walk – Page 2 – Notes from Bambi

Time!

Dear Benedict,

I can’t decide if time goes more or less quickly during a Lockdown. It certainly seems odd, nearly one year after the first Lockdown to be seeing the seasons begin to repeat. I make my daily pilgrimage through Longdendale, stopping to admire each breaking bud or gaze at the reflections of the valley. These are my hours, my opus dei.

Snow Moon setting over Longdendale, photo by Bob.

In a community things need some organisation. It helps to have a timetable for community activities, especially the most important ones as you point out in chapter 47 of your Rule. One of the gifts of the COVID year to our Lay Community has been a very full timetable of on line events developed since Easter last year (see website for details).

However, the gyrovague in me is still off up the valley in my ‘What shall we do about Janet’ habit gazing at the moon and admiring the reflections of the valley. My smartphone replaces my rod and staff as essential equipment.

There’s a lot to see here even after a year. Each day reveals some other glory, as the psalmist puts it.

There are no bells in the valley so no one summons me home, only my tired legs and the promise that God will grant a quiet night.

From my remembered bible: The sun announces God’s glory from one end of the day to the other.

Glory to God!

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

Food!

Dear 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.

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.

Sing!

Dear Benedict,

In chapter 17 of your Rule you are quite specific about which psalms the community should sing and when. The Psalter was the hymn book of your community and in all of the Benedictine communities I have visited it is obviously well known and much loved.

When I walked my End to End last year I was surprised how many bits of psalms, what I call psalm snippets, there were in my remembered bible and when I walk I often come back to them and reflect on them. Although I do use the psalms I also sing a lot of other things, quite a bit of which I make up ‘as I go along’ with the pattern of the psalms and the seasons to inspire me.

Today I was walking in our valley enjoying the falling leaves. Forest Church, an expression of outdoor worship, attracts me and there are places round here I often revisit . Today I made tracks to a group of beech trees that I call the Beech Cathedral and they were glorious. I wrote this hymn whilst I sat there.

The beech trees in this season
Each wear a golden gown,
And in the strips of woodland,
Deciduous leaves fall down.
All sorts of berries ripen
And turn a vibrant red
So in the coldest season,
The wayside birds are fed.

Chorus:
With all these things around us
May we learn to share
The good things of Creation
And for our planet, care.

The canopy above us,
The leaves beneath our feet,
The world continues turning,
The patterns still repeat,
But with our climate changing
We haven’t got much time
To change our wasteful ways
And repent of climate crime.

Chorus:
With all these things around us
May we learn to share
The good things of Creation
And for our planet, care.

The swallow have flown southwards,
The geese have come to rest,
By patterns of migration
We all are truly blessed.
But temperatures are rising,
The poorest bear the cost
We must change how we’re living
Or all we know is lost.

Chorus:
With all these things around us
May we learn to share
The good things of Creation
And for our planet, care.

Tune is Wir Pflugen (We plough the fields)

From the remembered bible: And the trees of the field shall clap their hands

I sing to you!

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

Forgive!

Dear Benedict,

Forgive me for not writing for a few days. I do a thing called retirement though I’m not sure it was a concept in the 6th century, or in monastic communities much at all. In 21st century Britain it’s a somewhat contested concept due to inequalities: some people get more retirement than others. Having been doing it in what I think is a modest way from nearly two years it often includes long distance walking. We have been walking a new route in Derbyshire along the Derwent Valley and that has taken me away from letter writing for a few days.

I’m writing to you about the Prayer of Jesus in morning and evening worship (and at other times too I’m sure) that you mention in chapter 13. You advocate saying it aloud as every word is a pledge or promise by community members to each other. You mention how ‘thorny issues’ may grow up between people and recommend the words ‘Forgive us as we forgive’.

Forgiveness itself is one of the thorny issues of our day. People ask, how do I forgive? Is it enough to say ‘I forgive you’ or is more required? What if you can’t say such words, can’t forgive? For some people it seems a straight forward matter: I forgive you and that’s it? For others it has qualification: I forgive you but I can’t forget. How does that seem? Others say they can neither forgive or forget.

At the beginning of the Rule you said this school for God’s service wouldn’t be harsh or a burden (end of Prologue) but you urged us not to run away from the opportunity for a way of life that might seem narrow to begin with but would be found accommodating enough with perseverance. I think perhaps this issue of forgiveness is one of those heartfelt aspects that is both tough and yet also liberating. In referring to the Jesus Prayer you put forgiveness in context. Jesus was teaching this prayer to his followers: it’s one of our direct links to him. The daily need for forgiveness was to him as vital as bread itself. However, not every loaf is perfect, not every hunger satisfied and not every forgiveness lived out but we have the opportunity to pray for it again tomorrow.

A narrow way in the Derwent Valley, Derbyshire.

I think of those who carry huge burdens of inequality and I wonder how they can be expected to forgive those who will not equally share bread with them. What of those who bare massive burdens of grief due to the destructive activities of war or other injurious practices: just carrying on in itself may occupy most of life let along forgiveness. Forgiveness for what? Even the church doesn’t get clean away with this one. Such are my distractions from my own forgiveness issues.

Your own world was smaller, although even a few relationships in a community can be complex. Maybe we need to think of starting with our immediate surroundings. I can only start with forgiving those closest to me and hope they do the same. Forgiveness one step at a time, one word at a time, one prayer at a time. How many times might we say these words in a life time? I’ve no idea but we have the opportunity and that could be world changing.

From the remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘Father, forgive them’.

Forgive me. Help me to forgive.

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

Good morning!

Dear Benedict

After a few days walking I’m planning to catch up with some writing beginning with writing to you about your Rule. I’ve been reading what to sing at Lauds, first thing in the morning.

I love to sing in the morning. Not a great singer as a child, I got over my sense of musical unease by singing more. When I worked in London, forty years or so ago, I’d sing as I walked from the station or the bus stop. It can get you some funny looks but where else are you supposed to sing? I love to sing anywhere, outdoors or in, alone or with others. There’s no exercise quite like singing: body, mind and spirit in one activity.

These days, as I walk I also sing. Often it’s something I make up as I go along, a sort of commentary on the walk, the sights and sounds, the weather, how I feel. Anything can be in a walk song! I sometimes think how the psalms were made up, perhaps like this on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and then passed around the group until everyone got the hang of it. Here’s one of my morning songs that I use in the worship of the Mobile Chapel of St Scholastica (aka Bambi!)

This is the day, a welcome day, 
as welcome as the sun. 
Today we'll live together here 
and get our whole work done. 
Today we’ll care for weak and strong 
That all may grow in love, 
We'll serve each other, serving God 
Creator, Spirit, Son. 

This is the day a welcome day, 
as welcome as the rain. 
As we embrace the challenges 
we know we're loved again; 
We know we can build justice here, 
and learn to live in peace 
We'll serve each other, serving God 
the kindom here will reign. 

This is the day, a welcome day 
whether in rain or sun, 
every day we can be kind 
and laugh and have good fun; 
Today we set out on a road 
together hand in hand 
Companions each and every one 
till travelling days are done. 

copyright Janet Lees Tune: Kingsfold or Forest Green (DCM)
(PS I use the word 'kindom' on purpose: a gender neutral word)

It’s great to sing if you can and to acknowledge God in our Good Morning activities, like the psalmists.

From a remembered psalm: Let every creature sing and praise God.

I’m singing to you!

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

Fill me!

Dear Benedict

I get the feeling you had little time for the ‘sarabaites’. It’s not a 21st century word so I’ll call them ‘the apathetic ones’. Possibly the most judgemental paragraph in your Rule, these are the ones you feared the most. By their very existence they undermine the Rule and those living by it.

The idea that two or three people might live in an unregulated community and actually manage to follow Christ’s way didn’t seem possible to you. You judge what they do what they like: ‘anything that strikes their fancy’. I assume you mean they have abandoned the work and worship patterns of more formal monasticism. They call anything ‘holy’.

It’s difficult for me to bridge a gap between 6th and 21st centuries, however I try. There are 6th century gems I go back to time and again, like the Breastplate of St Patrick for example: ‘Christ before me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger’, but this section of your Rule is not one of them.

Apathy is common to human beings. We get worn down, frustrated, disappointed, and apathy creeps in somewhere. It’s been a common stumbling block in the Church through the ages, as has the unexplainable need to defend any sort of criticism that might uncover those very things in the Church itself and thereby might deter followers. As a Reformer yourself, you’ll know why reform continues to be needed and you must have met a few good ones.

Perhaps when you wrote this you had some specific places of apathy in mind. Maybe some you had valued chose to leave the community and set up like this. There’s certainly passion here and that only comes from personal engagement. These apathetic ones had been your friends and you felt betrayed by their decision to enter the unregulated sheepfold.

Me, I’m pretty much unregulated. After 1,500 years deregulation has continued on and on, one reform after another, some more successful than others. The branch I have previously belonged to has been dwindling for nearly a century and for all its strides forward, for example with the leadership of women, it’s a hot bed for apathy. These days I call many things holy: I walk the way trying to listen but also questioning. I do get frustrated and I have walked away from some of the more frustrating tangles. I wonder if any of those apathetic ones came back to the community of the Rule?

Even so, this paragraph has its place, witness to the struggles to build community and to dissent. There will be some more dissent later, and as a Daughter of Dissent I can only welcome that.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA: Mother and daughter walk on in 2003

From a remembered psalm: As a deer longs for water so I long for you, God.

Fill 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.