Notes from Bambi – Page 7 – Traveller's notes

Scrutiny

Dear 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.

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.

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.

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

Forwards

Dear Benedict

I doubt you are familiar with the Pirate Song. I was thinking about it in relation to the New Year and reading your Rule, which starts again at the beginning of the Prologue on New Year’s Day. As I have been reading this Rule backwards for the last few months, starting forwards again reminded me of the Pirate Song: ‘this way, that way, forwards, backwards over the Irish Sea’.

From the words of the song we get the idea that life as a member of a pirate community was full of fun and rum, even for the children. And the first rule of Pirating was going backwards and forwards. I suspect, on those grounds, I make a better pirate than a Lay Benedictine.

Going ‘this way, that way, forwards, backwards’…

It’s good to start again and the Rule repeats several times a year which means we become familiar at least with the first bit: Listen, my child. As I walk in the valley on winter days there are quite a few sounds, not least the migrating birds making their way down from north to south, and sometimes west to east calling to each other ‘this way, that way, forwards, backwards’, trying to keep together, like a community.

In 2021 our walking plan was ‘joining up the dots’: linking the walks we had done over the years to each other in a countrywide network. I managed 1017 miles like that in 2021. This year I’m hoping for some more ‘this way, that way, forwards, backwards’ though I’m not planning on crossing any seas or taking up rum. But I will keep trying to read the Rule in the context of ordinary life in Britain in the 21st century, some 15 centuries after you wrote it. I will not be alone. Many others will attempt the same thing. There’s no test at the end of the year and sometimes it can be hard to tell whether one is travelling forwards to backwards, but I will trust the Rule to show me some direction, offer me some support and encouragement and something to get my teeth into.

A Nursery Rhyme….

When I was one, I sucked my thumb,
The day I went to sea.
I climbed aboard a pirate ship
And the Captain said to me:
‘We’re going this way, that way,
Forwards backwards,
Over the Irish Sea.
A bottle of rum to fill my tum
A Pirates’ life for me’.

From my remembered gospel: Jesus said ‘Follow me’

This way, that way, forwards or backwards, a Lay Benedictines life for me, please.

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

Voting for change

Dear Benedict,

The world keeps on changing. In 1984 when I first visited South Africa, I could not have known that it would be the last decade for Apartheid, or that I’d be back in 1994 to see the first democratic elections take place. I mention it because Archbishop Desmond Tutu has died, aged 90.

I might have mentioned before that I’m not very good with the great men and that I find the leadership sections of your Rule problematic at times. It’s always good to celebrate an exception. The Arch, as he was called, was one of those rare exceptions for me, and he seems relevant to the rest of chapter 64 of your Rule.

A monument to world leaders made of recycled material for COP26, in Stockport.

When I arrived in south Africa in 1984 all I knew about Apartheid was that we didn’t eat their apples. By the time I left a month later I’d learnt a whole lot more. I’d read about Black Liberation Theology, I’d seen the signs of racial segregation all around me and I’d heard about Desmond Tutu. I was to continue my education both in South Africa and the UK for the next ten years at least. I read the Kairos Document, I listened to people of all races and eventually I went back and learnt about contextual bible study (CBS) at the University of Kwa Zulu Natal in 1994.

One of the books I read in South Africa in the 1980s

These things became foundations for my ministry. Later I followed the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In all of this the face of Tutu was often seen weeping or laughing and much in between. The world recognised him for the ‘goodness in life and wisdom in teaching’ that chapter 64 of your Rule recommends in a leader.

Not every leader can be a Tutu, but to aim for ‘love not fear’ seems to be the bottom line.

From my Remembered Tutu: ‘Every human person is a stand in for God’ (Desmond Tutu).

Go well, Arch.

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

Talented

Dear Benedict

Like me, you use a remembered bible. At the end of chapter 64 of your Rule you refer to a verse: Matthew 24:47 ‘God will put this one in charge of everything’.

When I looked in a printed bible for the context I saw it was part of a small story about ‘a wise and faithful slave’ who was expected to ‘oversee the other slaves of the household’. Now you must understand that we read slavery differently to the way in which it was read in 6th century Europe. Too much of history has been about the exploitation of some human beings by others in systems called slavery, none of them as benign as these few verses suggest. No master had an good business owning slaves. That slavery was part of the Roman Empire and other administrations in the ancient world such that bible writers thought it acceptable to mention this, is not a reason to be uncritical of it now.

In similar ways your Rule has been subject to criticism for its treatment of children, even though physical punishment of children would have been commonplace in your day. Unfortunately cruelty towards children is still too common in our day and age for us to make such excuses.

If there’s one thing I expect from life in Christian Community, it’s being radical. I do not expect Christian communities to uphold unfairness or endorse cultural inequalities just because they are there, and I also expect them to seed this radicality into the systems and institutions that surround them.

O root of Jesse: some radical vegetables

Last night, on British TV, a Deaf woman won a major reality TV show, one that attracts millions of viewers each week. It’s a dance show. I’ve never seen it, but it’s glamorous and glitzy. Someone the public knows and loves is offered up as a trainee dancer and dancers with a professional dance partner doing a new dance each week. This time round several taboos were broken. In the final, one couple were a same sex pair of men dancing together and in the second couple one participant was Deaf.

So you see what I mean about the need for Christian communities to sow radicality. Why was two men dancing together ever thought unreasonable? Why had there not previously been a Deaf participant?

It seems that both of these sets of dancers has challenged the British public in new ways. The numbers of would be dancers who want to dance in same sex couples at local dancing schools and clubs has increased as has the number of people interested in learning British Sign Language (BSL).

BSL is the language of the British Deaf Community. I can only use a few simplified bits of it, but I do believe it should be taught in all British schools. That would be radical and it would break down a lot of barriers for British Deaf people. The Christian community would be a good place to start this radicalisation.

Would I change history? You bet. One dance partner at a time if necessary. But more than that, the community I’m interested in is radically inclusive. In that community anyone can dance.

From the remembered bible: That One comes on a day when not expected and at an hour no one knows.

O Root of Jesse, make me radically ready.

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

Peace

Dear 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.

Ignorance

Dear Benedict

Most folks know how to open a door, you’d think. But seeing it as particularly important you dedicate chapter 66 of your Rule to this vital task. It’s not just any old door. It’s the door to the community, after all.

The door to Bromfield Gatehouse, Shropshire, which was one the gateway to a Benedictine community.

This week, walking in Suffolk, I saw lots of doors and I heard or read about others. The way we open our doors says a great deal about who we are and who we follow. I find it particularly interesting when the door officer (you call them Porter) charged with the initial hospitality of the community, are those who were previously welcomed in and who now slam similar doors in the faces of others. That’s not the Rule, and indeed there’s no excuse for ignorance, as you point out.

Door, from the beach at Aldeburgh, Suffolk.

Another thing that happened this week was the leader of the Lay Community said how much I reminded him of Frank Skinner. In fact he sent me a copy of Frank’s book .

Now Frank I and do have things in common. We both make jokes about Wolverhampton. But he supports West Brom and I support Spurs (in the nostalgic way one does remembering the glory days of the early 1960s). We also both pray and that’s what he writes about in his book.

He’s not the first comic from the Midlands I’ve been said to resemble. I was 18 when some other A Level students said I reminded them of Jasper Carrot (other comedians are available). I’ve always had an admiration for stand up and want to try it myself, up to a point. I do a brilliant one woman show that my husband is the one man audience for. But mostly I just keep walking.

Frank’s book reminded me of the many many ways we pray. I love Frank’s way of doing it. Some prayers are long and others are short but I think they are all honest. He says he prays like parking ‘You get as close as you can’. It’s a good aim; I’m not great at parking either. The book had me bubbling with laughter. I like to think God reacts to my prayers like that: the wordy ones with the wacky metaphors and the silent ones with the awesome views.

Prayer is a door thing. It’s about opening and for that we are each our own door opener, though one or more assistants may have been provided to get us started. Once we’re off it’s up to us. Like me, Frank uses a remembered bible. He returns to some bits more than once, like most remembered bible users, turning them over again, examining our own ignorance.

He considers the line ‘Hallowed be your name’ a few times. It is a puzzling one, well padded with ignorance. I look into the night sky and I’m humbled by all the names I don’t know. I imagine anyone who attempts any name for God in whatever circumstances scores at least a point for trying, even if it doesn’t seem so promising a start to the Prayer Police. Like Frank, the God I pray with is open to offers; friendship, love…

And so back to the door to the community. On the news a woman in Aberdeen gave a home to a family from Afghanistan. She opened the door and they went in. I wept and I’m sure many others did too. Of course there will be other people needing houses in Aberdeen. But this open door is just a start. Consider who you are and who you follow. Just open the flipping door.

From my remembered bible: I stand at the door…

Help me to open doors.

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

Inside out

Dear Benedict

You’ll not be familiar with social media, a way to chat with people world wide at the click of a button without meeting them. It receives a mixed press these days but I do it, although I only use the one account in one form. This morning it was revealed to me by one of my correspondents that they have two different accounts. It made me smile.

I love my Twitter correspondent who has helped me a great deal, but we’ve never met. Such are the ways of much social media. If I was surprised at the alter ego they had also adopted then I know better than to comment but it did give me cause to think about chapter 67 of your Rule.

A few years ago bought an old campervan called Bambi. Aged 34 she has travelled 57,000 miles in her lifetime. I rededicated her as the Mobile Chapel of St Scholastica and took her on my Lay Benedictine travels. Yet chapter 67 is all about not going out.

Well that’s the main difference between monastics and Lay Benedictines. Being a Lay Benedictine you live inside out. I suspect there are many out there who don’t know they know a Lay Benedictine, a bit like having two social media accounts. And I’d have to say that it’s usually Bambi who attracts more attention rather than ‘What’s a Lay Benedictine?’

A Lay Benedictine is an enthusiast who would like to introduce more people to the inside-out life. Those who use social media often use it as a platform to share their views on life the universe and everything. There’s Anglican Twitter (I follow a few though I’m no Anglican) and Fungi Twitter (I’ve learnt a lot from them too). But most people just want to admire my van.

Perhaps this is why you didn’t want your monastics talking about what happened outside. You thought they’d be attracted to the outside life again. Me, I can’t get enough of it. Partly because I think it’s the life for me. I don’t mean night clubs and stuff, of motor shows, or concerts. All very nice in their way I’m sure. I mean the slow old routes from county to county, joining up the dots across Britain, where I am distracted by trees, fungi and other wild things.

So if you see an old Bambi out on the road, remember to give us a toot! We’ll be trying to live the inside-out life somewhere in Britain. Meanwhile we might meet on social media.

A traditional prayer: May the road rise to meet you.

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

Just care

Dear Benedict

Many tasks may seem impossible. We size them up, we decide they are not for us. It is true that I couldn’t have walked the End to End in 2019 without taking the first step. Indeed I was wary, and thought I might not be able to do it. But I had Bob, my husband, who had done it in 2003, to pace me from time to time when my steps were flagging. It took me 117 days but I did it.

In chapter 68 you write about impossible tasks. You seem to suggest you had a community of whingers who were forever saying ‘I can’t do that’, although I suspect you didn’t. As I look around me there are many tasks that look impossible but even the most unlikely folks embark on them. The end of Cop26 just a week ago indicates how impossible some tasks seem and how determined so many are to take on the challenges that are required.

The first function of leadership must be to act justly which in turn leads to the second function which is to just care. I’ve put the word ‘justly’ and ‘just’ in here on purpose. An unjust leader is not fit for leadership and care that is not just care is not proper care. Unfortunately we are currently surrounded by examples of the two, including amongst faith communities.

We seem to have forgotten that others will know Christ through our actions. If our communities do not run along just lines then others will turn their backs and leave us to it. So first and foremost the tasks must be assigned justly and then supervised by just care. Just as bullying is not just care so neither is an absence of care or no supervision.

Banner from the Christian Arts Festival 2021 at Nature in Art, Gloucestershire.

At the moment some of our most vital communities face a mountain of impossible tasks. I’m thinking particularly of the NHS and social care. Whilst it is good to encourage and support the marathon efforts of workers it is not good to ignore unjust leadership demanding burnout and low pay on the back of these workers whilst they line their own comfortable pockets. Impossible tasks require leaders with humility, insight and integrity just as much as they require willing workers. Have we forgotten what just leadership looks like?

From my remembered bible: Where love is, God is there.

May I live justly. May I just care.

From A friend of Scholastica and a member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.

Remember

Dear Benedict

We’re at that time of year we keep for Remembrance. It something that, having started up about 100 years ago, has gathered pace recently. I called today’s correspondence Remember because there’s a lot of that in your Rule. Of course you can turn to the text as often as you like if it’s accessible but memory also plays a part in living by the Rule. There are some bits I remember better than others, that see sort of foundational, like the beginning. Working backwards is harder as I don’t always get to the end.

Just one of thousands of names remembered on the Menin Gate at Ypres

Which brings me to a few thoughts about chapter 69 and not defending other community members.

Like others following the Rule today I find myself looking at the commentaries and reflections published by those doing their following in different circumstances to me. Some are helpful, some less so. On the whole what I find unhelpful is a sort of detached ‘suck it up’ instruction. ‘Get on with it’ is not a very good encouragement to keep going in community if it seems difficult. Yes, I accept that hardship and challenge have their place in developing resilence in adult life. But so does justice and if I might be so bold as to say so, I find you a bit light on that, and some of your more recent followers seem like that too.

Perhaps you have all lived in ‘good enough’ communities. Maybe no one abused their power and everyone got on as well as they might. Goodness flowed and mental, psychological and spiritual health were available in abundance. I suspect that’s somewhat niave especially when interpreting chapter 69.

‘Don’t get caught up in the conflicts of others’ we are cautioned by one commentator. Well here I am again failing at living the Rule of St Benedict, me and many others too, if that really is what you meant.

At a Make Poverty History demonstration in Edinburgh in 2005

For the last 20 days an ordinary man has been on hunger strike outside the Foreign Office in London, silently and with as much dignity as possible, asking for his wife, being held hostage in another country for over 6 years, might come home. I’m not related to him. He’s not a member of my family. I don’t live near him. I’ve never met him. But I have writen to him several times and I am caught up in his unjust situation.

He’s just one of several examples I could point to. A number of my former colleagues still contact me to discuss the injustices they experience, bullying and other forms of power abuse, in their ministries, often because there are unjust silences held over such issues. Don’t talk about it. Endure. These are not healthy messages.

But it’s not clear that chapter 69 recognises this. One commentator tells us that life is not perfect. Indeed it is not. But it is one thing for life not to be perfect and quite another to stand by and see others destroyed by the abuse of power in communities.

As I write this COP26 in Glasgow is nearly running on empty, as one rewrite after another waters down the language of change that is required to really tackle climate change. This is a global abuse of power. Once again the most vulnerable loose out. Are you really saying in Chapter 69 that I shouldn’t take sides in any of this.

For me that’s a direct contradiction to the gospel where Jesus encourages his followers to side with the vulnerable and marginalised. Why would we not do that? Why be bystanders when we could make a difference for justice?

I’m not planning to escalate a community conflict but neither would I be willing to stand by and see injustice go unchecked. In my remembered bible, there’s a story about a widow and an unjust judge. The widow keeps pleading and the judge keeps ignoring her. Yes, she seems strong, but the judge in the story really is a sod! Jesus makes it quite clear that God is not like the judge and by extension we should not be either. But equally we should not just stand by and see the widows or similar in our communities just take it because it will make them stronger. I shudder at that thought. It is when the churches have been silent on issues of justice, particularly those within their own communities that they have failed in their gospel witness.

Remembrance bring us face to face with the outcomes of the escalation of global conflict, and urges us towards peace. But peace and justice have to go hand in hand. In the psalms I remember they even kiss.

One hundred years later in a small cemetery in northern France

I hope I won’t be violent in community, but I also hope I’ll not be standing by while power is abused and people are damaged. Chapter 69 and some commentaries on it may need a rewrite.

From my remembered bible: Justice and peace join hands

Help me to remember and to live justly.

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

Wrong!

Dear Benedict

In chapter 70 of your Rule you write about physical violence between monastics. Clearly not something to condone, you complete the chapter with the quotation: ‘Never do to another what you do not want done to yourself’.

I’m not sure what size your community was or how many monastics gathered together in a community following your Rule in general through the ages. Some reports suggest early communities of about a dozen, but later ones rather bigger. Probably it varied and probably the interpersonal dynamics couldn’t necessarily be predicted either. But essentially your Rule on this is for a community gathered in one limited place under a leader. In our time it’s common to speak of the global community. For this fortnight the world is attempting to gather as a community in Glasgow for COP26, a very different sort of community, but it is this one I am thinking of when I read chapter 70 this week.

Team Lees-Warwicker crossing the border in 2012, on Hannah’s End to End.

You were concerned about the way monastics treated each other. To make community work, physical violence needed to be contained. To back up this part of the Rule you used the quote I mentioned. But in our world we are constantly behaving like this, especially in respect of climate change. None of us wants an uninhabitable earth but we all contribute to the warming of the planet, thereby inflicting harm on each other: like a slap in the face.

It’s a difficult subject because it requires insight and self reflection; not something we all welcome. Those who say ‘I used reusable milk bottles when I was a child so it’s not me’ may genuinely believe that they are faultless when it come to contributing the carbon emissions. Unfortunately each of us belongs to a bigger community and through our shared membership we are inheritors of its history for carbon emissions and other planet warming activities. I may not take long haul flights every week but I still have a part in my country’s carbon footprint. My personal commitment to reuse and recycle is important but we also have collective responsibilities.

Janetstown in Caithness 2019: the whole world in not ‘mine’

Most people think they try to be kind or helpful to others. It is rarely enough. The Rule is not about some bland inoffensiveness that will get us all through life. It’s about a positive choice to live with others and see them thrive. And as far as climate change is concerned it is not enough to smile and suck our reusable straw. We must work on what it means to not do to another, country or continent, what we do not want done to ours. Rising sea levels: no thanks. Not for my island home or yours.

Our shared sense of community needs to get bigger and bigger.

From the remembered bible: Love one another.

Enlarge my understand that I may act justly.

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

PS: The blue trousers have walked many miles, including taking part in at least 2 End to Ends.