COVID19 – Page 2 – Notes from Bambi

Not mine!

Dear Benedict,

Yesterday I was walking through one of the short strips of woodland in the valley. Woodland like that is one of my preferred walking places whatever the season, and I was thinking, as I had been for a few days, about chapter 33 of your Rule. It’s another one of the short chapters, I noted, this time about personal possessions.

Now the one thing I’m quite clear about is I don’t own that stretch of woodland. Occasionally I do come across places that are labelled as ‘Private Property, Keep Out’ but fortunately not very often round here where a lot of the land is signed ‘Open Access’. And although I’ve sometimes seen ‘Woodland for Sale’ notices, I’ve not bought any because I don’t have that sort of money or the need to ‘own’ woodland. Provided the community can have access to it, as a shared resource, that seems to me the more natural order of things. It is after all, the natural world. I realise someone does have to care for it, which is why I favour the community ownership option.

And I think you would too. Like many people, I surely have too much stuff: a house full in fact, as I’ve already noted. But for this chapter I also need to think about what belongs to us communally and how we treat such stuff.

The natural world is not mine, but neither is the NHS. It’s a shared resource, something I have contributed to but I don’t have more rights to it than anyone else. Most people would get that even if they don’t understand that passing on COVID19 to people who in turn need hospitalising is a way of life that is not mindful of the communal nature of the NHS. Just because you won’t need it, doesn’t mean it’s OK to indulge in behaviour that might mean someone else does.

So too, other resources we hold in common, often referred to as ‘tax payers’ money’, though in fact much more than that. It continues to astonish me how many people think it’s OK to find a way not to contribute their fair share of taxes, as if they didn’t want a share of the communal things these fund and in addition encourage the hounding of the poor for their need to rely on such communally funded resources, like Universal Credit, as if they were the criminals. Unfortunately when the leadership of our society seems to include those that encourage the misuse of communal resources, it seems likely we are not in the presence of the kind of leadership that Chapter 33 describes as being able to allocate resources according to need.

From the remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘There was a man who had 3 servants and before he went on a journey he asked them to look after his money. To one he gave £1,000, to another £500 and to a third £10. When he came back…..’

Call me back, remind me: not everything belongs to me!

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

Right or wrong?

Dear Benedict

A large chunk of your Rule is about what action the community should take towards those members who go wrong (chapter 23-30). It’s a tricky section to interpret nearly 20 centuries after you wrote it. Social attitudes and culture have changed a great deal, as I’ve mentioned before. There are quite diverse views about punishment, and a move away from, for example, physical punishment especially for young people, should be noted. You use words infrequently used today outside church circles (and even in them) like excommunicate.

It’s a serious and strong word for you to use as we see from the examples you give. A person who has done wrong is removed from community in steps: at mealtimes, at prayer times and eventually those unable to amend their faults have to leave. Such steps are common in most communities because a community cannot be a community if there are disruptive rule-breakers inside. Our criminal justice system is supposed to work on similar lines. We may seek to guide and change such individuals but what if we can’t?

The issue has become a very challenging one in our time. The central notion of confession and forgiveness means we like to think anyone can be a better person. Yet we also see damage caused by those who cross the lines as far as acceptable behaviour is concerned. Yet looking back, we can also see where, historically, lines were crossed and nothing happened, lines were crossed and there was no transparency of action, or lines weren’t crossed but someone was blamed or disciplined falsely, perhaps due to inherent prejudices and bias. So even the community can get doing wrong, wrong, or even not get doing right, right.

When a community makes a mistake against another person and punishes them in whatever way for not doing wrong but other wrong doers get away without punishment, then a bad situation has been made worse. It is charges of this sort against the Church in its various forms, and covered up or defended by some insiders, that has contributed to a widespread lack of trust amongst some outsiders. If, for example, a regulation says, a rule breaker must appear before a regulating body within 3 months and this doesn’t happen for 9 months, there should be a good reason. If one person seems to have been given exemption from a specific rule that others have to obey, again it needs to be clear why.

But most of us prefer to keep our wrongs to ourselves, and at least out of the public space (harder today than you might imagine). We also prefer to select which rules we need to keep and which don’t need to apply to us. All of which is in the forefront of my mind as we approach a 2nd (predictable) COVID19 national lock down in England (other parts of the UK may follow different lock down rules). We will have different ideas of what communal priorities should be.

Having had several decades of emphasis on extending life expectancy across the population with various health campaigns, screening and so on, we’ve now appear to have hit a wall. First some people now think that some health conditions are not worth surviving with and others think some forms of older age are worthless. Both of these are very serious communal wrongs. But if they become widespread views how will we deal with them?

Economic stability has been pushed above personal vulnerability, mostly by fear. We have seen, in previous situations, how the poor are badly served. Their life expectancy, quality of life and health are all likely to suffer more than other sections of the population. None of us wants to be in this group so we grope towards economic stability and leave the poor to fend for themselves. The MPs voting against the extension of free school meals in the holidays recently had all got good reasons for doing so, and none of them was hungry. They played on the fear of many who had been hungry in the past saying we can’t make the money stretch for ever. As a result even some people who have been hungry backed the decision hoping they’d not be on the hungry list this time.

In Britain today, no one needs to be hungry.

A community is a challenging place to live. It’s not just about being nice to the people next door or picking up your dog waste. Sometimes we learn the most about community when we do get things wrong. Putting things right is often much more difficult.

From the remembered gospel: Forgive us the wrongs we do as we forgive those who wrong us.

Help me to get things right!

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

In touch!

Dear Benedict

I’m writing to you again, this time about chapter 16 of the Rule, where you urge monastic communities to follow a pattern of prayer each day. It reminded me of George Herbert’s words: Seven whole days, not one in seven, I will praise thee.

The tradition I grew up in met once a week, the one day in seven. At first hearing about it worshipping seven days in seven seemed a lot. Then multiply that by the seven times a day that you advocate, it added up to the ‘Pray at all times’ which was the bible verse I chose for my own confession of faith.

In my early forays into Benedictine life the small hours during the day were delightful and I still love them as a template. The community is involved in a complex dance: together, apart, together, apart, together again. Worship, work, worship, work and worship again: the signs and sounds that we encounter in work are bought with us into worship.

Working as a school chaplain for some time, I found the rhythm of school life was similar. In between the formal chapel services I would often walk around corridors or sports fields with my prayers. So praying comes at many different times; in the queue at the shops, in the car, on the bus. The community around me will not be made up of the same people but common concerns arise.

Take hunger for example. Which of us enjoys beings hungry? It’s a big topic in our COVID19: who is hungry and who is not? Who has the power to feed the hungry and who actually does it? I’m not hungry and have been fortunate never to have been hungry. This does not mean I don’t believe others may be hungry or that somehow being hungry must be their fault. A hungry person needs food: simple really.

Jesus did not say: When I was hungry you had a debate in Parliament about me.

Of course, I could go as far as Helder Camara and ask why the hungry poor are poor in the first place, but that it seems would make me political and once again religious people in 21st century Britain are not supposed to be political. I wonder if those who say this really think this through. I am human, I am political. Being part of any community is a political act, it signifies with whom I am in solidarity, with whom I am in touch.

Seven whole days, not one in seven, feed the hungry. Seven times a day, pray as a community. Seven just means a lot, all of the time, continually. I know why the poor are poor. It is because the rich are rich. If your way of keeping away from hunger yourself is to hoard wealth then the poor will likely continue poor and hungry.

From the remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘When I was hungry you gave me something to eat’.

A prayer before meals: For what we are about to waste may we be truly regretful.

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

Alleluia!

Dear Benedict

‘Alleluia’ is one of those words for particular times and seasons, you write in chapter 15 of the Rule. In my own tradition it is not used that much, only for particularly lengthy Easter hymns from what I recall. But it’s a short word and it can be a fun one.

My daughter’s preferred response to me on social media is ‘Woot!’ I think ‘Woot!’ is a sort of ‘Alleluia!’ so maybe I’ll try replacing ‘Woot!’ with ‘Alleluia!’ and vice versa.

As you include ‘Alleluia!’ in responses at certain times of the year, so you exclude it from others, all of which gets a bit difficult to remember. As a community it might be easier to do that: a shared remembering.

COVID19 has given us much to remember and not much to ‘Woot!’ about. Last night, Greater Manchester (the boundary of which is 1100 yards away from where we live, according to my husband) entered Tier 3 of the current COVID19 restrictions. I didn’t hear many alleluias, except perhaps a few faint and ironic ones.

From Easter to Pentecost the community observing the Rule would have had much to celebrate and so Alleluia might have come more readily into worship. But now in gloomy October with grey days and bleak news there are fewer alleluias. So what if we started saying Alleluia now, and I don’t mean ironically?

Let’s hear a few more Alleluias. It might remind us who’s we are and who we follow. It might lift us from the mundane and the murky days. It might serve as a word of recommitment to the risen life and the kindom of peace and justice to which we are called. To some it might be liturgical anarchy but to others it might be a prayer, a sigh, a song.

A worshipful response: Christ is Risen, Alleluia!

Alleluia!

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

Keep watch!

Dear Benedict,

I’m skipping out a bit here, that I’ll come back to later (chapters 2-7) to arrive at chapter 8. One of the gifts of Benedictine spirituality to me is the practice of prayer at night. I was doing it before I met any Benedictines, but the affirmation of night prayer has been a real encouragement. So I’ve moved on to this bit about prayer at night, partly due to current context: the increase in restrictions about COVID19 and the accompanying increase in anxieties of all sorts.

As a child I was afraid of the dark and so I began to pray at night to allay my fears. It seemed the natural thing to do. If I woke up then God was there. This has continued all my life. I would wake often in the later stages of my pregnancy, which is not unusual: I’d pray. In ministry there were wakeful nights: I’d pray. When my mother died and I was mourning, I’d often be awake at night: I’d pray. So too in this Pandemic: I pray.

During the day I often collect up lots of prayer requests and notions. During the night is when I pray many of them. It may not be the complex formula of the night office you describe but it is prayer that rolls unstopping around the world. You liked structure and thought it helped community life, so your words about the night office reflect that. Whatever we face the underlying thought is the same: God hears us at night.

And so I’ve prayed at night in many places: in hospital, at home, in a tent, on a boat, on a train, for example. There are lots more places I’ve not prayed in yet, but who knows? What I do know is that many other people will have found the same thing and this does make a community of sorts, if not the same kind of community that the Rule is about.

At this time high levels of COVID19 infections are driving anxieties of all kinds in all places. It’s not that surprising and neither is it surprising that sleep eludes us. Night prayer is a gift to us all at the moment. I urge anyone who has not already done so to try it.

From some remembered psalms:
The Unsleeping One keeps watch….
Day and night are both alike to God….

Help me to keep watch and pray.

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

Move me!

Dear Benedict

I’m a wanderer. I use that word instead of gyrovague, because although I think it is a particularly super word, it’s not a 21st century one. Not using words in common use is one of the things that makes spiritual texts like the rule accessible only to initiated people, those that know and understand the language used.

So, I repeat, I am a wanderer. I have and do wander, both physically and spiritually. I was in my 20s when the local vicar, hearing my story about searching for a way in my vocation in the local reformed church, suggested I visited an Anglican Benedictine Community for women. Now you need to understand that in the reformed church of my youth, liturgy was very different as was architecture and the notion of community very different indeed. So this was a big change for me, but it was also a very welcome one. It was there that I first read your Rule and saw it lived out. Perhaps if I’d never wandered that way I wouldn’t have encountered it. But I doubt I contributed very much, if anything, to that community myself.

Later I wandered off to other communities, including one in South London and another in North Yorkshire. I can see that any community has to get a balance between welcoming wanderers and living as a community. It can’t be easy. Whilst I have not contributed much to any of those communities I have visited they have given me a great deal.

Perhaps it was like that in the community you knew: too many visitors visiting the high profile monastery to sustain community life. There has been an increase in wandering. Forward to the 21st century and we can see the patterns left by wanderers criss-crossing the globe and the unlooked for effects of all that wandering on culture, language, commerce, climate and our fellow human beings. It’s a layer of human activity that it seemed impossible to strip away until COVID19 came along. Suddenly all our plans were on hold. We were, and still are in some places, in lock down, restricted to our local community or even quarantined in one small space. With so much riding on our interconnections, some things began to grind to a halt. Fewer aeroplanes crossed the skies.

If there were some benefits to this reduction in wandering, it was soon apparent that many resented such restrictions and wanted to get back the freedom to wander. ‘We are a freedom loving people’ said the UK Prime Minister recently, about this. But surely not at any cost.

The Mobile Chapel of St Scholastica looking out to Holy Island.

In 2019 I wandered the length of Britain and once again I learnt a lot. Again I took much and gave little but can we be so sure that our presence as wanderers does give little to our hosts. How will a community practice hospitality if it doesn’t welcome visitors? How will it be open to new ideas and experiences if it doesn’t have an open door? These questions apply not only to monastics but to this whole island. Imagine a monastery that had a sort of little sub cell several hundred miles away, damp and poorly provisioned, run by another set of tired and jaded folks, where it sent unwanted visitors. It might deter people I guess, but would that be Christian welcome? Of course the idea of using Ascension Island for unwanted asylum seekers was just blue sky thinking, wasn’t it?

I’m a wanderer and I want to learn about community. So I have wandered into the Lay Community of St Benedict and I’m trying not to let my ‘will and gross appetites’ get the better of me.

From a remembered psalm: Lead me in your ways. May I follow your path.

Move me.

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

To Benedict (3)

Dear Benedict

Even after 3 days it’s a challenge to write to you again! Developing positive habits isn’t easy for a 21st century woman. Much easier to turn over in bed again, look at my social media or eat chocolate, so it’s good to be reminded to ‘Stir yourself’.

I’ve known communities of people that didn’t seem able to stir themselves. Passionate about nothing, unengaged, going through the motions of worship and service, I found them draining me too. It didn’t seem to matter how much of my own passion and enthusiasm for the gospel I poured into such situations, it all just soaked through the cracks and disappeared. The realisation that I was gradually becoming more angry in such contexts was eventually enough to enable me to walk away.

And try again.

I remember having depression about 20 years ago and how I struggled to stir myself. A thin grey blanket shrouded me and the workings of my mind and body were gradually replaced by woolly stuffing. I struggled to connect with my family and friends and with the world around me. I shut myself away in our small house and hoped it would go away. That there was, one evening a turning point, amazes me still.

It was sunset. The sun had gone down behind the ridge line of the hill and the dark night curtain was creeping across the land, much as the darkness seemed to have crept over me. But the sun had not entirely gone. There was a line of yellow, orange and purple reaching up from where the sun had been. The vivid colours arrested me. I could only gawp at them. And then I got some pastel crayons and paper and swept those colours over it, rubbed them with my fingers and let the amazement grow.

After that, I did it again and again. More colours, more paper and ever so gradually the light came back. I had stirred myself in response to something that had stirred me.

In these COVID times often think of Julian or Norwich, agreeing to become an anchorite in a small church in East Anglia in the 14th century. After all of Europe had been decimated by the Black Death, and possibly her whole family had died, she took a vow to remain sequestered for the rest of her life. I know that you don’t promote the solitary life in your Rule (maybe it never worked out for you, maybe you were just called to a different project) but she has often inspired me, as the first recorded woman to write a book in English. I think of her in her cell and what it might have meant to stir herself as she went about her day in such a small space. Probably she had the hours of prayer and worship to give her day some structure and she had people who called to speak with her. Maybe she had a cat.

I’m not a cat person but I don’t begrudge one to Julian. And she probably had a candle. So there she was alone with cat and candle and thoughts. As the darkness came on, maybe it would be time to stir herself and light the candle, or stroke the cat.

A proverb: It’s better to light a candle than curse the darkness (the origins of this proverb are uncertain).

From the Gospel: The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has never extinguished it.

Stir me.

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

To Benedict about the Rule (2)

Dear Benedict

Another note from me about you Rule, from someone trying to live ordinarily in the 21st century. I say ordinarily because I don’t live in a monastic community, although I have visited a few. I try to live as a Lay Benedictine, mindful of the legacy of Benedictine spirituality of which the Rule is the foundation. Like others on the Benedictine way I open the Rule. There’s quite a few translations out there. Attempts to help others like me find their way through what is quite a long document. And I’m sure other means of access are now available like podcasts, apps and so on. But some bits of me are quite old fashioned so I write letters.

Because it’s quite long, most writers break it down into shorter sections. I use the shortest sections possible: one word or short phrase. This is because I’m mindful that ordinary 21st century people prefer to keep things short. So yesterday I wrote to you about one word: ‘Listen’. Today I’ve chosen a short phrase from the second section of the prologue which I translate as ‘Pray first’.

Prayer is still a widespread thing. Research shows that even people who don’t believe in God may pray. Prayer has many layers, both simple and complex a bit like a quilt (I love to make quilts). I don’t remember exactly when I first prayed though I must have been quite young. I haven’t stopped yet although my prayers have changed. So ‘Pray first’ makes sense to me. Whatever you do. ‘Pray first’.

As an adult most of my life has followed that pattern, at home, in my profession as a speech therapist, in my ministry as a school chaplain, prayer was always there first. Nowadays I’m not doing lots of thing. In quiet COVID19 days, inside and out, as I write and sew and walk and cook, almost like a mini-monastery, I pray first.

At different times in my life I’ve used different forms of prayer. I welcomed the rhythm of Benedictine prayer when I first encountered it in a monastic community as a young adult. At different times in our lives different styles and manner of prayer may emerge to nurture us and challenge us.

When I set off on my End to End walk last year (see https://foowr.org.uk/lejogblog/) I didn’t know how I would pray but walking and prayer can work well together. I still do that most days.

You end this section of the Prologue with a word about angry parents. One of the limitations of seeing God as parent is that we may shut ourselves into an image that restricts our range of experiences of God. ‘Angry parent’ may be something we’ve experienced and yet it’s hardly the beginning and end all of God. Although Heavenly Father was a Christian revolution in prayer it was not suggested to limit prayer. In order to really understand Heavenly Father we may even have to leave the idea gently aside for a bit and by coming round by another route, find through new images and relationships, a renewed expansion of what the original idea could mean. Thus the mighty Oak is the parent of the acorn, the Albatross lays the egg, and the mountain crumbles into pebbles, but they do not look alike.

From Psalm 121: Look at the hills; the work of the unsleeping One.

Here I am, praying….

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

More COVID19 prayers

The woman on the news

Squirted the table and wiped it.

She said how the death of her daughter

Had increased her anxiety

And she wiped her hands.

The writer on Twitter

Took a deep breath

And said how his stay in ICU

Had increased his anxiety:

He breathed again.

The family at the foodbank

Stood in the queue

And explained how furlough and redundancy

Meant they had nothing

But hoped soon to eat something.

I walk in the hills,

Mindful of many,

Recalling the Unsleeping One,

Who rocks us all.

JAL 29.08.2020 in Longdendale