COVID19 – Notes from Bambi

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.

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.

Lent!

Dear Benedict,

As I plod through another day of COVID19 Lockdown, I am thinking about chapter 49 of your Rule, which is about Lent. You begin by saying that monastic life should be ‘a continuous Lent’. It has been suggested that this Pandemic year has been, more for some than others, a continuous Lent. And it’s true that is something few have the strength for, if indeed it is strength we need.

After I post this I’ll go for a walk in Longdendale, the valley where I live. It’s a very blustery day, and so I turn to my remembered Winnie the Pooh and the story of Pooh and Piglet going to visit Owl. It was while they were at Owl’s house, having tea and sharing stories, that a particularly strong gust of wind blew Owl’s house down. It was Piglet who saved the day by doing a very brave thing, climbing through the letter box and running for help (thanks to AA Milne).

How’s your remembered Winnie the Pooh this morning?

Going to Owl’s house is not an option today unless Owl is in your bubble. Pooh and Piglet would need to take a socially distanced walk. These limitations to social interaction make Lockdown hard, and they’re not really anything to do with Lent. Although prayer and abstinence are mentioned in your Rule (the traditional ‘giving it up for Lent’) there’s nothing about giving people up for Lent specifically (although joking is frowned on, I’m afraid).

I’ve not been giving people up for Lent, or given up being human for Lent. It seems to me that Lent is all about being human and our need for different things during different times and seasons. Last night I took part in the launch of a book to celebrate 75 years of Christian Aid. The whole zoom of 180+ people began with the question of whether or not we should celebrate this 75th anniversary at all. Was it a good thing that we’d needed this for 75 years and still do?

This book is published on 18th March 2021

Most agreed that it was the shared humanity that lies at the heart of Christian Aid that made it so memorable and vital to our life of faith today. The book is called Rage and Hope and will be published by SPCK next week. It seems to me that is what Lent is really for; to connect with our global family, to Rage against injustice and Hope for the living promise of Christ’s kindom. Don’t give that up.

From my remembered bible: Forty Days and Forty Nights, phew!

Acknowledge my rage, infuse me with hope!

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

Work!

Dear Benedict,

Chapter 48 is one in which you give a detailed account of the sort of daily labour generally expected in community. Once again you are thorough with hours marked out for all to understand. From bringing in their own harvest to quiet reading, everything is covered. Perhaps detail was important for this experiment in communal living.

Now nearly a year after the first COVID19 Lockdown in England, Lockdown fatigue is a real thing. It’s hard to maintain a timetable after all this time, even with a lot of encouragement. Emotions may be running high or low, apathy or anger may emerge in response to injustice. I always thought the third lockdown would be harder, due to the knock on effects of the previous two as well as seasonal factors and the looming anniversary.

Even so, we can become too obsessed with timetables and continued lockdown does give us some opportunities to see the way our time is often colonised by unnecessary activities as well. In pre-lockdown times it appeared too challenging to rein in the proliferation of meetings. Some role expectations ramped up and up. Leisure became a competitive industry.

In these days, simple things can help us reset ourselves: bake a loaf or a cake if possible, take a short walk, listen to some music.

Take time to make a tart: the Yorkshire rhubarb season is very short.

We are more than our work and life is not meant to be all work. Inequality plays a big part and survival might depend on it amongst the poorest. This week we’ve seen once again how inequality is promoted as a means of social control. This is directly contrary to your Rule, which was meant to ensure equal participation and responsibility.

Whilst it may seem harsh that those who neglect their duties, whether manual labour or reading time, should be punished it was consistent with your earlier sections and at the time added up to an honest attempt to create a harmonious whole. What of us now? It’s not just Lockdown that has put work and play out of kilter but it may give us opportunity to review and amend it. One things for sure, we desperately need to undo the bad work that inequality is contributing to communal distress. A leadership that lies and cheats is not going to create fairness and harmony, only more resentment and fear. In the last line of chapter 48 you have words we really need to hear. As for the sick or weak, the leadership ‘must take their infirmities into account’.

From the remembered bible: There is a time to work and a time to play.

In my apathy or anger, take me fairly into account.

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

Enough!

Dear Benedict,

I’m thinking about your chapters 44-46 which are especially concerned with accountability. Reading your Rule in 21st century some details are different: whipping youths who stumble over reading loud would not be allowed these days, thank fully. But the basic notion that being in community puts you in relationship with others to whom you are accountable is fundamental. You mention various places in which this accountability has obvious consequences: in worship or work, the chapel or the kitchen for example.

In our 21st century context work can look very different. Before lockdown there was commuting, now there’s zoom. There were visits to hospital, now there’s COVID19. Schools were open, now they’re shut, soon to open again. All this has happened in a society in which the notion of accountability has been changing. Some of that change is recent: in an emergency what does accountability look like, some might ask?

Books at the Savings Bank Museum near Ruthwell

But some of it has been going on for longer. To fly to far flung destinations or own a particular sort of car is to some an individual right, even if that damages the planet and we neglect our accountability to the poor. If we can make money at something does it matter if we impoverish someone else? To Benedictines it matters a lot.

This Lent I’m practising being human and accountability is both a welcome and an unwelcome aspect of human integrity. My humanity has a knock on effect to the way I respond to the humanity of others. I’m fortunate to have a warm, dry , safe place to live. This is a fundamental human need. I do not therefore think it acceptable that other human beings don’t have this. A landlord should not make money by renting an unsuitable dwelling. The government should not house asylum seekers in a place reported as unfit to house military personnel.

What do we do with our accountability? If we want others in our community to recognise our shared accountability, how can we do that? The main challenge of interpreting your rule today is this larger canvas. I could with hold ‘seconds’ to those who have not done their share of the weeding but what can I with hold from the dishonest landlord or those making unfair decisions in government. A society in which there is less accountability is a sicker one. How do we reinstate accountability to the civic agenda. It seems to me, enough is enough!

From the remembered bible: Do justice, love mercy.

Help me understand enough!

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

Not giving up!

Today is Shrove Tuesday, or pancake day, the day before Lent begins. I am not giving up pancakes today, or any day if I can help it.

The part of the Christian tradition from which I have come is not very strong on giving things up for Lent, so I never knowingly have. This year I will be keeping the same practice of not giving up.

This year I will not give up on being human. Each day I phone my dad, who is getting very deaf and as we shout at each other down the phone he tells me he is still breathing. I’m hoping he’s not going to give that up for Lent either.

I’m on Twitter but I shall not be giving that up for Lent. I know it has its dark side but I’ve found a lot of friends and encouragement there. I meet mushroom people and talk about fungi. I discuss writing projects, nature and walking, finding pebbles and creative arts. All this has helped me to not give up on being human.

In the Rule of St Benedict I find a lot about being human. Some of it sounds very sixth century of course, hence my weekly letters to St Benedict, but in general I meet some human issues and am helped to apply them to my own human life. The Nuns of Twitter are a great source of encouragement in this.

Each time I visit the social media platform I am invited into the lives and concerns of other humans. I hear about the struggles on the NHS frontline or the daily emotional roller coasters that challenge mental health or just getting by. Too often I learn about those who have died or who are dying from COVID19. All this is only a breath away. So for this Lent I’ll not give up on trying to be human. I hope you’ll join me.

From the remembered bible: He lived in the wilderness for 40 days.

Keep me Human, Wilderness One.

Janet Lees, a Friend of Scholastica, resident in Longdendale. On Twitter as @Bambigoesforth

Silence

Dear Benedict,

This week we saw the death toll of those people in UK who have died from COVID19 go above 100,000. To this news there is only, initially at least, silence. There may also be weeping, anger, denial, and many other things, but respectful silence at this loss of life is fundamental, whatever we do next.

Indeed there are many kinds of silence. Even if we are silent that doesn’t mean other things are not happening around and within the silence. Your Rule recognised this in chapter 42. Silence has many important functions: to rest, to listen, to affirm, to show respect, to indicate agreement or awe for example. And of course silence may be our only response if our voice has been taken away.

It is partly because of the complexity of silence that we must examine it again and again. It is too simple to say we live in a noisy world and therefore we all need silence. What kind of silence we might need and what kinds of silence are unhelpful need to be considered.

It is now well known that the silence that follows abuse of different kinds (but which are essentially different aspects of the misuse of power one over another) is a damaging kind of silence. Unfortunately no institution, not least the Church, can claim indemnity to this kind of abuse. Some of that silence has included the silence of unquestioning loyalty or fence sitting as well as the silence of cover up, threat and complicity. These may not have been the kinds of silence you were writing about but they have crept poisonously into many communities and we have to be alert to them. Many have been damaged by them and that damage is still causing havoc in people’s lives. A traumatised person said :’Every time I retell my story I am traumatised again’. Thus the breaking of silence also creates its own traumas.

It was my work as a speech therapist that first bought me face to face with many layers of silence and was one to the things I bought into ministry. However, it has never been a comfortable gift. Even this week, considering when to keep silent and when to speak have been once again on my mind when faced with evidence of the effects of unhealthy silences on people in different places. It can be a heavy thing to carry, which is why the Great Silence is so important: a time and place to put even silence down.

It is like that action a cook takes when folding flour into beaten eggs and sugar to make a cake. The dry mixture is folded, not beaten, into the wet and you can see them meeting each other, one gradually becoming the other, as they are folded together. Try it and see what you make of it.

And as you do, in this week of all weeks, let your silence take up the unspoken names of those affected by the current Pandemic and in other ways, in memory of those caught up in the holocaust and other genocides, those survivors of abuse and any who are unable to break out of unhealthy forms of silence. May the silence we enjoy be true silence of the embrace of the Holy One. May it be the ground of our being and the strength from which we emerge to serve the world.

From the remembered bible: Be still and know God.

I crawl into your silence.

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

Young and Old together!

Dear Benedict,

I’m writing to you again about your Rule, this time chapter 37. You remind us that people of all ages lived in your community and that although the Rule was meant for all, some considerations needed to be made to accommodate the needs of younger and older people living together.

You say that it is human to ‘be compassionate’ to young and old alike. I’m not so sure. Either that or like many things, attitudes have changed over the centuries. We may think we are being compassionate to those who are young or old but COVID19 has revealed a marked lack of compassion in some instances. For example, poverty, is much more likely to affect the young or the old and with many more people now falling into poverty our compassion for young and old seem to be running out.

Getting to the root of it: a tree relies on old growth and young growth working together.

Fear seems to me one of the biggest drivers of division, insecurity and hate. Of the messages I’ve read recently more and more seem to show a lack of compassion, though I wonder if that is driven by fear. If we are afraid for ourselves and our own near ones then maybe we begin to shun a wider community of need, anonymous people we don’t know. If we are alone at the moment, our connections to community may be tenuous at best, maybe that feeds into limiting our compassion for groups like young and old people. ‘If I don’t have it, why should they?’ or maybe ‘I need it so they can’t have it’.

At the moment in the Lay Community of St Benedict, we are pushing ahead with our Youth Development work (http://www.laybenedictines.org/). another organisation I have worked with, the Diana Award, is looking to recruit young people to help with its work at the moment: https://diana-award.org.uk/get-involved/become-a-diana-award-young-judge/

These are small steps to creating the kind of communities were people of all ages can thrive. But they are important ones, because unless we do so on a local scale more and more of the young and the old will become isolated and marginalised.

From the remembered bible: Your old people will dream dreams, your young people will see visions.

May I unite young and old.

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

Get well soon!

Dear Benedict,

Chapter 36 of your Rule is about the care of the sick, something which was for you a monastic priority. The chapter details how the resources of the monastery should be put to the service of anyone who is ill ‘as if they were Christ’, but also notes that anyone who is sick shouldn’t take undue advantage of this. The Benedictine tradition developed hospitals and new ideas in the treatment of illnesses including the use of herbs to treat sick people.

The concept that caring for sick people is a vocation is wrapped up in ideas of this sort. In my own family I saw this first hand as my mum and her sister were completely committed to their work as nurses.

My Aunty Betty (middle) in her nurses uniform

As health services have become more complex so our understandings of who is involved in health care have enlarged alongside the increase in resources we have committed to it. This is even more apparent in this Covid19 pandemic. The amount of work that has gone into developing the vaccines we have recently been hearing about is an example of this.

Chapter 36 even agrees that those who are ill might get better with an improved diet. For monastics in your day, that meant they could eat meat for a while. In ours it means consulting celebrity chefs.

Today I received a letter from a friend who had found his celebratory plate from the foundation of the NHS. It has certainly come a long way. Caring for the sick also means cherishing those who work with them and the sensible use of the resources needed to do the job. Chapter 36 is then a very timely reminder to us of the high value of this complex institution as well as an endorsement of the basic human act of caring.

Those of us not currently sick also have a part to play. It’s not about ‘clapping for carers’ but doing all we can to remain well. Indeed that had always seemed so obvious to me, bought up with family members working in the NHS, that I never expected to need to say it. Any risks we take may have a negative impact on the lives and well being of others. That was never more true in my life time than during this lock down.

And also women (remembered bible sick note).

Help me make caring my priority.

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