community – Page 2 – Notes from Bambi

Stranger

Dear Benedict,

Maybe stranger things have happened than Jesus rising from the dead, but for me that’s the new beginning. We celebrated together as a Lay Community this weekend and we said a lot of Alleluias.

It was a strange time to celebrate. It seems that the Easter message is still misunderstood even in the UK which claims a long back story with Christianity (it was probably brought here by the Romans in the first century). But this Easter the usual nonsense was rolled out to deter Christians from living life in community according to the faith we share. Foremost amongst these is the nonsense that Christians should not be political.

I’ve no idea what the dominant view was in the 5th and 6th centuries when you were just getting started. But there’s no doubt that the Rule you are remembered for is a political document as is the bible we share. The heart of the Rule is that ‘All guests should be welcomed as Christ’ for ‘When I was a stranger you welcomed me’ (chapter 53). It is this strange business of being a stranger that we stumbled over again this Easter.

A stranger is just someone we don’t know yet. A stranger is a person, a human being just like us. Unfortunately we have developed the unpleasant tendency of ‘othering’ the stranger, ostracising and excluding anyone ‘not like us’. We seem to be at our most vicious when it comes to strangers who arrive in boats and lorries unexpectedly. Aspects of our media and politics have developed very hostile narratives around such strangers.

In all my travels I have never found myself treated in this way, however unexpectedly I’ve turned up. I have sometimes been told my interpretation of Christianity is ‘too political’ sometimes in the oddest of circumstances. This usually means the hearer disagrees with my interpretation. I don’t think I’ve ever accused anyone of an interpretation that was either ‘too political’ or conversely, ‘not political enough’.

Some of you will be rolling your eyes and saying ‘Yes, but…’ Not buts here. Of course the community could get filled up with strangers, who would then not be strangers. What is it that we can’t share?

Later this week I shall be experimenting with stranger status again as I set off with Bob on another long walk. This one was postponed since 2020 and will take us down to London and back. I will be a gyrovague once more, a rootless stranger looking for a welcome of sorts. Now you are fairly unhappy about gyrovagues in your Rule as I’ve mentioned before, partly to counteract the tendency for people just to roam about. You liked your settled community and wanted others to both enjoy and commit to it as well. But sometimes life causes us to roam and when that happens we desperately need not censure or exclusion, not resettlement camps in far flung places, but welcome.

From my remembered bible I was a stranger and you welcomed me.

Welcome us all.

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

The blog of the walk will be found here from 22nd April 2022, instead of the usual letters to Benedict.

Weak

Dear Benedict,

After a week of Covid19, I’m gradually feeling better: tiredness continues. What with other folks I know also testing positive it made me think a bit differently about Holy Week.

It’s hard enough being holy for a week without being wholly weak. But every week includes weakness. You allowed for Alleluias ‘except in Lent’ (chapter 15) and evidently that meant you were more generous with this practice than some instructors. So I’ll just fit in a quick Alleluia for weakness while I’m here.

It’s hard to celebrate weakness in a culture that hard on the soft aspects of being human. Even in this week of weeks the bits that could be seen as weak are edited to distance us from too much weakness.

A man arrived at the city gate on a donkey, like many did every week. Rather than see this as ordinary, let alone weak, a great cheering crowd is heard making a fuss about a king coming, however unlikely the beast. Some say the donkey knew: they are knowing creatures.

Tired, weary and as weak as you or me, Jesus climbs off the donkey and disappears into the underbelly of Jerusalem. When he reappears he’s sitting down, not standing, in the temple. Just watching, just waiting, just breathing, he notices ordinary things. There’s an ordinary woman who makes an ordinary offering. Easy to overlook that.

Easy to overlook the poor today even though they are still with us. To overlook the ones on pre-payment meters queuing at local foodbanks for food that doesn’t need cooking. The message seems to be weakness should be ignored. But not by Jesus who remarks that it’s ‘All she had to live on’. It’s still up to us to determine if it’s enough to provide pot noodles or whether we should entice anyone into making a greater fuss alongside the weak.

It’s a week in which weakness continued to surface in all kinds of ways. Coming to the end of his temper with things as they were: a fig tree with no fruit, a temple market place with no justice, who wouldn’t loose it, and let it loose to echo down history as weakness or what? I’ll add a quick Alleluia for that too.

In a weak moment he takes the towel and tries to show them what it’s really like being part of a squabbling community in a place of political turmoil. Alleluia for clean feet.

In a weak moment he takes bread, ordinary stuff, and tries to say something about the yeast infused stuff that feeds them and the fermented juice that runs in their veins over hundreds of years of running away. They miss a lot of it, as do we, unhappy about too much weakness. We squabble about who was and who wasn’t there, what was and wasn’t said, what it did or didn’t mean, instead of taking the stuff and sharing it. ‘This is my body’: Alleluia for that.

The Mount of Olives at night would have been a dark and isolated place. Not a place for sleeping or for lover’s to meet and kiss. Giving all his strength away, as he has been throughout his ministry, he is taken away in weakness. Alleluia for that.

From there on, everything tumbles away until stripped and bleeding, nailed and tormented, all that’s left is weakness. And perhaps that why we want to edit the weak bits, busy concentrating on getting the right ending rather than what it takes to get there. Who wants a weak leader, one with mental health challenges or physical limitations, a mistake-maker, giver-upper? No mask or put on face here. Only the agonised admission: it is finished. Alleluia for that.

My week will have weak bits, tired bits, uncertain and unconvincing bits. The answer will be ‘I don’t know’ several times a day. I’ll step away, avert my eyes, deny and prevaricate. And from time to time, I may just glimpse some holiness in all this and raise my feeble Alleluia.

From my remembered bible: There was silence

Alleluia!

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

Halfway

Dear Benedict

We’re now more than halfway through Lent this year, so no return to pancakes yet then. My eye was taken by chapter 53 about eating at the table of the Abbott or Prioress (is there a reason why Abbottess was not used?).

Part of the public ministry of the community was hospitality and that meant meals with the senior leadership team. It was, you write, more than just a show, it was where the real concern and care of the community was demonstrated.

It made me think about how we demonstrate our care and concern. I was listening to an online talk about church buildings being closed during lockdown, The speaker took the line that the Church had laid down its life by closing, to keep people safe. Given that large indoor events continue to have the ability to spread COVID19, at a rate that is increasing again in the UK, that’s worth thinking about some more.

I will probably never know if I had COVID19 because we can’t get any LFTs to check it out. But whatever it is, I’d want to protect anyone, particularly from the risk that is Long Covid. One of the things the Pandemic has gifted us is the opportunity to think again about our responsibilities to each others.

Community is built on how we regard each other. A recent ceremony to award participants in the film industry is a case in point. The leadership team appoints a court jester to lead the show who then uses it an an opportunity to make dubious humour at the expense of some of the participants, one of whom takes offence and hits him. It seems likely that neither participants highly regards the other.

It’s challenging to come back from a situation in which a relationship has broken down enough to turn violent. How could Ukraine trust Russia again, and yet as neighbours they will have to. Today Turkey invites them both to the top table, provides hospitality and an opportunity to talk. Let’s hope no one gets food poisoning.

Most of the monastic communities I have visited in the UK no longer seem to kept chapter 53 of the Rule: there is no separate table. Everyone eats together; monastics, leadership team, guests all at the same table. It is perhaps a sign of how our society has changed since you wrote your Rule. The best demonstration we can give of our care and concern for each other is for us all to eat together. May the second half of Lent be that kind of sign for us all.

Easter Day with the Lay Community of St Benedict, 2017

From my remembered gospel ‘Eat, drink’.

Sustain our neighbours: may we eat together in peace.

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

Changed

Dear Benedict,

Lent again here, I sigh….. tries to mumble a few pro-Lent lines and fails miserably. I don’t come from a tradition strong on Lent, whereas of course your Rule has plenty to say about Lent, particularly chapter 49 (OK, it doesn’t come after chapter 63: don’t @ me).

You recommend a continuous Lent and then shy away from it saying monastics are not up to that. Do make up your mind, please. If the purpose of Lent is change then if it’s continuous that surely risks no change at all, which is the antithesis to its purpose. You write of a holy and pure life surely knowing that a vain goal. It’s mostly this sort of stuff that makes me fall out with you. You assume ‘negligence’ and ‘evil habits’ without really any knowledge of context or cause.

The beginning of Jacob’s Ladder on the West Highland Way, 2019

There’s no doubt the Rule has changed me. Listen to a Lay community Podcast here to confirm that, just as Jesus and his disciples who made it to the mountain top for the Transfiguration were changed. But that wasn’t the end and more pressing business waited for them at the bottom of the mountain: a vulnerable family in challenging circumstances. It’s not an advert for washing powder, though I’d have to say that climbing to the top of mountains is way more exhausting in my experience than this group seem to find. No mention of huffing and puffing and tired muscles, all of which are what I mostly remember on routes like Jacob’s Ladder on the West Highland Way: hot and heavy going. Worth it, yes, but effortful.

Top of Jacob’s Ladder on the West Highland Way, 2019

So back to Lent… You say that the follower should inform the leader of the Lenten discipline to be undertaken. A sort of monastic safety system I think so that people don’t undertake things that would be counter productive or dangerous. Is intermittent fasting a good thing? Depending on what adverts you’re reading on your social media. Is leaving off social media a good thing? Depends what you’re doing on social media in the first place. The purpose of Lent is to change us, not just as individuals but as a whole community, which is a pretty big challenge in Lay life. Who is my community?

It seems likely that with several more weeks to go I’ll return to my negligent version of Lent with my daily dose of social media and chocolate. I’ll pour my heart into looking for local wildlife, keeping track of the seasons, and lament climate grief and violence in Ukraine. I’m pretty sure that it’s not the sort of Lent many people associate with the season, which is probably why I’ve not mentioned it, until now.

From my remembered bible: Jesus went into the wilderness for forty days and nights.

Stay with me.

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

Rank

Dear Benedict,

I’m looking out on another wet windy day in the valley. Although Storm Eunice has now blown through the trees are still tossing about and everything seems restless, finding it hard to resettle to their place in the world.

Some words change their meaning or emphasis and the idea of rank from chapter 63 of your Rule is like this. To you it just meant who had arrived first, who had been in the community the longest. The rank was just the number assigned from the first to the last. Its meaning has changed to be one of superiority or greater authority. A person has greater rank when they are given authority over others, regardless of when they arrived on the scene. It does seem to be a pervasive aspect of organisations: who is boss counts. Although the other meaning, the one you used, is not without problems, and can be used by early arrivals to stall or stymie change or progress in a community.

Rank: the rings indicate the number of years in the life of a tree.

As far as the trees are concerned, storms can change rank. Some of the oldest, biggest, most precious trees can find themselves felled. Neither gone nor forgotten, they have started on their ‘nurse log’ phase by which they begin to rot back into the earth, providing nutrients and refuge for many species in the process. They make it look easy, just lying their rotting, but for human beings the change in circumstances which come with different phases in our lives can be difficult. The urge to ‘pull rank’ can be hard to overcome.

Pulling rank: my fungus is bigger than yours!

Communities change and evolve as new responsibilities are shared out. We discover new skills in others and take on new roles ourselves. At some point we may embrace the challenge of the nurse log, sheltering and nourishing others as we decline and decay. It’s a noble calling.

From my remembered gospel: The first shall be last and the last shall be first.

May I rot creatively.

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

Responsible

Dear Benedict

Most chapters of your Rule include more than one line of thought or instruction, so it can be difficult, in today’s context to see which strand to pick up and follow through. To be children in a monastic community in the 6th century is not something that is replicated today. Our modern education system is very different, but essentially the idea of nurturing young people to take on adult responsibility is a common link. That only leaves us having to decide what adult responsibility might be and who has attained it….

Is spreading fake news a demonstration of adult responsibility, or telling lies in public office , or ramping up international tensions, or renegading on international agreements, or persecuting minorities, or ….(fill in other irresponsible acts perpetrated by adults in the world recently)?

I think our world of adult and child is not a clear cut as you might have thought it in your day, when children stood up for their elders and didn’t sit down again unless given permission (Chapter 63). I don’t mean children today are impolite, far from it. I just think we don’t measure childhood by such things, and adults can be quite impolite anyway.

Play is a key aspect of childhood, but you don’t really mention it, for children or adults in your Rule, which is a shame as I enjoy it a lot. Indeed it is said to be important to our well being. Perhaps you thought some of the aspects of life in the monastery were playful or could be executed in a playful way, like liturgy or gardening. In too many places children never get to play and adults make life grim either directly or indirectly.

in 2015 I went with some young people to see some of the grimmer side of life with a visit to the former Nazi concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenhau. A place were thousands perished and certainly not a place for play, the faces of lives cut all too short and their pitiful belongs have stayed long in my memory, as they rightly should. Our corporate annual remembrance of the horrors of the Holocaust is now something we see through the eyes of those few remaining who were then children and now adults in their 90s.

Which leaves open again the question of responsibility. Once the atrocities of the Holocaust were reveal many adults tried to evade responsibility for the events. Many children carried the weight of those events for the rest of their lives. It’s a very big example of the disconnect between adult and child responsibility but one which can find echoes in other ways in every community in which children take responsibility time and again as carers, for people of all ages, or bread winners and workers or peacemakers, often with little adult support.

It makes responsibility an everyone thing, especially responsibility for justice.

From my remembered gospel: Let the children come to me.

Shape me to fit my responsibilities, in ways both playful and serious.

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

Scrutiny

Dear Benedict

I’m not sure how many folks use this word ‘scrutiny’ on a daily basis. There must be many jobs and roles in which it remains an essential skill. Most days I confine my scrutiny to the natural world of Longdendale, examining fungi especially, but also inspecting any other things that attract my attention.

You mention scrutiny in chapter 2 of your Rule: it’s necessary to scrutinise the results of the leadership offered by those leading the community. We find out how effective their leadership is by its fruits in the community and that requires scrutiny.

So it’s a skill we need and a process we need to encourage, even if it seems challenging. It needs to be ongoing and perhaps it is also something that goes on under the radar some of the time.

Speaking of radar, not a concept that was familiar in the 6th century, I’ve been delighted to watch a young person I knew when I was a school chaplain enjoying success in her chosen career in a documentary on national television. This young person, still only 20 years old, was one of the team of anti-bulling champions we developed with the help of a national anti-bullying organisation. Now on her chosen career path she continues to exhibit those personal characteristics of honesty and integrity that stood her in such good stead then, even when under scrutiny in a much more pressured occupation.

Of course she is not alone. Our society benefits from the countless number of people who share their skills in community in honesty and openness. Indeed, I’d suggest it was essential to good leadership. What your Rule makes clear is that leadership is not about idolising particular people or setting them up on a pedestal, even if aspects of celebratory culture want it to be replete with glamour and press opportunities. Everyone, whoever they are, must be subject to scrutiny and that scrutiny itself must be thorough, honest and replicable.

Each day I go into the valley and look at the fungi. They grow very slowly. Other aspects of the forest flourish around them. Their presence is a sign of a vast network of activity going on underground: the Mycelium. The fungi I see above ground are just one small part of the whole body. They are part of the life cycle that appears for a short time, withers and fades, whilst underground the Mycelium network continues to hold it all together. May we bear just as much scrutiny.

From my remembered bible: Consider the Fungi of the Fields (or Lilies if you like).

May my actions bear scrutiny.

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

Talented

Dear Benedict

Like me, you use a remembered bible. At the end of chapter 64 of your Rule you refer to a verse: Matthew 24:47 ‘God will put this one in charge of everything’.

When I looked in a printed bible for the context I saw it was part of a small story about ‘a wise and faithful slave’ who was expected to ‘oversee the other slaves of the household’. Now you must understand that we read slavery differently to the way in which it was read in 6th century Europe. Too much of history has been about the exploitation of some human beings by others in systems called slavery, none of them as benign as these few verses suggest. No master had an good business owning slaves. That slavery was part of the Roman Empire and other administrations in the ancient world such that bible writers thought it acceptable to mention this, is not a reason to be uncritical of it now.

In similar ways your Rule has been subject to criticism for its treatment of children, even though physical punishment of children would have been commonplace in your day. Unfortunately cruelty towards children is still too common in our day and age for us to make such excuses.

If there’s one thing I expect from life in Christian Community, it’s being radical. I do not expect Christian communities to uphold unfairness or endorse cultural inequalities just because they are there, and I also expect them to seed this radicality into the systems and institutions that surround them.

O root of Jesse: some radical vegetables

Last night, on British TV, a Deaf woman won a major reality TV show, one that attracts millions of viewers each week. It’s a dance show. I’ve never seen it, but it’s glamorous and glitzy. Someone the public knows and loves is offered up as a trainee dancer and dancers with a professional dance partner doing a new dance each week. This time round several taboos were broken. In the final, one couple were a same sex pair of men dancing together and in the second couple one participant was Deaf.

So you see what I mean about the need for Christian communities to sow radicality. Why was two men dancing together ever thought unreasonable? Why had there not previously been a Deaf participant?

It seems that both of these sets of dancers has challenged the British public in new ways. The numbers of would be dancers who want to dance in same sex couples at local dancing schools and clubs has increased as has the number of people interested in learning British Sign Language (BSL).

BSL is the language of the British Deaf Community. I can only use a few simplified bits of it, but I do believe it should be taught in all British schools. That would be radical and it would break down a lot of barriers for British Deaf people. The Christian community would be a good place to start this radicalisation.

Would I change history? You bet. One dance partner at a time if necessary. But more than that, the community I’m interested in is radically inclusive. In that community anyone can dance.

From the remembered bible: That One comes on a day when not expected and at an hour no one knows.

O Root of Jesse, make me radically ready.

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

Ignorance

Dear Benedict

Most folks know how to open a door, you’d think. But seeing it as particularly important you dedicate chapter 66 of your Rule to this vital task. It’s not just any old door. It’s the door to the community, after all.

The door to Bromfield Gatehouse, Shropshire, which was one the gateway to a Benedictine community.

This week, walking in Suffolk, I saw lots of doors and I heard or read about others. The way we open our doors says a great deal about who we are and who we follow. I find it particularly interesting when the door officer (you call them Porter) charged with the initial hospitality of the community, are those who were previously welcomed in and who now slam similar doors in the faces of others. That’s not the Rule, and indeed there’s no excuse for ignorance, as you point out.

Door, from the beach at Aldeburgh, Suffolk.

Another thing that happened this week was the leader of the Lay Community said how much I reminded him of Frank Skinner. In fact he sent me a copy of Frank’s book .

Now Frank I and do have things in common. We both make jokes about Wolverhampton. But he supports West Brom and I support Spurs (in the nostalgic way one does remembering the glory days of the early 1960s). We also both pray and that’s what he writes about in his book.

He’s not the first comic from the Midlands I’ve been said to resemble. I was 18 when some other A Level students said I reminded them of Jasper Carrot (other comedians are available). I’ve always had an admiration for stand up and want to try it myself, up to a point. I do a brilliant one woman show that my husband is the one man audience for. But mostly I just keep walking.

Frank’s book reminded me of the many many ways we pray. I love Frank’s way of doing it. Some prayers are long and others are short but I think they are all honest. He says he prays like parking ‘You get as close as you can’. It’s a good aim; I’m not great at parking either. The book had me bubbling with laughter. I like to think God reacts to my prayers like that: the wordy ones with the wacky metaphors and the silent ones with the awesome views.

Prayer is a door thing. It’s about opening and for that we are each our own door opener, though one or more assistants may have been provided to get us started. Once we’re off it’s up to us. Like me, Frank uses a remembered bible. He returns to some bits more than once, like most remembered bible users, turning them over again, examining our own ignorance.

He considers the line ‘Hallowed be your name’ a few times. It is a puzzling one, well padded with ignorance. I look into the night sky and I’m humbled by all the names I don’t know. I imagine anyone who attempts any name for God in whatever circumstances scores at least a point for trying, even if it doesn’t seem so promising a start to the Prayer Police. Like Frank, the God I pray with is open to offers; friendship, love…

And so back to the door to the community. On the news a woman in Aberdeen gave a home to a family from Afghanistan. She opened the door and they went in. I wept and I’m sure many others did too. Of course there will be other people needing houses in Aberdeen. But this open door is just a start. Consider who you are and who you follow. Just open the flipping door.

From my remembered bible: I stand at the door…

Help me to open doors.

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

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?

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.