janet – Page 11 – Notes from Bambi

Young and Old together!

Dear Benedict,

I’m writing to you again about your Rule, this time chapter 37. You remind us that people of all ages lived in your community and that although the Rule was meant for all, some considerations needed to be made to accommodate the needs of younger and older people living together.

You say that it is human to ‘be compassionate’ to young and old alike. I’m not so sure. Either that or like many things, attitudes have changed over the centuries. We may think we are being compassionate to those who are young or old but COVID19 has revealed a marked lack of compassion in some instances. For example, poverty, is much more likely to affect the young or the old and with many more people now falling into poverty our compassion for young and old seem to be running out.

Getting to the root of it: a tree relies on old growth and young growth working together.

Fear seems to me one of the biggest drivers of division, insecurity and hate. Of the messages I’ve read recently more and more seem to show a lack of compassion, though I wonder if that is driven by fear. If we are afraid for ourselves and our own near ones then maybe we begin to shun a wider community of need, anonymous people we don’t know. If we are alone at the moment, our connections to community may be tenuous at best, maybe that feeds into limiting our compassion for groups like young and old people. ‘If I don’t have it, why should they?’ or maybe ‘I need it so they can’t have it’.

At the moment in the Lay Community of St Benedict, we are pushing ahead with our Youth Development work (http://www.laybenedictines.org/). another organisation I have worked with, the Diana Award, is looking to recruit young people to help with its work at the moment: https://diana-award.org.uk/get-involved/become-a-diana-award-young-judge/

These are small steps to creating the kind of communities were people of all ages can thrive. But they are important ones, because unless we do so on a local scale more and more of the young and the old will become isolated and marginalised.

From the remembered bible: Your old people will dream dreams, your young people will see visions.

May I unite young and old.

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

I’ve got a little list

Dear Benedict, sorry to confuse you but I’m writing about something else, although being the Patron Saint of Europe I think you’ll find it interesting.

Last night I watched a film called Schindler’s List. It’s not about the sort of seasonal list that occupies the Christmas adverts. It’s about an altogether different sort of list and many readers may already have seen the film. I’d not seen it and we decided to watch it last night.

It’s a harrowing film, shot in black and white, except for one child in a faded red coat. It’s a chaotic film with crowds and crowds of people moving here and there, at one point I thought I don’t understand what’s happening even though I sort of knew the story. It’s an anonymous film, with only a few main characters, like Schindler, Isaak, Otto and Helena having names that stayed in my memory. All of the others were a huge anonymous mass. It’s a long film, at over 3 hours we’ve still to watch the last hour tonight.

In the film Schindler is not a sympathetic character. He is abrupt, appears not to listen, is dismissive at times and seems corrupt. Maybe that’s what it took to hide in plain sight. I understand he was arrested several times.

The list doesn’t feature until fairly late on. It’s a list of names of ordinary people. Schindler pays to keep these people safe. As he does this, all around him, Europe is in chaos and hundreds of thousands of others are being carted off to the death camps from which he is saving the people on the list.

It’s a film about racism in Europe eighty years ago. A time when racism was so acceptable that millions of Jews, Roma, disabled people and LGBT people were murdered. This mass murder, called the Holocaust, was the product of an ideology called Nazism and at the moment those on the political Right want us, ordinary people, to forget it ever happened.

I will not forget.

I will make my own list. I will remember the hate. I will call out racism, however ‘casual’ you may think it is. I will remember the camps and the cruelty. I will remember the ordinary people. I will continue to hope.

From the remembered bible: Pray at all times, give thanks in all circumstances. This is what God wants from you in Jesus Christ.

Even so, come then Lord Jesus.

Father Benedict, pray for us.

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

Note that St Benedict is remembered as the Patron Saint of Europe.

O Come

Another break from Letters to Benedict to post some O antiphons.

Traditional O Antiphons begin on 17th December but you can easily start a bit earlier by making up your own. Here’s a few to give you some ideas, based on my recent observations.

O heater of chestnuts

Thank you Jesus, that you feed us.

O sitter in doorways

Disturb us, homeless Jesus.

O sun dancer

From the margins of the cosmos, come and dance with us Jesus.

O morning blackbird

Come to your broken world, Jesus.

I’ve also written some short prayers to accompany the traditional Os. Here they are.

O Wisdom (17th December)

Lend me your wisdom, Jesus

O majesties (18th December)

I look to you for inspiration, majestic one.

O root of Jesse (19th December)

May I be rooted in Jesus

O key of David (20th December)

May I be open to Jesus

O rising sun (21st December)

Welcome, risen One

O ruler of nations (22nd December)

Welcome, kindom builder

O Emmanuel (23rd December)

Enrol us in your company, Always-with-us.

Janet Lees 09.12.2020 in Longdendale.

A Christmas Story for 2020

And in those days a decree was issued that put most people into tier 3, so Mary and Joseph couldn’t travel to their home town until they’d had two negative COVID tests five days apart. By the time the results had come through the transport system was heaving and social distancing was as far from reality it’s possible to get. The NHS was teetering on the
edge of collapse and they were lucky to find a vet and a barn on a celebrity farm, and Mary bought forth her first born son and laid him in a manger because the hospitality sector was still not fully open.

And there were some shepherds, keeping watch in the fields, still hoping a no deal Brexit could be avoided, and lo an angel of the Lord came down and said ‘Do not be afraid, for the good news is there will be a network of lorry parks in Kent. And this will be a sign to you, just off the M20, you will find the child lying in a manger.’

And suddenly the heavenly host were streaming ‘Glory to God in the High Street, peas in the food bank, and global goodwill to all.
Janet Lees, December 2020

A short break from letters to Benedict to bring you a seasonal story.

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.