community – Page 3 – Notes from Bambi

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.

Remember

Dear Benedict

We’re at that time of year we keep for Remembrance. It something that, having started up about 100 years ago, has gathered pace recently. I called today’s correspondence Remember because there’s a lot of that in your Rule. Of course you can turn to the text as often as you like if it’s accessible but memory also plays a part in living by the Rule. There are some bits I remember better than others, that see sort of foundational, like the beginning. Working backwards is harder as I don’t always get to the end.

Just one of thousands of names remembered on the Menin Gate at Ypres

Which brings me to a few thoughts about chapter 69 and not defending other community members.

Like others following the Rule today I find myself looking at the commentaries and reflections published by those doing their following in different circumstances to me. Some are helpful, some less so. On the whole what I find unhelpful is a sort of detached ‘suck it up’ instruction. ‘Get on with it’ is not a very good encouragement to keep going in community if it seems difficult. Yes, I accept that hardship and challenge have their place in developing resilence in adult life. But so does justice and if I might be so bold as to say so, I find you a bit light on that, and some of your more recent followers seem like that too.

Perhaps you have all lived in ‘good enough’ communities. Maybe no one abused their power and everyone got on as well as they might. Goodness flowed and mental, psychological and spiritual health were available in abundance. I suspect that’s somewhat niave especially when interpreting chapter 69.

‘Don’t get caught up in the conflicts of others’ we are cautioned by one commentator. Well here I am again failing at living the Rule of St Benedict, me and many others too, if that really is what you meant.

At a Make Poverty History demonstration in Edinburgh in 2005

For the last 20 days an ordinary man has been on hunger strike outside the Foreign Office in London, silently and with as much dignity as possible, asking for his wife, being held hostage in another country for over 6 years, might come home. I’m not related to him. He’s not a member of my family. I don’t live near him. I’ve never met him. But I have writen to him several times and I am caught up in his unjust situation.

He’s just one of several examples I could point to. A number of my former colleagues still contact me to discuss the injustices they experience, bullying and other forms of power abuse, in their ministries, often because there are unjust silences held over such issues. Don’t talk about it. Endure. These are not healthy messages.

But it’s not clear that chapter 69 recognises this. One commentator tells us that life is not perfect. Indeed it is not. But it is one thing for life not to be perfect and quite another to stand by and see others destroyed by the abuse of power in communities.

As I write this COP26 in Glasgow is nearly running on empty, as one rewrite after another waters down the language of change that is required to really tackle climate change. This is a global abuse of power. Once again the most vulnerable loose out. Are you really saying in Chapter 69 that I shouldn’t take sides in any of this.

For me that’s a direct contradiction to the gospel where Jesus encourages his followers to side with the vulnerable and marginalised. Why would we not do that? Why be bystanders when we could make a difference for justice?

I’m not planning to escalate a community conflict but neither would I be willing to stand by and see injustice go unchecked. In my remembered bible, there’s a story about a widow and an unjust judge. The widow keeps pleading and the judge keeps ignoring her. Yes, she seems strong, but the judge in the story really is a sod! Jesus makes it quite clear that God is not like the judge and by extension we should not be either. But equally we should not just stand by and see the widows or similar in our communities just take it because it will make them stronger. I shudder at that thought. It is when the churches have been silent on issues of justice, particularly those within their own communities that they have failed in their gospel witness.

Remembrance bring us face to face with the outcomes of the escalation of global conflict, and urges us towards peace. But peace and justice have to go hand in hand. In the psalms I remember they even kiss.

One hundred years later in a small cemetery in northern France

I hope I won’t be violent in community, but I also hope I’ll not be standing by while power is abused and people are damaged. Chapter 69 and some commentaries on it may need a rewrite.

From my remembered bible: Justice and peace join hands

Help me to remember and to live justly.

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

Wrong!

Dear Benedict

In chapter 70 of your Rule you write about physical violence between monastics. Clearly not something to condone, you complete the chapter with the quotation: ‘Never do to another what you do not want done to yourself’.

I’m not sure what size your community was or how many monastics gathered together in a community following your Rule in general through the ages. Some reports suggest early communities of about a dozen, but later ones rather bigger. Probably it varied and probably the interpersonal dynamics couldn’t necessarily be predicted either. But essentially your Rule on this is for a community gathered in one limited place under a leader. In our time it’s common to speak of the global community. For this fortnight the world is attempting to gather as a community in Glasgow for COP26, a very different sort of community, but it is this one I am thinking of when I read chapter 70 this week.

Team Lees-Warwicker crossing the border in 2012, on Hannah’s End to End.

You were concerned about the way monastics treated each other. To make community work, physical violence needed to be contained. To back up this part of the Rule you used the quote I mentioned. But in our world we are constantly behaving like this, especially in respect of climate change. None of us wants an uninhabitable earth but we all contribute to the warming of the planet, thereby inflicting harm on each other: like a slap in the face.

It’s a difficult subject because it requires insight and self reflection; not something we all welcome. Those who say ‘I used reusable milk bottles when I was a child so it’s not me’ may genuinely believe that they are faultless when it come to contributing the carbon emissions. Unfortunately each of us belongs to a bigger community and through our shared membership we are inheritors of its history for carbon emissions and other planet warming activities. I may not take long haul flights every week but I still have a part in my country’s carbon footprint. My personal commitment to reuse and recycle is important but we also have collective responsibilities.

Janetstown in Caithness 2019: the whole world in not ‘mine’

Most people think they try to be kind or helpful to others. It is rarely enough. The Rule is not about some bland inoffensiveness that will get us all through life. It’s about a positive choice to live with others and see them thrive. And as far as climate change is concerned it is not enough to smile and suck our reusable straw. We must work on what it means to not do to another, country or continent, what we do not want done to ours. Rising sea levels: no thanks. Not for my island home or yours.

Our shared sense of community needs to get bigger and bigger.

From the remembered bible: Love one another.

Enlarge my understand that I may act justly.

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

PS: The blue trousers have walked many miles, including taking part in at least 2 End to Ends.

Zeal

Dear Benedict

I’m still working backwards through your Rule and that has bought me to zeal. Like other words and concepts in the Rule, it’s not all that commonly used now. I remember zeal, it sort of rhymes with congeal, from a song in my childhood – but that all I remember about the song.

Zeal is a word for religious or spiritual enthusiasm, or commitment to a cause. You distinguish between good and bad zeal, but I think there’s probably also lukewarm zeal and fluctuating zeal, or at least there is in my experience. I expect you’d have them on the bad side of the zeal continuum but their presence is a sign that zeal is not clear cut, not one thing or the other but like most of our motivations, wanders about a bit.

I’m familiar with fluctuating zeal having moved from being highly zealous to indifferent and exhausted. In my experience, my mental health has a significant effect on my zeal. Tiredness also always decreases my zeal.

In your Rule, zeal should be directed towards love and service of others. In a community this can create a web of good zeal that holds everyone together. When a community becomes dysfunctional then the connections made by good zeal begin to fray and come apart. Some members may still be practising good zeal but not everyone. Gradually those members will find their good zeal drains away and as that happens the less good zeal builds up resentments, apathy and so on. These take over and it’s no longer a community, just a bunch of people who have lost their zeal.

At the moment the autumn migrants are coming into the valley: geese, swans and redwings amongst others. A local group alert me to their sightings each day. I walk along the local paths where a lot of fungus are now bursting out. The migrant birds hold together in their zeal. One by one they pass the leadership of the group onto the next bird who swings on ahead to guide them all on the next leg of their very long journey. Occasionally I see one of two birds fall off the back or sideways, tired and looking to rest.

May it be so with us, each taking a turn at guiding and encouraging, and may we live together in zeal in the valley of hope and love.

From my remembered bible: Look at the birds of the air.

The zeal of the Holy One will do this…….

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

Endings

Dear Benedict,

When I last wrote to you about your Rule I started at the beginning, as indeed most folks might. This time I thought I’d start at the end, which is more like me.

A sign on the Trans Pennine Trail that suggests East and West are not very far apart

I’ve been trying to find out about you, but apart from your Rule no one seems to have that much to say about the real you. Every thing I read suggests you were a good chap, which in itself makes me a bit suspicious. Something I read suggested you left school at 14, probably right and proper to your time and class but no something to be congratulated on these days, unless you eventually become a rich entrepreneur. At 14 you had religious aspirations, wanted to know about your place in the universe, to learn stuff, to pray and worship God. It’s not as uncommon as you might think these days either. A recent survey found 51% of young adults said they prayed regularly. Indeed younger adults were more likely to pray than those over 55.

The article didn’t take into account the ways in which prayer changes during our lifetimes, but change it does. I’m now 62 and I do not pray in the same way as I did 40 years ago. As I put my feet on the earth, one after the other, heel to toe as I walk through the landscape, so I pray, breathing gently and carefully all the while. Forty years ago I was in too much of a hurry to pray like that.

Your final chapter is really an encouragement to keep at it; something we all need. There are many things I have neglected over lock down. I’ve not played so much music, for example and consequently my efforts to get all the right notes in the right order are hampered. I still play, mostly with headphones on so as not to inconvenience others.

But the Rule is something that can only really be practised with others, which bring me back to you writing it down. History says you wrote it down near the end of your life, and maybe you borrowed some of the ideas from a few other rules. So for about 40 years or so perhaps you were thinking about it, planning it, starting a draft or two, working it out. I wish we had your works in progress, your odd notes on the Rule. I wonder what happened to those?

Did you share your thoughts with others, ask Scholastica or other monastics what you should leave out or put in? It seems to me that a Rule like this has to be a corporate effort. So it might more rightly be called the Rule of St Benedict and the Community he was part of.

Even with the last full stop on the page, this Rule is a work in progress in as much as it is not meant to remain a document but become part of the way we live, making daily life our pilgrim path. And so I will try to put my best foot forward in faith, even if this time, I’m walking backwards.

Song (by the Goons)

I’m walking backwards for Christmas,
Across the Irish Sea,
I’m walking backwards for Christmas,
It’s the only thing for me.

Walk with me!

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

Cross culture

The Nunburnholme Cross is a piece of carved, broken and mended Saxon stone housed in the Parish church of Nunburnhome near Pocklington in East Yorkshire. It’s unremarkable except for being there.

It’s not as well carved as the Ruthwell Cross, but it has a similar message. That message is in several layers. First the stone: the oldest part. Then the carvings: the age old story of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Then the destruction: torn down, buried and forgotten. Then the resurrection….

The Ruthwell Cross (from my End to End 2019)

This cross belongs to no one, just as the cross story cannot be claimed to belong to any one sect or group. I don’t know then it was damaged but I do know that Nunburnholme was damaged, by the decree of a deranged king, Henry VIII. In 1539 the monasteries were suppressed and least amongst these was a very small, some say the smallest, group of Benedictine Sisters living under the Rule of St Benedict in Nunburnholme.

Remains of the Nunburnholme Cross, Saxon, possibly 9th century.

I am linked to them. I am a Lay Benedictine and this blog is about living the Rule of St Benedict in the 21st century. Not that I’m very good at it. I’m like the damaged cross, rough and still here. I’m like the suppressed sisters: surplus to requirements.

1539 was a time of high culture wars when the establishment decided that ordinary people would toe the line and give up the rules and rituals they had tried to live by. Much of the country side was trampled as walls were knocked down, treasures were stolen and Religious paid off. So is that English enough for the new Culture Secretary, I wonder. It seems to me the current culture wars are, of course, very selective.

There are bits we like. Let’s keep those. There are bits we don’t like. Let’s hide, forget or destroy those. Only it doesn’t work like that. The bits you want rid of always come back and bite you on the bum. The Ruthwell Cross and the Nunburnholme Cross are witnesses to that.

There is a story, that goes back 2 thousand years in these islands, which has been interpreted in stone and on paper and in lives throughout that time. The basic story is still there, in the landscape, as people have tried to make sense of it and live it all of that time. It has welcomed and embraced people from countless different cultures from across the globe and is the better for it. There are still bits that are rough and rankle, at least with me. A recent post I read on Twitter lamented the lack of female deacons in the Catholic Church. Read on dear reader…

In the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church there are and always have been female deacons. It’s just some branches of that One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church don’t recognise them. Just like the story of the small group of Benedictine sisters at Nunburnholme has been forgotten, so have they. Just as too many good servants have been made surplus to requirements, so have they.

But just like those bits of unremarkable stone, they still exist and are still exercising their ministries in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. During the first lockdown in 2021 I read a book about female ministers of European origin finding new holy places on routes across North America in the 19th century. Surplus to requirements in one place they found space in another.

I am still finding a space, for holy service and holy communion. I have found the Lay Community of St Benedict is a good space in which to explore that. In my Bambi, the Mobile Chapel of St Scholastica, I celebrate, the forgotten sisters of Nunburnholme and I sing a song of high revolt to the interpretations that exclude and damage and destroy those who would follow the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So do we need a Rule for that? Maybe. I’m still working on that, as this blog will no doubt demonstrate.

Janet Lees, a friend of St Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict, after wandering through East Yorkshire. 19.09.2021.

Note: ‘One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church’ are words used in the service of ordination in the United Reformed Church.

Air

On Ascension Day I zoomed early morning prayers from the quarry for the Lay Community of St Benedict. This small greening space can seem like an outdoor room with the tree canopy overhead. Wind was blowing down the valley from the east, not too hard, but enough to ruffle emerging leaves. The birds were singing. It’s beautiful place for worship.

And the air there is lovely: clear and fresh. Air is essential for Ascension Day. without air, no ascension.

Of course without air, lots of others things would be missing too, as we’ve learnt so unkindly during this COVID year. Others are still caught up in the desperate need for air, a mix of atoms and molecules we can’t even see.

Right now air is one of the things that unites us with each other and with Jesus. That sense of being united in one breath is vital to our community building. Right now all across the world, people need to remember that we breath the same air.

On a very clear day in Longdendale, with the air is very clear and the reservoir is being a huge reflecting pool, all of heaven and earth open up to what I call The Mighty Blue. May we be open to that too, to the sharing of the air and the dancing through it, to the breathing in and out, to the unity of God and humanity. To the Air!

From the remembered gospel: Jesus blessed them.

Bless us with earth, fire and water, but most of all bless us with air!

JAL: Longdendale, 13th May 2021, Ascension Day.

#PostingPeace

My friend Doug has written a book about social media. Like The Rule of St Benedict it tackles some of the issues about how we live in our age. Here’s my review

Posting Peace: Why Social Media Divides Us and What We Can Do about It by Douglas S. Bursch

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Written with passion and energy about Christian engagement with social media and especially about our need to ‘Post Peace’ rather than contribute to the increasingly divisive nature of the world of the internet. It’s a worthy project, both in the US where the book originates and in other parts of the world like the UK, where I live. We can, all too easily, find examples of increasing hostility, hate and division, fed by social media. And some of them we write ourselves.
It is to this that the author, with his experience in things techy has paid attention. He has reflected on the bible and shared his testimony in the hope that we, his readers, will take up his challenge to Post Peace.
The book is full of sound material and each chapter ends with helpful questions for the reader’s reflection as well as two challenges to Post Peace. Although I’ve not yet tried any of them, I have been changed and challenged by the book. Firstly, I am more attentive to the thoughts and feelings that my engagement with social media evokes. I notice what makes me sad, angry, confused or hopeful. I enjoy being part of Mushroom Twitter and have learnt how to recognise many fungi as a result of my engagement with social media. But is that enough?
Here in the UK we also have #BLM and #MeToo. Recent examples of violence against women, particularly the death of #SarahEverard mean I cannot with integrity remove myself from social media use. Doug has helped me to consider how God is calling me to use the space for reconciliation: it’s a work in progress as far as I’m concerned. In this respect I’d have found it more helpful to have chapter 10, on justice and reconciliation, nearer the front of the book.
During the COVID19 pandemic the global connections of social media have enriched my life. I will continue to reflect on the need to Post Peace and enjoy following the author and others, not only people I agree with. If you are also concerned for the polarisations seen on social media and are looking for a nudge towards a greater awareness and practice of reconciliation on line, then I commend this book to you.

@Bambigoesforth

From the remembered bible: Go out joyfully, advance with peace.

Peace be with you

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

Anniversary!

Dear Benedict,

I’m writing this on the eve of the second anniversary of my End to End walk in 2019. I started at Land’s End on 2nd April and finished at John O’Groats on 12th August of that year: 1110 miles in 117 days. It is the anniversary of my full profession as a walker.

It had taken me 60 years as a novice to fully embrace the walking way. My End to End (also called LEJOG) had been proceeded by many other walks both long and short, some alone, some in company. I’d been working up to it for sometime. I’d supported Bob and Hannah when they walked their LEJOGs, in 2003 and 2012. A sort of mini walking community: The Community of the Good Traveller.

Holy Week is a good time to remember that travelling community, it’s origins and experiences. As we remember, this is my body, I remember what it feels like to walk more than you think you can. For others ‘This is my body’ will recall other physical experiences. None of us are disembodied cells and neither was Jesus.

From tomorrow I’m going to leave off writing to you for a while, but I couldn’t go without remembering this anniversary of profession. Not quite what monastics mean, I know, but I think of you and your embodied lay community (Rowan Williams reminded us about them being a lay community in his recent talk) and all the different professions that contributed to it. So too our Lay Community has discovered many different gifts and skills during this lock down year.

During my adult lifetime I’ve discovered many gifts myself and my contribution to the Community of the Good Traveller has changed over time, and will change again I’m sure. At the moment I’m an admirer of nature, recording my local wildlife sightings, making every step count.

If I don’t write for a while, I’ll not have forgotten you. I’ll take my remembered Rule with me and reflect on it. As a result of our correspondence there’s more I remember this year than last. There’s also those bits I’ve left out so far, still pondering them, particularly those sections on leadership. I’m not alone in still wondering what kind of leaders we need now. Ones of truth and integrity maybe obvious, but it’s clearly not as straightforward as that.

When thinking about leadership, too often we look to the Great Men, and now even occasionally to the Great Women of the faith. It’s good to know they’re there, members of the Community of the Good Traveller. But I’m looking for the more ordinary, dusty road traveller, hot cross bun eater.

I remember Margaret and Brian with love: their hospitality, affection, creativity and friendship. When we returned from South Africa in 1994, Margaret gently said, in response to our enthusiasm, ‘Not everyone can go so far, you know’, and six month later they were staffing the library of a theological college in Zimbabwe. It was a change from Twickenham High Street, but just as hot and holy.

But she was right, stay local if you can. We’ve stayed local all through the winter lock down, and hope to begin some further journeys later this month. But local is good, even in Royston Vasey (which, in case you’re not sure is the alternative name for the village where we live).

Recalling the opening titles of a certain ‘League of Gentlemen’

Meanwhile, I’ll ‘Walk on‘ and hopefully ‘Be back soon‘ (two travelling songs I sometimes sing).

From the remembered bible: Jesus said ‘Follow me’.

LEJOG Anniversary Declaration

I inhabit a space made by the Creator, lived in by the Son and animated by the Spirit.

That space is around me and within me.

I commit myself anew to The Community of the Good Traveller,

staying local where I can, treading gently on the earth, making each step count, ready to salute the species around me, and celebrate our place in the universe.

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