There’s a time for everything, says one biblical writer. As the summer has now definitely gone, there’s still time. Many will recall statistics about the last few months; the wet weather, the effects on insect species and other populations. Now the swallows are leaving for another year and the wildlife watchers are counting the skeins of pink footed geese across the sky. There’s a time for coming and a time for going.
Advice in Devon
I’m just back from a visit to Devon, somewhat south and west of Longdendale. One of the the things they hold in common is disused railway lines. By the late 1960s decisions had been made to close most of the railway lines in Devon, except the main ones through the county. They weren’t economic enough for some. Instead small roads were filled with fume emitting vehicles a new roads were built to take all the traffic. The disused railway lines became just that, disused, until the age of slower travel by off road routes came along and we tried to join them back up again. These are the routes we have been walking along.
Additionally one section of local rail line has been re-opened, to Oakhampton station and other small projects have big ambitions. The station at Oakhampton seems to be thriving and has an interesting museum. Of course, it costs more to re-open a railway now than it did to close it then.
Oakhampton Station, once again on the main line.
Religious communities can find it difficult to see ahead at the benefits and costs to changes in community life. It’s not unusual to hear members in many such places moan about the lack of younger members often in the same breath as they complain about those that are present.
The village of Sticklepath used to be on the main road route to Oakhampton. John Wesley came that way and preached at the white stone. A few years ago the small parish church was faced with closure. But today it is a space shared with the village heritage centre and the worshipping community, one at each end of the building.
So too on Lundy Island the church has a new life for visitors but is still celebrating the old one as a place of worship. The Landmark Trust re-purposes old buildings of interest and we’ve found them intriguing places to stay.
Evening at Winsford Cottage Hospital, care of the Landmark Trust
We face similar challenges in our high streets. Don’t make the mistake of thinking the Rule doesn’t embrace community change. The buildings can get a new life along with the people. What’s required is faithfulness in prayer and service, not unswerving adherence to activities that no longer contribute to holy communion.
From my remembered bible: There’s a time for everything under heaven.
Direct my prayers to the opening of your ways.
Janet Lees, the wandering anchorite of Longdendale., 9th October 2024
Take the narrow
path: it is the most life-giving (RB)
I doubt many of my forebears or contemporaries spend much time on the Rule of St Benedict, but then neither do I compared with someone who has lived under monastic vows for half a century. I come from a Reformed heritage and as such the temptation to reform is running through my veins every day. It’s a wonder I stick to any path.
As far as the east is from the west, in Longdendale
I’m not a totally
off-piste person either. I do love the edges though, where the
speedwell forms vibrant blue clumps or a pale helleborine is shielded
from the main trail, where the butterflies are dancing. The trail
that makes its way through Longdendale is wider in some parts than in
others. Sometimes there is a separate track for horse riders; the
spotted orchids thrive there. If you want to see a bracket fungus or
a delicate ring of age-old lichen you’ll need to go beyond the edge
of the path.
What about a rule
for building community? I wonder how I find myself gazing at that. I
grew up in a small village in Essex and took that kind of community
for granted. Without probing too deeply, I gradually, with age,
became aware of its flaws and frayed edges. A child suffocated to
death in a grain silo, marriages that fell apart, where Travellers
were welcome to pick fruit but not to live alongside us. It was much
the same in the rest of the country I expect. I went to South Africa
in the mid 1980s and was confronted by other communities and stories
of injustice. I came back to look differently at the scenes of
children playing in bread baskets on a narrow balcony or Black women
doing piece work in tiny flats.
My privilege took me to one of the oldest universities in Britain where I was mostly unhappy, conflicted, lost. I never learnt to revere the Great Men. A few threads of community brushed off on me in passing: we sang ‘Shalom my friends’ in a circle around the communion table in the ecumenical Estate Church on a Sunday. I picked up other echoes in SW London and Yorkshire by the kindnesses of those I met. For a while it was just enough to keep me on the path.
The next valley, where rules were broken.
A school has its
rules and Benedict knows that. He writes in the Prologue:
‘Our intention is
to begin a school for God’s service’ (RR) 1
As a school chaplain
I was aware of rules and their interpretation, roles and authority.
It is with all of this baggage that I stumble along with Benedict’s
Rule. There are other rules of course: most religious communities or
networks will have them and their unspoken interpretations. A good
Benedictine reads the Rule three times a year. A good enough one
remembers a few bits of it.
There are those who consider the Rule that is over a thousand and a half years old a gift to the twenty-first century. I am still unsure about that. It contains a lot of words, and much of it is archaic in language and authority. However, it seems to include three main ideas: the importance of stability, accountability and of owning nothing.
Walking
Stability is the reassurance that it is ‘a gift to come down where we ought to be’. 2
Accountability is my
take on obedience. We seek to live in mutual respect to each other.
We own nothing. You
cannot own a valley, though this one doubles as a water catchment
area for part of Greater Manchester so swathes of its (mis)management
are taken over by a private company that is run for the profit of a
few shareholders rather than the eco-system as a whole.3
I am finding
stability here. The three-times-a-year Rule is mixed up with the four
seasons, the boundaries of which are unravelling. An arctic tern
turned up in the black-headed gull colony on a peninsula on the
farthest reservoir this spring (2024). A colony that shouldn’t
really be there are we are a long way from the coast, and nearly
wasn’t there for the two breeding seasons it was ripped apart by
avian flu, but it came anyway. Maybe a gyrovague looking for a
familiar wave to ride. Not finding one, it stayed a day or two and
then went on its way to some other community, some other place, some
other stability.
I count stuff and share my observations with a group of enthusiastic wild-life watchers. They see more than me, charting the comings and goings of migratory species and newcomers looking for a place to call their own. As I write this (May 2024) there are rumours that a family of otters has taken up residence on a small body of water towards the moorland. After another wet spring my fears are for the orange-tipped butterflies, their one early breeding flight washed out again. ‘To whom do you consider yourself accountable?’was the question posed at my surplus-to-requirements interview weighing my value to the larger community that saw school based ministry as pointless. My answer, in this valley, more than seven years later, remains the same: To Jesus Christ, the head of the Church. I could go on, but essentially, if no one else wants to know that the climate is changing, as few enough seem to, I can still count stuff.
Heron
A heron has just
flown over on its way to goodness knows where, and the rain is
falling in stair rods (uncommon enough metaphor these days). I own
none of these things. Of the things I do own I try to share them with
those around me in a not-for-profit way, mindful I still have too
many unused possessions other are unlikely to want (the local charity
shops have been the recipients of quite a few of them). I can’t
take you through the Rule of St Benedict one paragraph at a time,
backwards of forwards. I do not keep it under my pillow. I walk
through this valley with a remembered bible and a remembered rule and
quite a lot of baggage, as a good enough Benedictine.
Come, walk with me. The way maybe narrow but it is life-giving. Tomorrow I need to go and see if the bog-bean is flowering.
Stone cross, possibly 8th century.
Janet Lees, Friend
of Scholastica and wandering anchorite of Longdendale, 27.05.2024
1RR
is the Remembered Rule – and RB is of course the Remembered Bible.
so it’s all about what I’ve internalised, how I have
interpreted, what has shaped me.
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.
I walk a lot and you write a lot. In chapter 7 of your Rule, you write that there are 12 steps to humility. It’s certainly a long chapter and one, as you might imagine, I have issues with.
Walking one step at a time.
I’m not sure how many people would regularly use the word ‘humility’ today. Like some other words in your Rule it has been left on the sidelines and replaced by more modern concepts. Self awareness is perhaps the most obvious because being humble is not just about imagining ourselves lower, but perhaps more about enacting equality.
Would you wish to be kissed after football match? It’s caused quite a row in Spain who won the cup but not the issue of equality. Of course, I’m not sure any country would be able to claim it had got that fully worked out, but in some ways, the issue of sexual harassment arising in Spain has granted it more exposure than if it was Iran or UK, for example. It’s now a year since street protests began in Iran over the death of a young woman considered to be wearing the wrong clothing, or rather not wearing the right clothing. In that year many others have been killed and injured in the resulting protests. Some consider what they wear to be a sign of humility but surely that is only true if it is freely chosen. Equality is based on informed choice.
In the UK various events across the summer have celebrated Pride, often seen as the opposite to humility, but in this case the capital letter denotes a particular kind of Pride related to identity. Even though now acceptance of LGBTQ identities are more widespread in the UK this has not stopped violence against those embracing such identities. In a country of choices some choices are still considered more equal than others.
Pride
Times change and 5th century Europe was a different place to the one of the 21st century. And so humility was the word you choose for your 12 steps. Self awareness seems to balance both humility and pride saying ‘I am not greater than you but I am your equal’. In that equality I can be gracious, grateful, and generous. I cannot be these thing freely if I am forced to do them from a down-trodden position. As it is I can choose to do them from an equal position. We are not forced to follow poor leaders but welcome the chance to travel with our equals.
‘Follow me’
And so, if I might suggest a rewrite, the 13th step is equality, faced full on.
From my remembered bible: Jesus said ‘Come with me’.
Let us start from a position of equality, one step at a time.
From a Friend of Scholastica, in Longdendale, 03.09.2023
I’m back from wandering for a bit so perhaps I’ll manage to get back to blogging about your Rule again. How frustrating it must have been to have monastics in the community who seemed to loose the point so often. There’s more than one way of wandering in community.
I’ve never managed to write about chapter 2 of your Rule, which is about the leadership of a community. Partly because I didn’t feel equipped to do so and partly because, whatever the community, it’s a tough subject these days. So I’ll try to give it a go now, although I am an imposter myself.
I haven’t been for an eye test for a while. I remember when I got one in my teens and spectacles were first prescribed. I said to my mother from our kitchen ‘So that’s what the end of our garden looks like’. Even with spectacles, I have for a long time, been aware of the planks and I’ve got good at squinting round them as we all do. They are a constant.
The eyes have it
So how will anyone lead with a massive great beam projecting from their eye? You must have found this to be a hindrance too. Your Rule is said to have been a departure from the usual power play of the post-Roman world, reminding the community as it does of the leadership of Christ. Of course that’s not easy to adopt either. Western Christianity is full of examples of leadership that claim to be Christian but what sort of Christ do they reflect?
For example, recent attempts to amplify the voices of survivors of Church Abuse are to be commended, but quite frankly why is this taking so long?
Chapter 2 is a long chapter. It wanders about, and includes all sorts of stuff like physical punishment ‘for those that err’ and I don’t think you meant hesitate. Such action would be unthinkable in our own context. Yet stories still emerge of those who have endured physical assaults by bad leaders. In such cases it is the bad leaders who need rooting out.
Ribbons on Roughfields
It seems to me it’s easy for bad leaders to fool people. This accounts for some of the imposter syndrome in any humble would-be leader. We look at others and too often our own sense of inadequacy comes flooding back. To tell us to ‘lead like Christ’ is small encouragement in a setting that has Christ emblazoned in glory on the ceiling everyday and only on the floor with a bowl and towel once a year.
The community that yearns for Christ like leadership needs to keep up the search for Christ in the everyday. Christ in the kitchen, Christ in the cleaning, Christ in the listening, Christ in the welcoming. If a would-be leader cannot translate this into Christ in the meeting, Christ in the negotiating, Christ in the board room, Christ at the dispatch box then that’s not Benedictine leadership.
The real response to the call to Benedictine leadership is to be good enough. There’s probably no such thing as the perfect leader. But there is real leadership in owning a sense of inadequacy, a real discussion of feelings and reactions and in celebrating the success stories of the community. There’s always a need to keep on travelling.
Bowl at Stanbrook Abbey, Wass.
From my remembered bible: The first shall be last and the last shall be first.
Grant us all a holy life.
A Friend of Scholastica, writing in Longdendale, 24th July 2023.
I usually start with one word, but this phrase caught my eye this morning. The cenobites are the chosen when it comes to your Rule. It might be argued that the Rule is hope enough, but then ….
Many people eat potatoes (if they can afford them) but few people have a diet made up entirely of mashed potato. Of course even mashed potato can be dressed up as bubble and squeak but however much you like mashed potato from time to time the urge to break out for a chip or roastie will come upon even the most dedicated mashed potato lover.
So too with cenobites. It’s not now a word in common use but it refers to those monastics who live under a rule and the leadership of an Abbot in a stable community. Your Rule is for them.
Having tried the solitary life yourself you advocated for communal life. I’m pretty sure you must have wandered about a bit too, but you advocated for the settled life. You promote a path of stability lived in common with others.
I’m not all that fond of mashed potato but I’ll eat it. This week saw the #nationalfishandchipday and that’s something I’d celebrate any day of the year (suggestions for a Saint of fish and chips welcome). I wander from one fish and chip shop to another and particularly enjoy visiting those that have won awards from Shap to Kilmarnock. But I do usually wander back again and settle in the valley and listen to the geese.
Good food for wanderers
I’m not a good cenobite. But I’m getter better at being an anarchist, at least being a follower of Holy Anarchy. My friend, Graham wrote the book and talked about it on line a week ago. You can watch it here.
So why do cenobites need Holy Anarchy? Because they need a change from mashed potato. I can admire cenobites but I still need a more varied diet. Mostly I need to live with those who are committed to recovering nonheirarchical affirming and creative forms of community in which everyone can flourish, that uses language creatively, that is willing to unpack the abusive aspects of past behaviour, that isn’t bound by the ‘that will never work here’ creed, that doesn’t consider my body parts an obstacle to my calling. I’m looking forward to the #NationalFishandChipAwards and I hope you are too, you lovely cenobites.
Food of the gods
From my remembered bible: Jesus said ‘I will show you how to fish’
Give hope to the cenobites!
From an Friend of Scholastica living in Longdendale.
At times I find it a struggle to read the Rule. It’s long (even the short bits) or at least longer than my attention allows, and boring. It’s easier to go out into the valley and look for fungi or geese or something unexpected.
I know that Benedict’s Rule is followed by a lot of people and at its most basic level I follow it too. I stick to the bits I remember and come back time and again to ‘Listen’. The rest of it I dip into now and again but sometimes I just leave it.
A table prepared in Roughfields, Longdendale
I first encountered people who did Liberation Theology in South Africa in the 1980s. I was visiting my brother, a mining engineer in the Transvaal. I went to see some people in Gaborone, Botswana, and they gave me the Kairos Document, a landmark in the opposition of the churches to Apartheid. I was hooked. My wishy-washy white liberal theology couldn’t stand the onslaught of the argument. It wasn’t just a case of not eating their apples, I found a much more political and justice orientated faith in South Africa, and I went back for more several times.
Eventually, after 1994 (we were there for the first democratic elections) I came back to UK determined to use my understanding in ministry. I practised contextual bible study using the remembered bible here for over 20 years, despite of vocal opposition and, more commonly, apathy. I wrote about my encounters with people using the remembered bible. I got on with the struggle.
These days my journey is gentler. I’m not so busy but I am still frustrated and angry with churches and church people who seem to think justice is optional, which is why these days I avoid them more. Justice is a still a fundamental aspect of my faith, and these days that means justice for those forced to live in poverty, for women and for those working to limit climate change. So, can you find this sort of stuff in the Rule of St Benedict?
I’ve not studied
it as long as some people so I’m not an expert. I’m an ordinary
person when it comes to the Rule but one with a background in
Biblical Studies and Theology so I know something about critical
questioning and interpretation. Even so, I’d say it’s not easy.
Benedict was writing in the 6th century for what were essentially self-sustaining local communities living together. Most of the time he’s concerned about what psalms to sing day and night and not about carbon footprints. Most monastic communities would have used local supply chains or grown their own produce. This was a pre-industrial age so no one was exploiting oil or discarding plastic willy-nilly. So of course, he couldn’t have written about that specifically.
The idea that a community should be self-supporting and engaged locally is now more popular again. So that does seem relevant even if other parts of the Rule are less easy to apply. Excommunication may mean something different now (say some) but it’s never meant much to me. Other say that they are able to apply the Rule to both men and women, but again it’s a struggle to see it in feminist terms. But it is particularly the lack of referents to justice that erk me. Leadership under the Rule is considered largely benign. It doesn’t self-promote, grasp, lie or abuse or do any of the negative things we equate with leadership failures today in both Church and State. Unrealistic you might think but then remember, this was the age of the saints. Benedict is writing about ideals. Everyone has a beam in their own eye.
Now we know that leadership easily opts for the self-promoting way and abuse of many kinds is a common coin across many contexts. This makes it impossible for some to engage with faith based communities at all.
In our own village, people from different churches and faith groups co-operate on a local level to support their neighbours with food, warmth, company and such like. This has been the winter of Warm Space in which a small bunch of those who are not economically active support other who are less economically viable by using free or reduce price produce from supermarkets owned by billionaires to make meals that our neighbours couldn’t afford to buy or cook for themselves.
Soup
There are those who ask me if this is real. Are their really people who can’t afford to live on basics, heat their homes and so on? Are they not just taking advantage of our generosity? When that happens I invite them to visit this village, just one small place in NW Derbyshire. I also suggest they try to get to know they people they live alongside better.
For me the Rule is
not my basic document when it comes to my response to issues like
this. I’m a biblical scholar and my go to faith resource is the
bible. ‘When I was hungry you fed me’. I’m not saying Benedict
wouldn’t do this too, although you might have had to wait outside
for a few days before you got let in. Benedict often quotes the bible
in the Rule, but he’s not a critical bible user. He’s not
concerned about who wrote it, when and with what agenda. Psalms are
for worship not political propaganda as far as he’s concerned.
Even so, it’s at a practical level we co-operate across faith divides in our village. We can serve bread with our soup but some wouldn’t take it from my hands if I blessed it and called it the body of Christ. Around the communal table everyone present agrees they don’t support this divide and want an end to it. What do I make of that? Why is the continuing authority of a few denying food to the majority, in both Church and State?
Making bread
This morning I made
some more soup. It was from left over stuff billionaires could afford
to pass on. The struggle is still in me, the struggle for justice I
mean. Will the Rule help me sustain it? I’m still not sure about
all of it but I will go back to basics and ‘Listen’.
From my remembered
bible: This is what God requires: do justice, love mercy, walk
humbly.
Although I started writing to you nearly two years ago, there were bits of your Rule that I missed out. I’m now returning to chapter 2 which is quite long so this is only about the first paragraph. It’s about leadership and especially the qualities of a good leader.
The Ruthwell Cross, an Anglo-Saxon sculpture remembering the ways of the Cross-Wise One
With Queen Elizabeth II having died three days ago, there’s a lot of talk around about leadership and especially about hers. This makes it timely to talk about the kind of leadership proposed in your Rule. Commentators agree that it wasn’t the kind of leadership that would have been familiar to folks in 6th century Europe. Look at it carefully and we can see it’s not the kind of leadership familiar to people in 21st century Britain either.
Community leaders are ‘believed to hold the place of Christ’. That takes me to the Jesus of the gospels, our human entry point into seeing God at work in the world. It’s a fair step from 1st century wandering Aramaic preacher to 21st century leader, on either the local or global stage. We talk about Christian values but often shy away from the radical nature of their demands.
Stone cross in field boundary, probably dating from 6-7th century, Cornwall.
Jesus was not upholding the status quo of the religious institutions of his day. He did not point to local or global political leaders as heralding the reign of God but to another kin-dom based on the activity of the seeds of small plants. Most of what is remembered of what he said (and it would have had to have been remembered before it was written down) turns the human ideas of that day and this upside down. He was regularly criticised for hanging out with the wrong people, often those on the margins of the the society of which he was a part.
We on the other hand take a pick and mix approach, choosing the bits we like and leaving the rest under the carpet. Former Primer Ministers may praise the late Queen’s honesty and humility and conveniently overlook their own lack of either of this qualities, for example. Or the new Home Secretary might say too many people claim state benefits in support of income whilst herself earning a six figure sum. These ways of speaking and acting are not, it seems to me, at all Christ-like.
Seen in Caithness, 2003
The leaders of the community you describe do not get praise heaped upon them, but neither do they get trolled. They are not expected to make a fuss but just get on with the role God has called them to. There is some similarity between this interpretation and the life of the late Queen Elizabeth, except for the reported 500 million pound fortune and the multiple large mansions. A Queen is after all a queen and inherits all the baggage of state and history into the bargain.
The monastic leader is not in this league, although eventually of course there were monastic leaders who got the wrong interpretation of leadership roles in the past, accumulated too much wealth or abused power in other ways. Some of these have been unmasked and the abuse of religious power was one of the things that contributed to the Reformation in Europe. Unfortunately too much of the Church is still rich making it difficult for some to see it as on their side of those on the social margins. It may be understandable to think that the worship of the Triune God requires our best; huge wealthy buildings and posh clothes, but there’s nothing in the gospels to suggest this and everything to indicate it wasn’t the way Jesus lived his life.
Closer view of the Ruthwell Cross, Dumfries and Galloway
When leaders are ‘believed to hold the place of Christ’ we might imagine him washing people’s feet, touching lepers, eating with excluded people and the like. These are not just things he did for photo opportunities. He actually lived like that: no home base, no comfortable existence. Most of our leaders, local and global, would not embrace such conditions.
It is said of the late Queen Elizabeth that when Pope Francis asked her to pray for him, she said she would. It’s the very least we can do and it’s an important beginning. If we want to see a greater Christ-likeness in our leaders then we must pray for them.
From my remembered gospel: The kin-dom of God is like …..
Pray for me as I pray for you.
From a Friend of Scholastic and the Member of the Lay community of St Benedict.
I know that summer is nearing it’s end when the valley becomes full of fluff and geese calling. The fluff comes from the thistles and willow herb so abundant here. As the deep purple of the heather wanes, the fluffy seed heads of these proliferant plants explode and set the next generation free on the wind. The geese are also getting restive. Morning and evening they call, their own Lauds and Compline ringing out across the valley as they encourage their companions. It will soon be time for a long flight.
Willowherb in Longdendale
There’s always something on the move in the valley, from tiny bugs to large lorries, some more welcome than others. In chapter 61 of your Rule you explain the welcome that other monastics might expect when visiting a community. In your time too, people were on the move, looking for a place to put down roots and live alongside like-minded people. Although you earlier express your dissatisfaction with gyrovagues (those that wander about) in chapter 61 you seem more accepting that folks will wander about, and more ready to welcome those who do, providing they are not too disruptive.
I try not to be too disruptive……
As one of the more disruptive ones, that made me laugh. Summer, is for me a time of wandering (but then Spring, Autumn and Winter may be as well!). Like the geese I tend to keep my liturgy simple, morning and evening, thanks, reflection and commitment to the valley and the day. I visit my favourite places, watch the sun cross the sky or some other weather, plant my feet on familiar paths. I have snippets of psalms to accompany me and I know the Watching One is awake in the hills (Psalm 121).
A friend reused this old lamps from Bambi to make plant pots.
From time to time I stop on someone’s doorstep: the community foodbank perhaps, to take a turn in deliveries whilst someone else is on holiday. After finding some treasure in a skip I delivered that to my friend who has a reuse, recycle and repurpose shop in the high street. Once a month I join a small group of repairers who try to puzzle out how to extend the life of items bought in by other villagers to the Repair Cafe. So far I’ve eaten more cake than repaired things.
Cake at the Repair Cafe
How disruptive was I? Well, you’ll have to ask the others about that. Meanwhile, I’ll keep company with the geese.
From my remembered bible: The Watching One is always awake.
Watch me as I wander.
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
I am writing to you. It’s one of my occupations. I’m not sure if it’s one of my roles but that’s what I’m going to write to you about today. The bible reading/remembering today was the story of Martha and Mary. Well, actually a small bit of it. Like most of the gospel we only get small snippets of information into the daily life of Jesus and those who followed.
Everyone in a family has their roles, so too anyone in a community and your Rule has loads on that. But most of all you say it’s not competitive. For example, when the Deans are chosen in chapter 21, it’s for wisdom not rank. Yet as humans we are obsessed with competition. So too with interpreting Martha and Mary. In Luke’s words even Jesus gets hung up on it: Mary has chosen the better part.
At Talbert House, Poperinge
I’m suspicious about the gospels (or any religious text really). Luke is seen as a ‘good editor’ for women so why did he write this nasty little snippet in which Martha understandably gets upset when tired and Mary gets commended for the better part which ‘won’t be take away from her’ but ultimately is (i.e. women are stripped of their right to equal discipleship by the Church)? There are a few options but most have the get out clause: sexists society, sexist Jesus.
John comes in later with a different snippet on the family: Lazarus dead, Mary grieving and Martha announcing Jesus as ‘The One’. Different tensions, different words, but still the roles get taken away. Whatever way you look at it, Martha and Mary do not come out of the written gospels with their roles as equal disciples with the named male disciples in tact, at least according to traidtional Church Theology.
Today I played the unassailable role of organist at the small church in the village. Anyone can preach (today my husband) but not everyone can play the organ. Most of the year now it stands in the corner gathering dust. I can play it. I learnt years ago and it still gives me a huge lift in my mood to sit there and thunder out a good tune (even if I do it rather poorly). So you’d think I’d be happy, and certainly as small communities go this is a delightful one.
This morning’s instrument
But I’m still left with my Martha and Mary questions and much besides about roles in any community. There have been and will be many wise ones who will not be appointed to appropriate roles because someone else will get the job due to bribery, favouritism, phobias and other corruptions. Even in the death defying communities that the church is supposed to be, the status quo will predominate. Someone will be slow to embrace change and that will trip us all up.
In my rememberings of Martha and Mary they were carers for Lazarus, the non speaking member of the family who died in unspoken circumstances: the one who gets called out from his own tomb by the Tomb Quitter. These two sisters knew each other well and if 1st century caring is anything like 21st century caring they were both exhausted. One makes and bakes, another sits and listens: roles should be made for us but in family, or community, life is not always like that. Even Jesus struggles to hold the tension together, making promises about discipleship that the Church will eventually fail to honour for centuries.
There was a moment in my organing this morning when I pulled out the trumpet stop in the middle of a verse and blasted it out, because it had all got too comfortable. We were singing ‘Jesus Christ is waiting’ and that moment where it says in the lyrics ‘I am angry too’ we all sounded too nice. This was my ‘hymn of the pandemic’ and I’m still angry, so I let an 8 foot trumpet rip for a couple of lines and felt better. It’s probably a sign that I am completely unsuited to any role in community.
Pulling out the stops
From my remembered bible: ‘I am like a green olive tree’ (Psalm 52: they are known for longevity in harsh climates).
I am angry too!
From a Friend of Scholastic and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
