The season of wandering is nearly over for this year. We are back on Greenwhich Mean Time and the evenings are now darker as the light part of the day shortens. I’m back to my thoughts about wandering.
I think you took against it because by the time you came to found the community for the Rule that bears you name, you’d done your bit of it and were happy to settle down. God help the rest of them. You wanted them to experience stability and that’s all very well but it can be stultifying.
A goose in Longdendale
Of course I understand that wandering has its downside too. No roots, shallower relationships, a whole host of questions. But maybe this was just what your community needed. I’m back in the valley after my final wanderings of the season and I’m full of observations, questions and feelings of being unsettled. Maybe that does make it harder to re-integrate into a solid settled community. I can imagine the whispering: ‘Who do they think they are, coming back here with all those ideas?’
Of course most of our communities are not that settled these days. Poverty and inequality, for example, are unsettling. Newcomers need attention and understanding. What should we tackle first?
More soup
I settle back to the tasks I’ve taken on; a bit of soup making, reusing and recycling unwanted items, and observing the changes that the seasons bring to the valley. About now many more geese are on the move, from their summer to their winter nesting round. Hundreds at a time fly high overhead to find the right place to spend the winter.
I will spend the winter here. It’s my winter nesting ground. I’ll walk and write and pray in this valley for a few months. I think about the observations and questions that came from wandering. This week I think of the souls and the saints, old and new, their stories of wandering and stability, their homecoming. May they rest in peace and rise in glory.
And more soup
From my remembered bible: I will walk through the valley without fear.
I am thankful for all the saints, even the most unlikely ones.
From a Friend of Scholastica living in Longdendale, 3rd November 2023
I usually start with one word, but this phrase caught my eye this morning. The cenobites are the chosen when it comes to your Rule. It might be argued that the Rule is hope enough, but then ….
Many people eat potatoes (if they can afford them) but few people have a diet made up entirely of mashed potato. Of course even mashed potato can be dressed up as bubble and squeak but however much you like mashed potato from time to time the urge to break out for a chip or roastie will come upon even the most dedicated mashed potato lover.
So too with cenobites. It’s not now a word in common use but it refers to those monastics who live under a rule and the leadership of an Abbot in a stable community. Your Rule is for them.
Having tried the solitary life yourself you advocated for communal life. I’m pretty sure you must have wandered about a bit too, but you advocated for the settled life. You promote a path of stability lived in common with others.
I’m not all that fond of mashed potato but I’ll eat it. This week saw the #nationalfishandchipday and that’s something I’d celebrate any day of the year (suggestions for a Saint of fish and chips welcome). I wander from one fish and chip shop to another and particularly enjoy visiting those that have won awards from Shap to Kilmarnock. But I do usually wander back again and settle in the valley and listen to the geese.
Good food for wanderers
I’m not a good cenobite. But I’m getter better at being an anarchist, at least being a follower of Holy Anarchy. My friend, Graham wrote the book and talked about it on line a week ago. You can watch it here.
So why do cenobites need Holy Anarchy? Because they need a change from mashed potato. I can admire cenobites but I still need a more varied diet. Mostly I need to live with those who are committed to recovering nonheirarchical affirming and creative forms of community in which everyone can flourish, that uses language creatively, that is willing to unpack the abusive aspects of past behaviour, that isn’t bound by the ‘that will never work here’ creed, that doesn’t consider my body parts an obstacle to my calling. I’m looking forward to the #NationalFishandChipAwards and I hope you are too, you lovely cenobites.
Food of the gods
From my remembered bible: Jesus said ‘I will show you how to fish’
Give hope to the cenobites!
From an Friend of Scholastica living in Longdendale.
At times I find it a struggle to read the Rule. It’s long (even the short bits) or at least longer than my attention allows, and boring. It’s easier to go out into the valley and look for fungi or geese or something unexpected.
I know that Benedict’s Rule is followed by a lot of people and at its most basic level I follow it too. I stick to the bits I remember and come back time and again to ‘Listen’. The rest of it I dip into now and again but sometimes I just leave it.
A table prepared in Roughfields, Longdendale
I first encountered people who did Liberation Theology in South Africa in the 1980s. I was visiting my brother, a mining engineer in the Transvaal. I went to see some people in Gaborone, Botswana, and they gave me the Kairos Document, a landmark in the opposition of the churches to Apartheid. I was hooked. My wishy-washy white liberal theology couldn’t stand the onslaught of the argument. It wasn’t just a case of not eating their apples, I found a much more political and justice orientated faith in South Africa, and I went back for more several times.
Eventually, after 1994 (we were there for the first democratic elections) I came back to UK determined to use my understanding in ministry. I practised contextual bible study using the remembered bible here for over 20 years, despite of vocal opposition and, more commonly, apathy. I wrote about my encounters with people using the remembered bible. I got on with the struggle.
These days my journey is gentler. I’m not so busy but I am still frustrated and angry with churches and church people who seem to think justice is optional, which is why these days I avoid them more. Justice is a still a fundamental aspect of my faith, and these days that means justice for those forced to live in poverty, for women and for those working to limit climate change. So, can you find this sort of stuff in the Rule of St Benedict?
I’ve not studied
it as long as some people so I’m not an expert. I’m an ordinary
person when it comes to the Rule but one with a background in
Biblical Studies and Theology so I know something about critical
questioning and interpretation. Even so, I’d say it’s not easy.
Benedict was writing in the 6th century for what were essentially self-sustaining local communities living together. Most of the time he’s concerned about what psalms to sing day and night and not about carbon footprints. Most monastic communities would have used local supply chains or grown their own produce. This was a pre-industrial age so no one was exploiting oil or discarding plastic willy-nilly. So of course, he couldn’t have written about that specifically.
The idea that a community should be self-supporting and engaged locally is now more popular again. So that does seem relevant even if other parts of the Rule are less easy to apply. Excommunication may mean something different now (say some) but it’s never meant much to me. Other say that they are able to apply the Rule to both men and women, but again it’s a struggle to see it in feminist terms. But it is particularly the lack of referents to justice that erk me. Leadership under the Rule is considered largely benign. It doesn’t self-promote, grasp, lie or abuse or do any of the negative things we equate with leadership failures today in both Church and State. Unrealistic you might think but then remember, this was the age of the saints. Benedict is writing about ideals. Everyone has a beam in their own eye.
Now we know that leadership easily opts for the self-promoting way and abuse of many kinds is a common coin across many contexts. This makes it impossible for some to engage with faith based communities at all.
In our own village, people from different churches and faith groups co-operate on a local level to support their neighbours with food, warmth, company and such like. This has been the winter of Warm Space in which a small bunch of those who are not economically active support other who are less economically viable by using free or reduce price produce from supermarkets owned by billionaires to make meals that our neighbours couldn’t afford to buy or cook for themselves.
Soup
There are those who ask me if this is real. Are their really people who can’t afford to live on basics, heat their homes and so on? Are they not just taking advantage of our generosity? When that happens I invite them to visit this village, just one small place in NW Derbyshire. I also suggest they try to get to know they people they live alongside better.
For me the Rule is
not my basic document when it comes to my response to issues like
this. I’m a biblical scholar and my go to faith resource is the
bible. ‘When I was hungry you fed me’. I’m not saying Benedict
wouldn’t do this too, although you might have had to wait outside
for a few days before you got let in. Benedict often quotes the bible
in the Rule, but he’s not a critical bible user. He’s not
concerned about who wrote it, when and with what agenda. Psalms are
for worship not political propaganda as far as he’s concerned.
Even so, it’s at a practical level we co-operate across faith divides in our village. We can serve bread with our soup but some wouldn’t take it from my hands if I blessed it and called it the body of Christ. Around the communal table everyone present agrees they don’t support this divide and want an end to it. What do I make of that? Why is the continuing authority of a few denying food to the majority, in both Church and State?
Making bread
This morning I made
some more soup. It was from left over stuff billionaires could afford
to pass on. The struggle is still in me, the struggle for justice I
mean. Will the Rule help me sustain it? I’m still not sure about
all of it but I will go back to basics and ‘Listen’.
From my remembered
bible: This is what God requires: do justice, love mercy, walk
humbly.
Begin with something to make the soup base. The way I prefer to do this is with chopped onions and a little garlic. Fry these gently in a small amount of vegetable oil until they are soft and golden. Then add the chopped vegetables you are going to use in this week’s super soup. This can be anything at all – although watery things like lettuce and cucumber are not so good in this kind of soup (but can be fine in lighter summer soups). Remember that what you choose will affect the look of the eventual soup. Carrot makes most things orange, or brown if with something green. Some people like brown soup. Potato will thicken most things but other vegetables will have a similar affect, like sweet potatoes, squash or similar. Stir the chopped vegetables around a bit. Consider the seasoning options. Ground turmeric is nice and goes well with some ginger to make a warming soup that is bright and encouraging. Ground coriander also goes well, and fresh coriander can add a green finish to a soup if you add it at the end. Cumin seeds or ground cumin give a lovely flavour but experiment with things a bit and see what you like. This can be fun but bear in mind that not all members of your community will agree. Add vegetable stock or water and simmer for 20 minutes or so until the vegetables are soft but not soggy. I usually use a blender to finish the soup because I like a thick velvety texture. Some prefer not to do this or to leave some chunks in for guessing games.
Soup in Longdendale
I have been performing this litany once a week since October. Due to the cost of living crisis we can get free vegetables from supermarkets who can’t sell all their vegetables. With these free vegetables we can make free soup to serve people who can’t afford to buy vegetables. We serve it at a small village church that is heated by the giving of people who can only just about afford to keep warm to people who can’t afford to turn on their heating. Some people call this progress. Others call it charity. I call it a disgrace.
But I’m loathe to waste good vegetables or have people go cold and hungry. Unfortunately Benedict doesn’t really do this kind of politics in his Rule. He does commend kitchen service (Chapter 35).
From my remembered
bible: Hurry up and help us God!
Soup makers creed:
I believe in God, creator, ingredients maker of all things
heavenly and earthy,
And in Jesus Christ, food multiplyer, crowd feeder,
Born of the homemaker Mary of Nazareth, getting by on the
basics.
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.
A table
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.
A table on Roughfields, Derbyshire
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.
In setting down a time to eat you were concerned that people ate enough and in company and that the time together was also an important part of communal life (chapter 41). The community was governed by the natural order of day and night and being in the northern hemisphere, the way it changed during the year, so you made allowances for this. Furthermore, people worked in daylight so food needed to be available to fuel that work. It all makes good sense.
In our day time is a different thing. It rushes past or drags us down. We may have company or we may not. We may have work, too much too little or none. Thinking about a chapter like this, there are so many ways in which it addresses our lives. A rhythm to daily/yearly life is important. A good one can keep us healthy and in communion with each other.
Lockdown is not like that so it’s not surprising if some folks want to bend the regulations or use their own judgement. A TV interview with a person from China about Lockdown recently revealed the view that ‘We are used to doing what we are told, you are not’. It’s certainly food for thought.
I have found different patterns developing in Lockdown even in our small community of two.
There’s a time to walk and a time to be still, a time to work and a time to rest, a time to eat and a time to prepare for eating, a time to think and a time to pray, a time to sleep and a time to wake up. There’s a time for everything in Lockdown.
From time to time, there’s also a time to worry. This doesn’t seem to have a schedule but arrives out of nowhere almost and sows its own chaos. It may change the times we had set up for something else. It can scramble up our thinking, doing and being. Having a timetable can help with getting back on track. Each thing has it’s time and place, each activity makes a space for us to enjoy that one thing.
The local shopkeeper told me that when he first got a shop it played havoc with his eating times: he’d eat all sorts of stuff any time. I took it to indicate that the new shop was a stressful experience. I remember my great uncles, who ran the fish shop when I was a child, had strict times for eating, each one coming up for his meal at the specified time, to keep a sensible rhythm, to keep healthy habits.
The communal habit of eating in local lunch clubs is something I know some older people have missed. The rhythm of the day and time and the company was helpful and nourishing as much as the food. It’s a part of old normal that we need to rethink for new normal.
Where possible, it’s sensible to have a time to eat. If we can’t do that or it seems to elude us sometimes, we need to think why that might be and see about getting back on track if we can. We need to help each other to stay healthy clearly announcing when it’s time to eat or offering opportunities for shared eating times where possible.
A meal to share is a great gift
From the remembered bible: There’s a time for everything under heaven.
Help me to stay healthy.
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
Chapter 39 of your rule, like many sections is both comforting and correcting. In this chapter about food you begin by making it clear that good healthy food should be available everyday for everyone in shared meals, but you go onto say ‘Overindulgence is inconsistent with the Christian life’.
21st century Christmas in UK is our feast of overindulgence. There are endless advertisements for all the good things you can have in abundance. There is continued emphasis on how special food fits a special time of year and how much of it we should all crave. Of course it’s quite likely that from our prehistoric ancestors onwards this midwinter time has always been used as time to get together and eat as much as possible.
At the same time there is real food poverty in the UK right now. These extremes are signs of our dysfunctional communal life and we find it a real struggle to set the balance right. Whilst we give out awards to those who try to feed the poor, we still seem not to want to ask why the poor have no food.
Our personal attempts to contribute to a better shared food pattern include buying local products from local people and buying Fair Trade products where possible. It’s only a small thing but if the pattern were more widespread it can make a difference, as the network of Fair Trade Towns bears witness. It began in Garstang, in Lancashire, a place I walked past on the Lancaster Canal on my End to End, and has spread across the whole country. We even past through the Fair Trade zone of North Ayrshire.
North Ayrshire Fair Trade Zone on my End to End in 2019
About now is the time for resolutions for the year ahead. How about a food related resolution?
From the remembered gospel: ‘Don’t worry about what you need to eat’ and ‘Give us this day our daily bread’. Are these two rememberings in conflict? How do you think they relate to chapter 39 of the Rule?
May all be fairly fed.
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
We all have to eat and in any community, even a small one, the logistics of this will need managing somehow. You turn your attention to this in chapter 35 of your Rule.
From this is gather that feeding people is a central part of community life, begins and is sustained with prayer, and is passed onto others in a continuous stream by the same means. Everyone gets a chance to serve in this way, whatever their abilities. Each person’s service is dedicated through prayer and upheld through the prayers of the community. By prayer too, so the tasks are passed onto the next team of servers. So a seamless round of gospel based serving and being served is inaugurated.
Any one for seconds?
I enjoy both roles. I love to be be part of the serving team, getting the meal together and presenting it, and I love to be amongst those served, enjoying what is being offered.
There’s a proliferation of cooking programmes on the TV. Some are more communal than others with the rounding up of tasters and the served. Some are more solitary; the server and the taster are essentially the same person. These reflect the range of eating options in our society today. Some serve and eat in a group, others do so alone.
Creative ways of making a community of servers are being explored in lock down. One of our preferred ways of socialising is with food. How to say ‘pass the sauce’ or ‘anyone for seconds’ in a zoom meal requires some thought, but this is true of our whole lives. Thinking about who we serve by our social distancing and mask wearing, or how we are served by those who keep the local down rules is a challenge every bit as much as actually keeping them ourselves.
There’s a lot of talk about doing Christmas differently, which mostly means the eating thing. It’s interesting how central a role this seems to play in the lives of so many. Needing to recreate Christmases past has always seemed rather odd to me, even though I do try to humour my 89 year old father on this one, largely because I’d hate for him to be lonely. But change can be good and help us to think afresh. After all we don’t require all Christian women to give birth in stables, do we.
The main things about eating together at any time of year seem to be to be:
Is it fair? If not what can you do about it?
Are we grateful? If not what can you do about that?
From the remembered bible: God come quickly and help us.
From the remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘I am just another server here’.
Help me to be fair enough, to be grateful enough.
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
We live in an unequal world. It’s my first thought when reading chapter 31 of your Rule. Of course that was true when you wrote it and throughout human history. But that doesn’t mean we stop working for fair shares.
Each community should have a least one person in it who makes sure everyone gets a fair share, you say. Today, in our world, that concern needs to be more universal. Every person a Benedictine Cellarer, the name you gave to the sharer-outer, or maybe the quarter-master or mistress.
It can be difficult not to hoard or even just tuck something away for another day when we fear lean times. Poverty instils anxiety and so we keep a little back, or a lot depending on our access to resources. No one wants to go hungry.
In recent developments a footballer bought up in poverty who is now very well known has, I’m glad to say, managed to extract another U-turn from the government on the issue of child food poverty. And he has done so very humbly, sharing the appreciation he received with all involved.
So it is possible, even in a very unequal world. May we pursue such possibilities and feast together in hope of a more equal kindom.
From the remembered gospel: Jesus told them to collect up what had been left over. There were 12 baskets full.
Give us this day our daily bread.
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St 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.
