Burden

Dear Benedict,

When I think about putting your rule into practice today, it sometimes seems too complicated. All 73 chapters are about how to live in community. It’s a daunting prospect. Would you suggest a top ten perhaps? Most days I barely scratch the beginning and end: ‘Listen’ and ‘try not to be discouraged’ (my remembered versions).

Sign post on the End to End 2019

This is partly because my usual companion is the remembered bible, rather than the remembered rule. The bit I’m thinking of today is about bearing each other’s burdens. We developed some strange ideas in the 21st century and one of them that has caught hold and will not seem to let go, is that as we age we become a burden.

We don’t. We are never that. We need a major reboot here.

What becomes tough, daunting, frustrating, can be re-balanced if we can only think of sharing the load, standing by each other, giving a hand. Of course the complexity of our lives has made that harder. Everyone needs to work, and often at several jobs, to maintain the expected multi-holiday, big car, comfortable house, lifestyle that is advertised in our celebrity endorsing, selfie-society.

I haven’t seen a dentist in over five years. There are no NHS dentists in the area where I live or in many other parts of the country. Is this because the NHS has failed. No, it’s more complicated than that. The best dental service I ever received was from the students at the dental hospital (that was years ago now). Yet, even then it was clear that one of the motivating factors for some students was the high salaries they believed they could and should command.

Teeth on the End to End in 2019

Too many of the people not now able to afford dentistry are now in the grip of the worst post-war poverty epidemic we have yet seen in this country. There’s a two child limit on family financial help via child allowance and too many families are having to rely on food banks.

My first profession was as a speech therapist in the NHS. Even then it was hard to find speech therapists, and sometimes waiting lists were very long. Once again you could look to pay for private speech therapy but it’s not a part of the profession I ever went into. I learnt at a young age to give stuff away and most of all to give away my time. I didn’t get my first paid job until I was 18 and that was as an au-pair. During my adulthood I’ve often worked for nothing, volunteered for stuff, had unpaid roles one way or another. I don’t have a large income, because I’m a woman born in the 1950s so I don’t get my pension until I’m 66. But I still have enough to give my time and efforts to other people, make soup, sew up things, visit people.

Soup

I’m fortunate that is the case but it does puzzle me what multi-millionaires think they will need all that money for….Or even why ordinary people get hooked into the must have this or that culture. Later today, I hope I will put my walking boots on and walk up the valley. I’ll see some birds, plants and maybe something unexpected. It will cost me nothing.

If you want to live with the Risen Christ, think about how you can take life beyond the restrictions and false attractions of a culture that promises much but delivers so little. Think about how you can be part of a community that ‘shares each others burdens’. It seems to be a somewhat counter cultural way of life now in a context in which everything costs more and the fear of having nothing dominates the richest, while the poor have to scrap by on several low paid jobs and a bag of free groceries.

Bob carrying Hannah and Sally Bunny, sometime ago.

If there’s a rule it should be ‘Let no one go without what they need to thrive’.

From my remembered bible: ‘Jesus said ‘I have come so you might have the fullest life possible’.

Show us how to bear each others burdens.

Janet lees, Friend of Scholastica, living in Longdendale. Easter Sunday 2024.

Just care

Dear Benedict

Many tasks may seem impossible. We size them up, we decide they are not for us. It is true that I couldn’t have walked the End to End in 2019 without taking the first step. Indeed I was wary, and thought I might not be able to do it. But I had Bob, my husband, who had done it in 2003, to pace me from time to time when my steps were flagging. It took me 117 days but I did it.

In chapter 68 you write about impossible tasks. You seem to suggest you had a community of whingers who were forever saying ‘I can’t do that’, although I suspect you didn’t. As I look around me there are many tasks that look impossible but even the most unlikely folks embark on them. The end of Cop26 just a week ago indicates how impossible some tasks seem and how determined so many are to take on the challenges that are required.

The first function of leadership must be to act justly which in turn leads to the second function which is to just care. I’ve put the word ‘justly’ and ‘just’ in here on purpose. An unjust leader is not fit for leadership and care that is not just care is not proper care. Unfortunately we are currently surrounded by examples of the two, including amongst faith communities.

We seem to have forgotten that others will know Christ through our actions. If our communities do not run along just lines then others will turn their backs and leave us to it. So first and foremost the tasks must be assigned justly and then supervised by just care. Just as bullying is not just care so neither is an absence of care or no supervision.

Banner from the Christian Arts Festival 2021 at Nature in Art, Gloucestershire.

At the moment some of our most vital communities face a mountain of impossible tasks. I’m thinking particularly of the NHS and social care. Whilst it is good to encourage and support the marathon efforts of workers it is not good to ignore unjust leadership demanding burnout and low pay on the back of these workers whilst they line their own comfortable pockets. Impossible tasks require leaders with humility, insight and integrity just as much as they require willing workers. Have we forgotten what just leadership looks like?

A stitch in time….

From my remembered bible: Where love is, God is there.

May I live justly. May I just care.

From A friend of Scholastica and a member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.

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.