I am writing to you. It’s one of my occupations. I’m not sure if it’s one of my roles but that’s what I’m going to write to you about today. The bible reading/remembering today was the story of Martha and Mary. Well, actually a small bit of it. Like most of the gospel we only get small snippets of information into the daily life of Jesus and those who followed.
Everyone in a family has their roles, so too anyone in a community and your Rule has loads on that. But most of all you say it’s not competitive. For example, when the Deans are chosen in chapter 21, it’s for wisdom not rank. Yet as humans we are obsessed with competition. So too with interpreting Martha and Mary. In Luke’s words even Jesus gets hung up on it: Mary has chosen the better part.
At Talbert House, Poperinge
I’m suspicious about the gospels (or any religious text really). Luke is seen as a ‘good editor’ for women so why did he write this nasty little snippet in which Martha understandably gets upset when tired and Mary gets commended for the better part which ‘won’t be take away from her’ but ultimately is (i.e. women are stripped of their right to equal discipleship by the Church)? There are a few options but most have the get out clause: sexists society, sexist Jesus.
John comes in later with a different snippet on the family: Lazarus dead, Mary grieving and Martha announcing Jesus as ‘The One’. Different tensions, different words, but still the roles get taken away. Whatever way you look at it, Martha and Mary do not come out of the written gospels with their roles as equal disciples with the named male disciples in tact, at least according to traidtional Church Theology.
Today I played the unassailable role of organist at the small church in the village. Anyone can preach (today my husband) but not everyone can play the organ. Most of the year now it stands in the corner gathering dust. I can play it. I learnt years ago and it still gives me a huge lift in my mood to sit there and thunder out a good tune (even if I do it rather poorly). So you’d think I’d be happy, and certainly as small communities go this is a delightful one.
This morning’s instrument
But I’m still left with my Martha and Mary questions and much besides about roles in any community. There have been and will be many wise ones who will not be appointed to appropriate roles because someone else will get the job due to bribery, favouritism, phobias and other corruptions. Even in the death defying communities that the church is supposed to be, the status quo will predominate. Someone will be slow to embrace change and that will trip us all up.
In my rememberings of Martha and Mary they were carers for Lazarus, the non speaking member of the family who died in unspoken circumstances: the one who gets called out from his own tomb by the Tomb Quitter. These two sisters knew each other well and if 1st century caring is anything like 21st century caring they were both exhausted. One makes and bakes, another sits and listens: roles should be made for us but in family, or community, life is not always like that. Even Jesus struggles to hold the tension together, making promises about discipleship that the Church will eventually fail to honour for centuries.
There was a moment in my organing this morning when I pulled out the trumpet stop in the middle of a verse and blasted it out, because it had all got too comfortable. We were singing ‘Jesus Christ is waiting’ and that moment where it says in the lyrics ‘I am angry too’ we all sounded too nice. This was my ‘hymn of the pandemic’ and I’m still angry, so I let an 8 foot trumpet rip for a couple of lines and felt better. It’s probably a sign that I am completely unsuited to any role in community.
Pulling out the stops
From my remembered bible: ‘I am like a green olive tree’ (Psalm 52: they are known for longevity in harsh climates).
I am angry too!
From a Friend of Scholastic and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
I’m not sure how many folks use this word ‘scrutiny’ on a daily basis. There must be many jobs and roles in which it remains an essential skill. Most days I confine my scrutiny to the natural world of Longdendale, examining fungi especially, but also inspecting any other things that attract my attention.
Birch Polypore in Longdendale
You mention scrutiny in chapter 2 of your Rule: it’s necessary to scrutinise the results of the leadership offered by those leading the community. We find out how effective their leadership is by its fruits in the community and that requires scrutiny.
Turkey Tails near Hobson Moor
So it’s a skill we need and a process we need to encourage, even if it seems challenging. It needs to be ongoing and perhaps it is also something that goes on under the radar some of the time.
Speaking of radar, not a concept that was familiar in the 6th century, I’ve been delighted to watch a young person I knew when I was a school chaplain enjoying success in her chosen career in a documentary on national television. This young person, still only 20 years old, was one of the team of anti-bulling champions we developed with the help of a national anti-bullying organisation. Now on her chosen career path she continues to exhibit those personal characteristics of honesty and integrity that stood her in such good stead then, even when under scrutiny in a much more pressured occupation.
Of course she is not alone. Our society benefits from the countless number of people who share their skills in community in honesty and openness. Indeed, I’d suggest it was essential to good leadership. What your Rule makes clear is that leadership is not about idolising particular people or setting them up on a pedestal, even if aspects of celebratory culture want it to be replete with glamour and press opportunities. Everyone, whoever they are, must be subject to scrutiny and that scrutiny itself must be thorough, honest and replicable.
Jelly Ear: ‘If you have ears…’
Each day I go into the valley and look at the fungi. They grow very slowly. Other aspects of the forest flourish around them. Their presence is a sign of a vast network of activity going on underground: the Mycelium. The fungi I see above ground are just one small part of the whole body. They are part of the life cycle that appears for a short time, withers and fades, whilst underground the Mycelium network continues to hold it all together. May we bear just as much scrutiny.
From my remembered bible: Consider the Fungi of the Fields (or Lilies if you like).
May my actions bear scrutiny.
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict
I’ve been interested to read how your Rule first came to Britain. It is thought to have been bought here at the end of the 6th century by Augustine of Canterbury. I find this interesting because some call Augustine’s mission the ‘Christianising’ of England, which is clearly wrong. It might have been a further wave of Christian missionary activity, but it wasn’t the first. In fact the names of the first Christians in Britain are unknown to us, just as you might expect.
Remains of an Anglo-Saxon cross shaft at Nunburnholme, Yorkshire.
So it’s possible that your Rule was bought here by someone else, but Augustine got the credit. It seems that he wanted religious houses in England to use the Rule and it was promoted for men and women to use in monastic communities. I’ve been reading a sample of a book concerning the activities of Benedictine Women during the Middle Ages. Product of a great deal of scholarship I’ve only read the sample but it is fascinating. The author, Katie Bugyis, has looked at many manuscripts from the Middle Ages to support her finding concerning the kind of ministries women were practising during that period.
The remain of St Pancras Church Canterbury, possibly the oldest part of the Augustinian Abbey.
I mention it in relation to chapter 65 of your Rule, another essential read about community leadership. Bugyis suggests that your Rule wasn’t fully adopted by women’s monastic houses in England until the 10th century, and that a feminised version was promoted to make it more applicable to these Abbeys. I’d love to see that.
Her main findings are about the sort of roles women had during this period: reading the Gospels liturgically, hearing confession and offering intercessory prayers are the ones she explores in detail. My heart was joyful: once again we find that women were doing these things and they have been forgotten or covered up or negated in some way. Of course my heart also sinks that power was abused in ways that robbed women of leadership roles then and now. It’s not something I am at peace about.
Statue of St Benedict wrapped up for protection at Stanbrooke Abbey, Wass, Yorkshire in 2016
Chapter 65 refers to the communal need for the ‘preservation of peace and love’ being the foundation of the way in which Abbott or Abbess shall lead the community. Unfortunately, those outside the walls were the ones to determine, too often, what some of those gender based activities might be, and such discrimination is still limiting some interpretations of the ministries of women.
As we approach the season of the Nativity, it’s a time to pray again for a wider understanding of ministry of women. I think of the times when women have ‘given up’ ministries for ‘the peace of the church’. Good thing Mary never gave up pushing for the incarnation.
From the remembered gospel: Jesus said: ‘It’s peace I leave with you, but it’s not like the world’s peace’.
Help me to keep pushing for justice.
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
The Nunburnholme Cross is a piece of carved, broken and mended Saxon stone housed in the Parish church of Nunburnhome near Pocklington in East Yorkshire. It’s unremarkable except for being there.
It’s not as well carved as the Ruthwell Cross, but it has a similar message. That message is in several layers. First the stone: the oldest part. Then the carvings: the age old story of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Then the destruction: torn down, buried and forgotten. Then the resurrection….
The Ruthwell Cross (from my End to End 2019)
This cross belongs to no one, just as the cross story cannot be claimed to belong to any one sect or group. I don’t know then it was damaged but I do know that Nunburnholme was damaged, by the decree of a deranged king, Henry VIII. In 1539 the monasteries were suppressed and least amongst these was a very small, some say the smallest, group of Benedictine Sisters living under the Rule of St Benedict in Nunburnholme.
Remains of the Nunburnholme Cross, Saxon, possibly 9th century.
I am linked to them. I am a Lay Benedictine and this blog is about living the Rule of St Benedict in the 21st century. Not that I’m very good at it. I’m like the damaged cross, rough and still here. I’m like the suppressed sisters: surplus to requirements.
1539 was a time of high culture wars when the establishment decided that ordinary people would toe the line and give up the rules and rituals they had tried to live by. Much of the country side was trampled as walls were knocked down, treasures were stolen and Religious paid off. So is that English enough for the new Culture Secretary, I wonder. It seems to me the current culture wars are, of course, very selective.
There are bits we like. Let’s keep those. There are bits we don’t like. Let’s hide, forget or destroy those. Only it doesn’t work like that. The bits you want rid of always come back and bite you on the bum. The Ruthwell Cross and the Nunburnholme Cross are witnesses to that.
There is a story, that goes back 2 thousand years in these islands, which has been interpreted in stone and on paper and in lives throughout that time. The basic story is still there, in the landscape, as people have tried to make sense of it and live it all of that time. It has welcomed and embraced people from countless different cultures from across the globe and is the better for it. There are still bits that are rough and rankle, at least with me. A recent post I read on Twitter lamented the lack of female deacons in the Catholic Church. Read on dear reader…
In the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church there are and always have been female deacons. It’s just some branches of that One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church don’t recognise them. Just like the story of the small group of Benedictine sisters at Nunburnholme has been forgotten, so have they. Just as too many good servants have been made surplus to requirements, so have they.
But just like those bits of unremarkable stone, they still exist and are still exercising their ministries in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. During the first lockdown in 2021 I read a book about female ministers of European origin finding new holy places on routes across North America in the 19th century. Surplus to requirements in one place they found space in another.
I am still finding a space, for holy service and holy communion. I have found the Lay Community of St Benedict is a good space in which to explore that. In my Bambi, the Mobile Chapel of St Scholastica, I celebrate, the forgotten sisters of Nunburnholme and I sing a song of high revolt to the interpretations that exclude and damage and destroy those who would follow the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Inside Bambi
So do we need a Rule for that? Maybe. I’m still working on that, as this blog will no doubt demonstrate.
Janet Lees, a friend of St Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict, after wandering through East Yorkshire. 19.09.2021.
Note: ‘One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church’ are words used in the service of ordination in the United Reformed Church.
Today’s letter is to Mother Julian of Norwich, the first woman to write a book in English that has survived, from the 14th century.
Dear Mother Julian,
I imagine you missed them. How could you not? If the Black Death was anything like we understand it, then it was horrendous and to lose you family to it, dreadful. Other plagues would come and go. I’ve visited Eyam, for example, where there was plague in 1665, and seen the place where one woman buried her whole family, one after another. It’s here: https://historicengland.org.uk/services-skills/education/educational-images/riley-graves-riley-lane-eyam-6974
I often think of you in that simple space, made holy by your constant prayer. A quiet and austere stone cell, I have my own aluminium equivalent, but I also have the choice to open the doors, be inside or out.
Inside the Mobile Chapel of St Scholastica, Bambi.
I wonder what took you there, as I listen to contemporary stories of loss and grief, anxiety and sadness, of the missing and the missed, the lonely and the alone: was it like that for you?
Or did the stones seem warm and welcoming, resonant and reflective as you readily embraced this lone existence? Time to think, to remember, to grieve, to renew, to celebrate; we all need such times and places.
I first read your book about 40 years ago. It astonished me. It confirmed me as a woman of faith in ways some other word didn’t do. I could stretch out my hand to you over the centuries and see you open yours and show me the hazelnut; simple but significant. A woman, on her own, was enough, to be able to see God and say so.
I am not alone, not like you were. I flit back and forth, connected in different ways, by sight, by internet, by memory. But I still hugely value your insights and your persistence. As I dig down into the earth of faith, I am pleased to echo with you that ‘We shall not be overcome’ and ‘All Shall Be Well’.
Words on The Wall
From the remembered bible: Pray at all times.
In response to the call of Christ, I seek to live holy communion, create holy space and offer holy service. (Prayer of the Lay Community of St Benedict http://www.laybenedictines.org/)
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St 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.
We’re approaching All Saints and All Souls, an extended autumnal feast to remember those who have gone before us in the faith. I’m not clear how this would have worked in your day, as there were many fewer official saints. However, you consider saints important to Benedictine spirituality and mention them in chapter 14, so that’s why I’m writing to you about that now.
Saints are just one of the things that still divide Christians today. We have our different views about who are worthy to be called Saints, who can appoint them, how we should remember them and much more. One person’s Saint is not necessarily another’s.
However, it’s clear that there are many people who through the generations have kept the faith alive in many ways and who we remember for diverse different reasons. Some are associated with a place or cause, some are more like common ancestors in the faith or beloved family members. Even you get to be a Saint, Benedict! I’ve no idea how you’d receive that, except of course I’m sure it would be humbly.
One of the biggest problems with the faith is the urge in us to cart our history about with us, and when it becomes too much to carry, to set it down somewhere and continually revisit it. Sometimes this is helpful. It can inspire and enliven us, but it can also bog us down, distract us and take up too much of the energy we need for living the faith today.
Our churches and religious places are not museums. They are supposed to be beacons: a means of lighting out way. So too the Saints: people to propel us forwards.
Speaking personally, there are a vast number of people who do that faith propulsion thing for me. Some are those the Church recognises as official saints, but most are just ordinary people that I might read about or meet. I chose Scholastica as my running mate for many different reasons. As your twin she was connected to you, but like me she was female. However, in our day, very little is known about her directly and few, if any, of her actual words survive. That much of her story is familiar to the lot of many women in the early era of the Church.
What has been passed on about her was that she was feisty and ready to question you. It’s good to know that. I’d add to her name a whole list of others beginning with Julian of Norwich, Florence Nightingale and Madge Saunders. You can read a piece I wrote about Madge in the Dangerous Women Project.
So I wish you a happy feast, with which ever Saints keep you alive in the faith.
From the remembered bible: Let us run the race that is before us!
Keep me alive in my faith!
From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St 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
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.
