some other word didn’t do. I could stretch out my hand to you over the centuries and see you open yours and show me the hazelnut; simple but significant. A woman, on her own, was enough, to be able to see God and say so.

I am not alone, not like you were. I flit back and forth, connected in different ways, by sight, by internet, by memory. But I still hugely value your insights and your persistence. As I dig down into the earth of faith, I am pleased to echo with you that ‘We shall not be overcome’ and ‘All Shall Be Well’.

From the remembered bible: Pray at all times.

In response to the call of Christ, I seek to live holy communion, create holy space and offer holy service. (Prayer of the Lay Community of St Benedict http://www.laybenedictines.org/)

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