Author: janet

A letter to Benedict about the Rule

Dear Benedict

I’m just getting in touch about your 1,500 year old best seller, ‘The Rule of St Benedict’. Still read around the world today, I am one of those would-be readers. I admit it’s challenging. For a start, I don’t live in a monastic community and of course our contexts are different in other ways too. However, I’m determined to give it a go and find a way of opening it up for me and others like me, a dissenting woman of the 21st century, and maybe others too.

I like the beginning. Everything needs an introduction and your prologue is just that. Simple enough to start with, the first thing I remember is ‘Listen!’ Sounds easy but it’s often much harder than that one word suggests. Our world is probably noisier than yours was. Having said that many traditions both religious and secular value listening. Like your Rule, they recognise that true listening gets under the surface of things.

We’re currently suffering from a viral pandemic and in my small corner of rural England, listening has many dimensions. First there’s physical listening: I love to go outside and listen to the sounds of the country side. We know this is a good healthy thing to do, but even this simple step may be difficult for some. Such listening can certainly be easily interrupted by other sounds added to our environment. We live in a constant tangle between what is good for us as people, what keeps us healthy and what we think is good for us who want to better standard of living. High above me is a flight path to one of the UK’s regional airports. Along the valley one of the busiest arterial roads in this county. At the end of the road a building site offers affordable housing and construction noise. It’s a struggle to know what is best for us.

Then there’s another side of listening: listening to speech and attending to what is really being said. In our pandemic times there’s a lot of speech travelling round the world. Some is honest and straight forward and some is not. We have to pay attention to sieve one from the other. So we are agreed, in your time and in mine, listening is essential.

I have spent a lot of my professional life as a listener, but all of us can learn to listen better. Maybe we should each try to make a note of some of our listening and see what we really hear.

From Proverbs chapter 1, a remembered version:

If you’re wise you can still learn more by listening again: even experienced people can learn something new.

Make me a new listener, ready to learn new things.

From a friend of Scholastica’s, and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.

The year of the vulture

The clock ticks only forwards

As we fall into the year,

The ups and downs and straight bits

In the hills round here.

A great bird came to visit

And seemed willing just to stay

As people came and watched it

More and more each day.

But as the days got shorter

And things began to spike,

The vulture headed homewards:

It would be quite a hike.

Oh dear and brilliant creature

We’re glad you came our way,

And wish you flying Eastwards

A safe and happy day.

JAL: 21.09.2020 in Longdendale.

More COVID19 prayers

The woman on the news

Squirted the table and wiped it.

She said how the death of her daughter

Had increased her anxiety

And she wiped her hands.

The writer on Twitter

Took a deep breath

And said how his stay in ICU

Had increased his anxiety:

He breathed again.

The family at the foodbank

Stood in the queue

And explained how furlough and redundancy

Meant they had nothing

But hoped soon to eat something.

I walk in the hills,

Mindful of many,

Recalling the Unsleeping One,

Who rocks us all.

JAL 29.08.2020 in Longdendale

Anger

Something St Paul never wrote…

So what if I can say anything I want, like other people, good and bad, do everyday? If I cannot express my anger, what am I but a hollow dried out gourd, a deflated tyre. I might put all the right words and sentiments together in the right order, I may share bright thoughts and new insights, what I say may cause the earth to change, but if anger remains repressed, what’s the point in that? I may donate everything I own, even my body parts, but what’s the point if my anger, such a key part of me, remains un-noticed?

Anger burns, slowly or quickly and engulfs everything; it blurts out, slaps down, flares up; it ferments, seethes, grows and as a result smothers a lot else; it feeds on injustice, real or presumed, it boils away leaving a painful crust, a life long scar. It’s always there, however faithful, hopeful or loving you try to be.

Anger is powerful and our failure to acknowledge this or give it space strengthens its power. What may have been a positive force for change is demonised and negated and becomes a many headed monster. It doesn’t matter what language you speak, if you do not give voice to anger then it will erupt violently somehow. Ignore it and it may pass, but it will be back.

To some, anger seems childish; part of a repertoire we should have left behind. As adults we are told we don’t need anger, but what if injustice continues? We struggle to understand our current experiences: how will we become whole unless we acknowledge the place of anger? God knows me and God knows anger.

If there are things that remain, like faith, hope and love, so much the better, but you shouldn’t ignore anger.

Janet Lees, 04.06.2020 in Longdendale.

Anthem for doomed workers

I’d apologise to Wilfred Owen if I could meet him, but some how I think he’d understand……

If in some smothering dreams you too could  pace

Along the corridors so clean and pale,

And hear the ping and suck of each machine,

Each laboured breath that’s on the edge of fail.

If you could see in every face the care

Plastered on with sweat to skin so bruised,

Each mark a sign of time spent as you dare,

The insufficient mask or absent veil,

My friend, you would not brief the clamouring press,

With words that hint at some desperate glory,

The old lie: Dulce et decorum est

Pro patria mori.


JAL. 28.04.2020 in Longdendale on Worker’s Memorial Day 2020

My best friend, my Lazarus

Four days since I heard he was ill. Four days of knotting my stomach, of a disconnected head and a pounding heart. Four days of measuring each breath I take, hoping only that he is still taking them too. Four days of dry mouthed fear and crawling skin. Four days, four days.

Four days since I got the message that Lazarus was ill. Four days hoping, praying, wandering, waking in the night, sweating. Four days of indecision. Too far away to do anything.

Four days of uncertainty: should I stay, should I go. Four days with my hands shaking and no will to eat. Each night I call for peace but there is no peace.

Now I stand outside, my cheeks wet, my body trembling, my head a void. Martha worries about the smell. I am anxious about far more than that. Four days, four days.

The stale air reaches my nostrils. I scream into the abyss. ‘Come out, my best friend, my Lazarus’.

JAL 29.03.2020 during the COVID 19 Pandemic, when the lectionary remembering was the Rising of Lazarus.

Parable of the Three Advisors

Three political advisors obtained government posts.

The first had a record of making racist statements, making comments against disabled people and people from sexual and gender minorities, being misogynistic, promoting pro-eugenic policies and supporting fascist regimes.

When the public heard about him and his record there was an outcry. After a few days he resigned.

Some people said, ‘See public opinion is still strong. He has gone and our society is safe’.

The second advisor tried to suggest a slightly less extreme set of views. He was still promoting social division and encouraging others to voice racist, homophobic, disablist and other discriminatory comments and promoting hate crimes. Some people noted this connection and campaigned for his removal but others said, ‘Freedom of speech is important. He’s not done anything wrong’ and he kept his job.

The third advisor learnt from what had happened to the first two advisors. He said nothing. He supported racist and homophobic attacks and euthanasia for disabled people in secret. He told lies about policies and people, including those who were poor, homeless or living in the margins, but he was clever enough not to attract too much attention. Few people noticed him and he kept his job.

Which of the three advisors posed the most potential danger to your community and the most vulnerable members of it? Listen then if you have ears.

Janet Lees

18.02.2020

Haiku for a tadpole

On today’s practice walk for the LEJOG next month, I passed the puddles we saw earlier in the week. In the brown cloudy water I saw three tiny tadpoles.

Like a small comma
On a smugged page, you wiggle:
Invisible script.

The cowslips are coming up and will likely flower towards the end of the month. Most of the local fields are still empty. I only saw one lamb on my walk. Under the beech trees the green shoots of bluebells are beginning to appear with early May their likely flowering time.
This prayer is based on words from the Native American tradition:
Great Spirit, who made the darkness for rest,
Surround us this night
So that our words, our thoughts, our breath,
May rest in you.

JAL 24.03.2019

First Day of Spring

From a walk in Derbyshire today

I look up at the hills,
I walk beside still water,
I search for the right paths,
I make peaceful tracks.

Here a Comma,
There a Peacock;
Butterflies on Blackthorn blossom.
Puddles coagulate with frogspawn:
It’s World Frog Day.

Wild geese float on blue water,

Calling softly to each other.

I’m happy inside and out,
Marvelling at the Universe,
Glad to breathe.

JAL 20.03.2019

All cracked up

There are cracks everywhere: in the ceiling and the arches, in the earth, in the institutions, in the people.
And our response to these cracks: we keep Lent again. We tell each story as if for the first time. We count each encounter.
Listen with the ear of your heart: Benedict begins The Rule that way. It’s simple enough.
Jesus goes up a mountain. Heaven breaks through. There are cracks but they can be filled with light and glory: remember.
And then he comes down. It is not the end of the story. Even if it is a good reason for going up mountains it is not a good enough reason never to come down again.
At the bottom of the mountain, I am still drawn there, to another encounter. This one counts for me. The excluded child and family; feared and fearful. Both faith and doubt need help: both have their cracks. The listening one listens and another glory fills the fragile lives of that family.
The story does not end there. More cracks to come, and more glory. As the sun streamed into the Abbey church later many of the cracks were filled with warm coloured light from the windows. Jesus: everything he’s cracked up to be.

In our life and our believing

The love of God

JAL 17.03.2019

Ampleforth Abbey