Category: women

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.

Olive’s chair

My great aunt Olive was one of the wise ones in my family. Before I give her chair away I’d best tell you her story.

Olive was married to Len, one of the Sewell brothers. Anna Sewell of ‘Anna Sewell and sons’ was her mother in law and my great grandmother. Anna had five daughters and four sons, of which Len was the eldest, so he ran the business on a day to day basis. He was helped by George who had served as a submariner in WW2. They all lived at the fish shop in West Green Road, Tottenham, which was where I grew up.
Olive ran the multi generational household that gathered at the shop and where all family occasions were celebrated. We relied on the shop for the major part of our diet when I was very young. My mum would call in everyday before tea time and Len would give her something that was left of the fish on the counter. ‘Fish makes you brainy’ the uncles would always say and we thrived on it. I still love to eat fish above everything else.
On Saturday nights the whole family would gather at the shop. Each person was allowed to choose what they wanted for tea from the fish left that had to be used up (Sunday and Monday the shop was closed). You could choose anything but you had to ‘deal with it’ yourself, bones and all. We all learnt to fillet at an early age.
There would be stories and laughter. Uncle George would say daft things and get told off by Aunt Olive. There would be card games of rummy and cribbage with Newmarket at Christmas played with buttons from the button box rather than money.
Olive was always generous, giving things away, freecycling just as we are doing now so I know she’d approve.
In the holidays we’d go to aunt Olive’s caravan near Southend sometimes. Or she would come on holiday with us and our cousins to places on the east coast like Sea Palling, bracing! She’d read us stories and we’d play tricks on her like putting a china egg in her egg cup at breakfast.
As we got older, aunt Olive was a source of treats. She took me to the hairdresser when I was about 10 and I got a bob hair cut. She bought me a magic set for my birthday, not a practical thing but something I had dearly wanted (I can’t remember why).
Eventually Len sold the shop and everyone dispersed. Len and Olive lived in retirement in a bungalow near the east coast and we would visit quite often. When Len died it was Betty, my mum’s sister, who took time to look after Olive.
At about that time I was moving into a flat in Palmers Green in North London. Olive gave me two items of furniture for the flat: a bedside cabinet and the rocking chair. I used to sit in the window at the flat and read or sew. It was the best thing I had apart from my sewing machine. She lent me her watch for my wedding day (something borrowed).
When Olive died hers was the first funeral I conducted, on my 33rd birthday.
I remembered driving along the M40 towards Oxford, returning to college, praying ‘May the God of Peace comfort, hold and sustain you now and forever’.
It’s been a great chair.

In our life and our believing

The love of God

JAL 08.01.2019