community – Notes from Bambi

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).

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.

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.

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.

Humility

Dear Benedict,

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.

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.

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.

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

Planks constant

Dear Benedict

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.

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.

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.

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.

Hope for the cenobites

Dear Benedict,

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.

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.

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.

Struggle

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.

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?

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.

May everyone be fed.

Janet Lees in Longdendale, 04.03.2023

Leadership

Dear Benedict

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.

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.

Janet Lees, Longdendale, 10.09.2022.

Summer

Dear 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.

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.

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.

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.

Janet Lees, Longdendale, 28.08.2022.

Roles

Dear 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.

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.

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.

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.

Janet Lees: 17.07.2022, in Longdendale.

Build

Dear Benedict,

Yesterday we gave our toy bricks away. Some of them I’d had since a child and some were from my daughters childhood, but they never date. We passed them onto a child, aged 9, who arrived from Ukraine on Tuesday, a country that will require substantial rebuilding.

Look around our world and you see a lot of that: there’s a lot needs rebuilding. I expect you found that too. Its wasn’t all picturesque ruins even then. I’m not sure there’s really any such thing. After all the ruin of anything has a complex story to tell as evident for example in the Grenfell inquiry.

Walking along the canals of Britain I’ve seen many extremes. Some things are rebuilt, some are pulled down, some places are rewilded, some are chopped down. There are disused things, like railway lines, that are reused for traffic free paths, while other sections got swallowed up when the M1 was built. A railway route existed between London and the North of England. It was called the Great Central Railway but it was closed so now HS2 starts the process all over again.

All of this made me thing of chapter 57 about Artisans in the monastic community. These were skilled people who could make stuff but the point was they had put that skill at the disposal of the community. Therefore it was directed by the leadership of the community and any benefit accrued was for the community. The artisan was expected to be humble.

It sounds quite sensible until inequalities start to creep in. The leadership might keep more of the artisans products than they should for themselves and the profits are not all given back to the community for decisions about what to do next, for example. The artisans may be encouraged to be humble but what about if their gifts are misused or they are taken for granted. The chapter is not just of concern to the artisans who’s work is under consideration, but for everyone who is concerned for a fair community.

Such are the challenges in community. After all, as we regularly hear these days, it only takes one bad apple. We can rebuild stuff, we can rewild places, but we have to see it as a benefit to everyone. It seems that some businesses that contribute most to human induced climate change wish to be excused some of the responsibilities or receive greater compensation. It’s as if they don’t believe that having a thriving planet is in everyone’s interest.

Building is therefore a complex subject. You go as far as to suggest that monastic artisans should under cut the market price compared with prices outside the monastery. But what if those outside do not have the same support as the monastic artisans and have more overheads from high rents or a profit driven supply chain? If these artisans are under cut by the monastery then they may be driven out of business and into poverty. Not for the first time I find your rule lacking in an understanding of justice, but maybe market forces didn’t seem as complex in your day.

Any worker should do what they can to retain their integrity, but that can include calling out unjust situations or unsafe conditions. ‘Artisans are doormats’ is not an attractive slogan in a monastic community or anywhere, particularly when we regularly see the product of unsafe working or unjust labour laws.

At school I was told by the class bully in a pottery lesson that I should smash up the clay figure I’d made as it was ‘too good’ and that was somehow ‘unfair’ to everyone else (including him of course). I didn’t. I still have it to remind me of some of the challenges of being an artisan in a community.

From my remembered bible: a wise person builds on rock

May we have the integrity to build justly.

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

Janet lees, 03.07.2022, in Longdendale.

Human

Dear Benedict,

Back from our long Spring/Summer Walk I think I better get back to writing to you, about your Rule and living with it in the 21st century. Two human beings many centuries apart, I wonder what we would make of each others lives? You a monastic, me a lay Benedictine in a very different world, both of us wondering about how to be human in community.

At the moment our society is going through a very divisive phase. There are many different attempts to glorify ‘us’ and demonise ‘them’ when in fact of course we’re all members of one race: the human race. Such attempts have been ongoing throughout history. Each Empire has given rise to folks who think they are in some ways superior to another set of people. Within each set rules have developed that segregate, exclude and disadvantage some on the grounds of specific characteristics: for example sex, race, ability, sexuality, gender and income.

Walking seems like a simple thing. The majority of the population can do it and it’s a form of movement seen us defining human evolution, until of course you can’t do it or not very well when all sort of obstacles and challenges appear and you are no longer in the mainstream. At that point discrimination steps in and all the ‘non-walkers’ or ‘poor-walkers’ are excluded from quite large parts of life because of their lack of bipedal motion or their difficulty with it. It’s just one example. One that from a position of current privilege (I can walk) I have experienced the world recently having walked to London and back.

Along the way I meet many other folks and interacting with them found of course that I had more in common with some than others. It was ever thus. Religion is one thing that currently gets bad press. ‘I’m not religious’ countless people tell me. Some add a story of having fallen out of the church or feeling they got pushed out. Mostly religion comes out of it poorly. It was experienced as a set of dogmatic rules and a straight jacket to behaviour that was applied without care or concern by a hierarchy of leaders who were later found, too often, to be suspect at least and dangerous at worst. So much for religion then.

But religious or not, many people share stories and embedded in most of these is a thorny issue of identity. ‘I used to be…’ is a commonly encountered beginning. The one thing we still are, and cannot relegate to the past, is human. So what is it to be human and be united by our attempts to find identity in humanity?

Your Rule offers a group of human who want to live in community a way of living together to discover more about this. But it wouldn’t suit everyone of the humans I know. The idea of rules is coming into question everyday. What is legal or illegal? Can a person legally be illegal? I wonder what it is we don’t like about ourselves that means we want to define people like this.

In a week of weeks this business of being human came up in many forms. A small group of people, whether legal or not, were to be put on a plane, whether they wanted to be on it or not, and taken to another country, whether they wanted to go there or not because another group of people, human like them but not subject to the same rules, had decided, without asking even more people, that it was a good idea, whether legal or not.

Some of the other people who said they didn’t support it were religious leaders. It lead to a further ramping up of the debate about whether being religious and political was tenable or not. Now you need to know that some significant aspects of my faith formation happened in South Africa between 1984 and 1994, a time when the religious and political things was a major issue in that country. Religious leaders had said that discrimination on the grounds of race (and more specifically a way of governing called Apartheid) was morally repugnant and could not be defended on religious grounds. That it had been so defended by a white minority for a long time is a matter of record. It was, to some extent, down to the way people interpreted the bible, a religious things, but it was mostly about being human.

Earlier in the year, one of the leading opponents of that struggle against Apartheid died (I wrote about him then). ‘The Arch’, Desmond Tutu was quite a human but as a religious man he didn’t shy away from the link between religion and politics, and neither do I. ‘When White people came to Africa’, he, a Black African, used to say, ‘They had the Bible and we had the land. They said “Let us pray” and when we opened our eyes, we had the Bible and they had the land’.

It was my time in South Africa that influenced my interpretation of the bible the most. It has been living in Britain in the 21st century that has challenged me to use those interpretative skills the most, including amongst my religious siblings in an out of community. Our shared humanity is not negotiable when it comes to being religious. At the centre of it is One Human who I choose to follow. On the walk someone asked me about that.

A fellow traveller, he described himself as a Pagan and told me he’d been very moved by the companionship and community he’d experienced when taking part in the Camino, that 800 kms centuries old walk across the north of Spain known as the Way of St James. I was walking a few hundred kms on a route of canal towpaths and disused railways in England at the time, but it was my Camino. He asked me what I thought the essence of Christian faith was. For me that comes from me remembered bible: Jesus said ‘Love one another’. He also ‘Follow me’.

He told me he could understand the first but he wasn’t sure about the second point. Why follow? On a towpath or disused railway line this may seem redundant advice. The path has one direction and away we go. But life is not all canal towpaths or disused railway lines, as this week has amply illustrated. How we will decide our direction? What will be our moral compass?

Will it be the further accumulation of wealth and status? Will it be how to bend to rules to suit ourselves and disadvantage some other people? How could it be arranged that my direction is inclusive and encouraging to others such that we travel as fellow humans, thriving in each others company whoever we are.

Some say it’s like that on the Camino. I’ve never been so I can’t comment. But I have been End to End and on a lot of other paths. I have considered how to stop planes from taking off and what to do about food poverty in a rich country. I have though about other human beings, both known and unknown and whilst I’ve not always made the right decision I’m still following the Human One. I’m grateful to all those who keep me company, religious or not.

From my remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘Follow me’.

I journey this day in the name of the Human One

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