janet – Page 12 – Notes from Bambi

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.

Saints Alive!

Dear Benedict

We’re approaching All Saints and All Souls, an extended autumnal feast to remember those who have gone before us in the faith. I’m not clear how this would have worked in your day, as there were many fewer official saints. However, you consider saints important to Benedictine spirituality and mention them in chapter 14, so that’s why I’m writing to you about that now.

Saints are just one of the things that still divide Christians today. We have our different views about who are worthy to be called Saints, who can appoint them, how we should remember them and much more. One person’s Saint is not necessarily another’s.

However, it’s clear that there are many people who through the generations have kept the faith alive in many ways and who we remember for diverse different reasons. Some are associated with a place or cause, some are more like common ancestors in the faith or beloved family members. Even you get to be a Saint, Benedict! I’ve no idea how you’d receive that, except of course I’m sure it would be humbly.

One of the biggest problems with the faith is the urge in us to cart our history about with us, and when it becomes too much to carry, to set it down somewhere and continually revisit it. Sometimes this is helpful. It can inspire and enliven us, but it can also bog us down, distract us and take up too much of the energy we need for living the faith today.

Our churches and religious places are not museums. They are supposed to be beacons: a means of lighting out way. So too the Saints: people to propel us forwards.

Speaking personally, there are a vast number of people who do that faith propulsion thing for me. Some are those the Church recognises as official saints, but most are just ordinary people that I might read about or meet. I chose Scholastica as my running mate for many different reasons. As your twin she was connected to you, but like me she was female. However, in our day, very little is known about her directly and few, if any, of her actual words survive. That much of her story is familiar to the lot of many women in the early era of the Church.

What has been passed on about her was that she was feisty and ready to question you. It’s good to know that. I’d add to her name a whole list of others beginning with Julian of Norwich, Florence Nightingale and Madge Saunders. You can read a piece I wrote about Madge in the Dangerous Women Project.

So I wish you a happy feast, with which ever Saints keep you alive in the faith.

From the remembered bible: Let us run the race that is before us!

Keep me alive in my faith!

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

Sleep!

Dear Benedict,

In chapter 21 you give your attention to sleep. I do so now in my letter to you. Sleep is important, vital.

In your day, ordinary people would have expected little private space, if any, in which to sleep. Families bedded down together and if you worked as a servant for a richer family, then servants would have shared sleeping space. But you say ‘each sleeps in their own bed’. An early attempt at safe-guarding? Hard to say. The concept is still a relatively new one to us even. But it’s a timely piece of advice.

Of course even today not everyone has the space to sleep alone. Homeless and on the streets, it’s warmer in a doorway with a dog and a companion or two. Under a leaking tarpaulin trying to cross Europe as a refugee, people take shelter where they can. Even in Britain today not everyone gets to sleep in their own bed.

For those who can choose, private space for sleeping has become the norm. Shared dormitories of the type you describe are much less welcome. But a small room with a closed door could be more dangerous than an open room with many beds. Our understandings of consent are challenged all of the time. We must wake up to that, at least!

But sleep is important if you are going to get up early to sing and pray the offices. Proper sleeping arrangements are therefore vital. Yet too often we, who have these basics, seek to deny them to others, pushing out those who seek asylum, for example, to sleep in places we have long since abandoned or consider inappropriate now, like disused barracks. When hotels or B and B’s are used for people claiming benefits we decry the luxury, even when the places themselves are far from luxurious. When the un-imprisoned learn prisoners have televisions in their cells they are incensed. All this seems to be the response of the fearful who live wondering if their flimsy security could be stripped away.

Patchwork bed quilt I have made with fabric reused from garments

You knew that a bed would help a person feel valued, give them a place. Well slept monastics could better serve the community to which they belonged. We could learn this too. Giving people beds is not a luxury; it just helps them sleep and wake up better able to contribute.

From the remembered bible: I lay down and sleep in safety.

Let me sleep!

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

Pray, but keep it short!

Dear Benedict,

This isn’t a long letter. This is to commend you for your advice in Chapter 20 to keep our prayers ‘short and pure’.

I’m in favour of that. I’ve sat through far too many long and tedious prayers in my time, designed, it would appear to make the pray-er look good rather than anything else.

Of course, sometimes, in anguish or anxiety, our prayers may become stretched out. God sits with us.

We may wonder what short prayers could accomplish but remember we are not trying to ‘change God’s mind’ as much as join God’s team. Joining for a short time whenever we may gives God joy: the Holy One is happy to see us show up.

As for pure; just pray. Try not to get it mixed up with other stuff; and make it wholehearted.

From the remembered gospel: Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God!

Here I am, wholeheartedly!

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

Sing!

Dear Benedict,

In chapter 17 of your Rule you are quite specific about which psalms the community should sing and when. The Psalter was the hymn book of your community and in all of the Benedictine communities I have visited it is obviously well known and much loved.

When I walked my End to End last year I was surprised how many bits of psalms, what I call psalm snippets, there were in my remembered bible and when I walk I often come back to them and reflect on them. Although I do use the psalms I also sing a lot of other things, quite a bit of which I make up ‘as I go along’ with the pattern of the psalms and the seasons to inspire me.

Today I was walking in our valley enjoying the falling leaves. Forest Church, an expression of outdoor worship, attracts me and there are places round here I often revisit . Today I made tracks to a group of beech trees that I call the Beech Cathedral and they were glorious. I wrote this hymn whilst I sat there.

The beech trees in this season
Each wear a golden gown,
And in the strips of woodland,
Deciduous leaves fall down.
All sorts of berries ripen
And turn a vibrant red
So in the coldest season,
The wayside birds are fed.

Chorus:
With all these things around us
May we learn to share
The good things of Creation
And for our planet, care.

The canopy above us,
The leaves beneath our feet,
The world continues turning,
The patterns still repeat,
But with our climate changing
We haven’t got much time
To change our wasteful ways
And repent of climate crime.

Chorus:
With all these things around us
May we learn to share
The good things of Creation
And for our planet, care.

The swallow have flown southwards,
The geese have come to rest,
By patterns of migration
We all are truly blessed.
But temperatures are rising,
The poorest bear the cost
We must change how we’re living
Or all we know is lost.

Chorus:
With all these things around us
May we learn to share
The good things of Creation
And for our planet, care.

Tune is Wir Pflugen (We plough the fields)

From the remembered bible: And the trees of the field shall clap their hands

I sing to you!

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

In touch!

Dear Benedict

I’m writing to you again, this time about chapter 16 of the Rule, where you urge monastic communities to follow a pattern of prayer each day. It reminded me of George Herbert’s words: Seven whole days, not one in seven, I will praise thee.

The tradition I grew up in met once a week, the one day in seven. At first hearing about it worshipping seven days in seven seemed a lot. Then multiply that by the seven times a day that you advocate, it added up to the ‘Pray at all times’ which was the bible verse I chose for my own confession of faith.

In my early forays into Benedictine life the small hours during the day were delightful and I still love them as a template. The community is involved in a complex dance: together, apart, together, apart, together again. Worship, work, worship, work and worship again: the signs and sounds that we encounter in work are bought with us into worship.

Working as a school chaplain for some time, I found the rhythm of school life was similar. In between the formal chapel services I would often walk around corridors or sports fields with my prayers. So praying comes at many different times; in the queue at the shops, in the car, on the bus. The community around me will not be made up of the same people but common concerns arise.

Take hunger for example. Which of us enjoys beings hungry? It’s a big topic in our COVID19: who is hungry and who is not? Who has the power to feed the hungry and who actually does it? I’m not hungry and have been fortunate never to have been hungry. This does not mean I don’t believe others may be hungry or that somehow being hungry must be their fault. A hungry person needs food: simple really.

Jesus did not say: When I was hungry you had a debate in Parliament about me.

Of course, I could go as far as Helder Camara and ask why the hungry poor are poor in the first place, but that it seems would make me political and once again religious people in 21st century Britain are not supposed to be political. I wonder if those who say this really think this through. I am human, I am political. Being part of any community is a political act, it signifies with whom I am in solidarity, with whom I am in touch.

Seven whole days, not one in seven, feed the hungry. Seven times a day, pray as a community. Seven just means a lot, all of the time, continually. I know why the poor are poor. It is because the rich are rich. If your way of keeping away from hunger yourself is to hoard wealth then the poor will likely continue poor and hungry.

From the remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘When I was hungry you gave me something to eat’.

A prayer before meals: For what we are about to waste may we be truly regretful.

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

Alleluia!

Dear Benedict

‘Alleluia’ is one of those words for particular times and seasons, you write in chapter 15 of the Rule. In my own tradition it is not used that much, only for particularly lengthy Easter hymns from what I recall. But it’s a short word and it can be a fun one.

My daughter’s preferred response to me on social media is ‘Woot!’ I think ‘Woot!’ is a sort of ‘Alleluia!’ so maybe I’ll try replacing ‘Woot!’ with ‘Alleluia!’ and vice versa.

As you include ‘Alleluia!’ in responses at certain times of the year, so you exclude it from others, all of which gets a bit difficult to remember. As a community it might be easier to do that: a shared remembering.

COVID19 has given us much to remember and not much to ‘Woot!’ about. Last night, Greater Manchester (the boundary of which is 1100 yards away from where we live, according to my husband) entered Tier 3 of the current COVID19 restrictions. I didn’t hear many alleluias, except perhaps a few faint and ironic ones.

From Easter to Pentecost the community observing the Rule would have had much to celebrate and so Alleluia might have come more readily into worship. But now in gloomy October with grey days and bleak news there are fewer alleluias. So what if we started saying Alleluia now, and I don’t mean ironically?

Let’s hear a few more Alleluias. It might remind us who’s we are and who we follow. It might lift us from the mundane and the murky days. It might serve as a word of recommitment to the risen life and the kindom of peace and justice to which we are called. To some it might be liturgical anarchy but to others it might be a prayer, a sigh, a song.

A worshipful response: Christ is Risen, Alleluia!

Alleluia!

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

Forgive!

Dear Benedict,

Forgive me for not writing for a few days. I do a thing called retirement though I’m not sure it was a concept in the 6th century, or in monastic communities much at all. In 21st century Britain it’s a somewhat contested concept due to inequalities: some people get more retirement than others. Having been doing it in what I think is a modest way from nearly two years it often includes long distance walking. We have been walking a new route in Derbyshire along the Derwent Valley and that has taken me away from letter writing for a few days.

I’m writing to you about the Prayer of Jesus in morning and evening worship (and at other times too I’m sure) that you mention in chapter 13. You advocate saying it aloud as every word is a pledge or promise by community members to each other. You mention how ‘thorny issues’ may grow up between people and recommend the words ‘Forgive us as we forgive’.

Forgiveness itself is one of the thorny issues of our day. People ask, how do I forgive? Is it enough to say ‘I forgive you’ or is more required? What if you can’t say such words, can’t forgive? For some people it seems a straight forward matter: I forgive you and that’s it? For others it has qualification: I forgive you but I can’t forget. How does that seem? Others say they can neither forgive or forget.

At the beginning of the Rule you said this school for God’s service wouldn’t be harsh or a burden (end of Prologue) but you urged us not to run away from the opportunity for a way of life that might seem narrow to begin with but would be found accommodating enough with perseverance. I think perhaps this issue of forgiveness is one of those heartfelt aspects that is both tough and yet also liberating. In referring to the Jesus Prayer you put forgiveness in context. Jesus was teaching this prayer to his followers: it’s one of our direct links to him. The daily need for forgiveness was to him as vital as bread itself. However, not every loaf is perfect, not every hunger satisfied and not every forgiveness lived out but we have the opportunity to pray for it again tomorrow.

A narrow way in the Derwent Valley, Derbyshire.

I think of those who carry huge burdens of inequality and I wonder how they can be expected to forgive those who will not equally share bread with them. What of those who bare massive burdens of grief due to the destructive activities of war or other injurious practices: just carrying on in itself may occupy most of life let along forgiveness. Forgiveness for what? Even the church doesn’t get clean away with this one. Such are my distractions from my own forgiveness issues.

Your own world was smaller, although even a few relationships in a community can be complex. Maybe we need to think of starting with our immediate surroundings. I can only start with forgiving those closest to me and hope they do the same. Forgiveness one step at a time, one word at a time, one prayer at a time. How many times might we say these words in a life time? I’ve no idea but we have the opportunity and that could be world changing.

From the remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘Father, forgive them’.

Forgive me. Help me to forgive.

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