Notes from Bambi – Page 8 – Traveller's notes

Obedience

Dear Benedict,

In chapter 71 your refer to one of the things I find hardest to contextualise for 21st century people: obedience. You were operating in a hierarchical society and your Rule about being obedient to those selected to lead was not something to question. In some ways these early monastic communities were the beginning of democracy. That’s an on going project.

Our 21st century world has many different ways of understanding obedience. In some places obedience is required on pain of death. Any dissent is severely dealt with. In others situations we have moved on from corporal punishment for, for example, children to the delight of some and the annoyance of others. Others find ways of seeming obedient on the surface but get round the rules in hidden ways. In yet others, obedience is demanded from abusive leaders who blight the lives of those they should be serving. So much then for obedience. It’s no wonder people find it difficult. Some rule with an iron fist and obedience is coerced. Other rule with a soft mitten …… (decide for yourself what is the consequence of that)

Some of the gloves I used to wear when I was a school chaplain…..

In March 2020 our Prime Minister told people to stay at home, due to COVID19. Some did for the good of all. Some didn’t because they couldn’t (low wages, no sick pay for example) or wouldn’t (libertarians who wouldn’t be told what to do, for example). Now with COVID19 infection and death rates rising again in the UK, the government would seem to have spent all its currency on obedience, neither side really now being content to trust its judgement.

So it’s amazing that we have now arrived at COP26, a large international, in person gathering about the Climate Emergency in Glasgow. Only of course we haven’t all arrived. Some have never set out, either because they can’t or don’t want to. Some are still in Rome at the G20 and will doubtless arrive in Glasgow having used less environmentally friendly forms of transport to do so (I really do not understand why the two meetings could not have been scheduled sequentially in the same place).

One of the things COP26 points to is the need for a new look at obedience: for us to be obedient to each other, and most essentially to those most vulnerable to climate change. Unlike the leaders of a monastic community we did not elect these people, but we did play a part in keeping them on the margins. Being obedient to each other is the thing we need to replace unquestioning obedience with. It’s the blessing of the most vulnerable that we should look for when we are caught out in our climate exploiting games.

We keep the Rule best when we readily give up any power or privilege we have in order to have better relationships in our fragile world which will lead to the thriving of all creatures. I am not more important than the earthworm or the bee (or any invertebrate for that matter) for without them I cannot thrive. I am not more important that one who lives on a small island in a rising ocean, for I do so too, or to one who lives sustainably in a place of ice and glaciers, for without their efforts I also drown.

It doesn’t surprise me that the leaders a country that makes a lot of wealth out of the use of fossil fuels wants to alter the language of a report in order to endorse their right to continue to do so. Neither does it surprise me that large countries emitting increasing amounts of carbon don’t want to come to a summit in which they are lectured by those western governments who seem to see it as their paternal right to set the agenda.

What I don’t understand is why a teenage girl who speaks up for the climate and the action we need to take should attract so much abuse. It is those who will continue to inhabit our more and more precarious planet who we need to ask a blessing from.

Chapter 71, were I to suggest a bit of editing, would be about that. Honour the smallest, the least, the most vulnerable amongst you. Don’t expect obedience for obedience sake. No one should be ruling the roost with this Rule.

From the remembered gospel: Let the children come to me, let them speak for me.

O God open our lips.

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

Ancestor?

Dear Benedict,

It seems my idea to start at the end of your Rule and work backwards wasn’t as novel as I’d thought. Of course not! Someone else had already thought of it (Terence G Kardong). Oh well, still plodding backwards through your Rule anyway.

I say plodding but then I do a lot of walking. I was reading an extract of a podcast of a conversation between Bruce Springsteen and Barak Obama which may seem odd but then I’m still not really into podcasts much. It was about their fathers, which is also odd as I’m not really into them either, being no fan of the Rule of the Fathers. Which may seem even odder when you think about reading your Rule, as you are also known in our times as Father Benedict. Anyway, enough oddness for now…

These two men compared stories and found much in common. At the end Bruce offers Barak the advice to walk with his late father ‘not as a ghost but an ancestor’. It’s that I’d like to write to you about today.

It’s partly why I was reading the Rule backwards. I wondered if by doing that I might catch a glimpse of the real Benedict in my rear view mirror. In all the commentaries on the Rule I’d read, I’d found it hard to find the real Benedict. Now I’ve not read Kardong’s backwards book but it seems he thinks we see more of you in the final chapters of your Rule than in the initial ones (an insight provided by another Lay Benedictine). Maybe you were getting more into it.

Any lengthy project can be like that. It’s on the final stretch of the End to End that you seem to have got the hang of it and don’t really want to stop. I tried to make the last mile last a whole day!

Maybe, by the end of your Rule you were coming across more as an ancestor and less as a ghost.

As you might imagine, I chose my affiliation to your sister purposefully. How I wish we had Scholastica’s Rule. As it is we know even less about the real Scholastica. I’m pretty sure she prayed though. I often list my sisters in the faith as my ancestors and there’s no doubt that I benefited from their company on the End to End and most days since. What I look for in an ancestor is someone with whom I have some common ground, so that the struggles are acknowledged not brushed away, but also enough challenges to create a dialogue. That common ground needs to include understanding being marginalised, excluded and finding a voice. It needs to include empathy. Is that in your Rule?

However, I also find there the sort of hierarchical statements about obedience in ways that sit uncomfortably with what we know today about the distortions of life in community, including faith communities. It’s no longer possible for me to contemplate an unquestioning obedience in systems that have not proved to be safe. Neither do I have a test that allows me to completely know what might be safe and what might not. If I reveal things about my identity and find myself abused and made more vulnerable by others in that space, it clearly wasn’t holy to begin with. But how was I to know if I came with my bright niave enthusiasm? Which ancestors should I trust?

‘Look to Christ’, you urge me. Sure, but when others claim, to the vulnerable, that they have Christ’s characteristics how do you know you’re not plodding on with a charlatan? It’s the biggest question out there for faith communities at the moment. More and more people tell me they’re ‘not religious’ but they continue to be ‘spiritual’ in some way. Leaving off the old dead labels on a search for some other ancestors. How about recasting the old label and make ‘religion’ something much more liberating.

When Jesus visited the pool of Siloam some of those present got too bogged down in religious rules, side tracked by conventions and constrained by ghosts, to see what God was doing. It’s hard not to make the same mistake, reject the ‘religious’ without exploring how much more of God there is to be discovered.

So I’ll keep walking backwards through the Rule, looking for the footsteps of holy enough ancestors, for wisdom to step out to.

From my remembered bible: The Shepherding One leads me by still waters.

Restore my soul.

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

Zeal

Dear Benedict

I’m still working backwards through your Rule and that has bought me to zeal. Like other words and concepts in the Rule, it’s not all that commonly used now. I remember zeal, it sort of rhymes with congeal, from a song in my childhood – but that all I remember about the song.

Zeal is a word for religious or spiritual enthusiasm, or commitment to a cause. You distinguish between good and bad zeal, but I think there’s probably also lukewarm zeal and fluctuating zeal, or at least there is in my experience. I expect you’d have them on the bad side of the zeal continuum but their presence is a sign that zeal is not clear cut, not one thing or the other but like most of our motivations, wanders about a bit.

I’m familiar with fluctuating zeal having moved from being highly zealous to indifferent and exhausted. In my experience, my mental health has a significant effect on my zeal. Tiredness also always decreases my zeal.

In your Rule, zeal should be directed towards love and service of others. In a community this can create a web of good zeal that holds everyone together. When a community becomes dysfunctional then the connections made by good zeal begin to fray and come apart. Some members may still be practising good zeal but not everyone. Gradually those members will find their good zeal drains away and as that happens the less good zeal builds up resentments, apathy and so on. These take over and it’s no longer a community, just a bunch of people who have lost their zeal.

At the moment the autumn migrants are coming into the valley: geese, swans and redwings amongst others. A local group alert me to their sightings each day. I walk along the local paths where a lot of fungus are now bursting out. The migrant birds hold together in their zeal. One by one they pass the leadership of the group onto the next bird who swings on ahead to guide them all on the next leg of their very long journey. Occasionally I see one of two birds fall off the back or sideways, tired and looking to rest.

May it be so with us, each taking a turn at guiding and encouraging, and may we live together in zeal in the valley of hope and love.

From my remembered bible: Look at the birds of the air.

The zeal of the Holy One will do this…….

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

Endings

Dear Benedict,

When I last wrote to you about your Rule I started at the beginning, as indeed most folks might. This time I thought I’d start at the end, which is more like me.

A sign on the Trans Pennine Trail that suggests East and West are not very far apart

I’ve been trying to find out about you, but apart from your Rule no one seems to have that much to say about the real you. Every thing I read suggests you were a good chap, which in itself makes me a bit suspicious. Something I read suggested you left school at 14, probably right and proper to your time and class but no something to be congratulated on these days, unless you eventually become a rich entrepreneur. At 14 you had religious aspirations, wanted to know about your place in the universe, to learn stuff, to pray and worship God. It’s not as uncommon as you might think these days either. A recent survey found 51% of young adults said they prayed regularly. Indeed younger adults were more likely to pray than those over 55.

The article didn’t take into account the ways in which prayer changes during our lifetimes, but change it does. I’m now 62 and I do not pray in the same way as I did 40 years ago. As I put my feet on the earth, one after the other, heel to toe as I walk through the landscape, so I pray, breathing gently and carefully all the while. Forty years ago I was in too much of a hurry to pray like that.

Your final chapter is really an encouragement to keep at it; something we all need. There are many things I have neglected over lock down. I’ve not played so much music, for example and consequently my efforts to get all the right notes in the right order are hampered. I still play, mostly with headphones on so as not to inconvenience others.

But the Rule is something that can only really be practised with others, which bring me back to you writing it down. History says you wrote it down near the end of your life, and maybe you borrowed some of the ideas from a few other rules. So for about 40 years or so perhaps you were thinking about it, planning it, starting a draft or two, working it out. I wish we had your works in progress, your odd notes on the Rule. I wonder what happened to those?

Did you share your thoughts with others, ask Scholastica or other monastics what you should leave out or put in? It seems to me that a Rule like this has to be a corporate effort. So it might more rightly be called the Rule of St Benedict and the Community he was part of.

Even with the last full stop on the page, this Rule is a work in progress in as much as it is not meant to remain a document but become part of the way we live, making daily life our pilgrim path. And so I will try to put my best foot forward in faith, even if this time, I’m walking backwards.

Song (by the Goons)

I’m walking backwards for Christmas,
Across the Irish Sea,
I’m walking backwards for Christmas,
It’s the only thing for me.

Walk with me!

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

Cross culture

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.

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.

Our trespassers

In the book Winnie the Pooh, Piglet tells us his grandfather’s name was Trespassers Will. By doing so, Piglet was celebrating his ancestors and our trespassers.

Christians may be forgiven for getting muddled here, as we pray the prayer Jesus’ Tortoise: Forgive us our trespassers as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Actually trespass is a complex thing and it is worth a moment to celebrate our trespassers, without whom, in England at least, the Right to Roam would be much curtailed. I’m referring of course to the Kinder Mass Trespass in Derbyshire on 24th April 1932.

I followed some of that route this week (not all the way up to Kinder) and back to the village of Hayfield. There are various memorial markers on the route and it makes a worthwhile pilgrimage. I did not know that the Snake Path, which goes from Hayfield to the Snake Inn, was a much older route, from 1897. Some of the original iron gates remain in use.

Hayfield, Derbyshire, from the Snake Path

Remember also that those arrested for the Kinder Mass Trespass were young men: between 20-24 years old, arrested for riot and resisting arrest amongst other things, they served prison sentences for our right to roam.

It interests me when we look historically of what was formerly a criminal offence but was later recognised as a public right. Things like women getting the vote for example. Remember these matters, they are important. Roaming and voting have this in common.

And as for a Mass Trespass….

Mighty Mountain Maker,

remembering those who have gone before to win the right to roam on these hills,

we call on you, Unsleeping One,

to fill us body, mind and spirit, as you fill us with bread and wine,

to make us a vigilant people

ready to defend the vulnerable and marginalised, to create safe spaces for all your creatures

as we take this pilgrimage, in the company of the Travelling One.

Janet Lees, Hayfield in Derbyshire (for a change) 28-30th June 2021.

Just Walking

Sister Thea Bowman, F.S.P.A., once observed that “the quest for justice demands that I walk in ways that I never walked before, that I talk and think and pray and learn and grow in ways that are new to me.”(Quoted from Who Shall be Welcome in God’s Tent, by Andrew Remick, 2019)

When I walk, I walk in Beauty,

Beauty, beauty everywhere.

When I walk I walk in Beauty,

Beauty, beauty like a prayer.

This verse, that I sometimes sing when walking, is based on a Native American saying.

This week in Canada, more mass graves were found of First Nations People, buried anonymously in land formerly occupied by a Christian school.

This week I visited a Parish church in Derbyshire where a 15th century tomb displays effigies of two people who may or may not be those for whom the tomb is named.

That church itself is dedicated to John the Baptist, memorable for loosing his head for confronting an abuse of power.

Most of the time I walk in a green valley where the only memorials are in a small deserted graveyard where a few headstones remember those who laboured to build the system of reservoirs that were constructed in the 19th century to bring a cleaner water supply to the city of Manchester.

A view of Torrside, one of the reservoirs of Longdendale

In this small valley it is is usually easy to see beauty: it’s all around me.

St James church, Woodhead, where some of those who constructed the Longdendale reservoirs are remembered.

But what is beauty and who says?

Is beauty more easily found in over grazed pastures and moorland managed for shooting imported game birds or in the withering branches of a tree dying slowly from an imported disease?

Since walking the End to End in 2019, a feat that is to me both incredible and credible, I’ve had a lot of questions about walking through the world around me, much of which has happened during a lockdown due to a global pandemic. Walking is also the basis of my daily worship, the rhythm of my prayer and the means of processing my thoughts.

I was glad to find the words of Sister Bowman. I am committed to walking in ways that are new to me, in ways I’ve never walked before as I learn, think and pray in these new ways.

From my remembered bible: It is the narrow way that leads to life.

Walk with me.

Janet Lees 25.06.2021, in Longdendale, Derbyshire.

Footsteps

We’ve had a week walking in East Yorkshire with some lovely weather. We were based at the lovely oasis that is Acorn Glade.

A small wildlife haven and people restorer that is a home from home, with lovely, welcoming hosts, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s also handy for many fine walks and COVID secure.

We were picking up on some of our previous East Yorkshire routes.

Starting at Selby on day 1 I walked to Riccall on the TPT. We were last at Selby on 24th August 2020. Riccall has a great deli for picnic items which are an essential accompaniment to a hot summer.

Day 2 saw me start again in Beverley, where we left off on 11th September 2020. Unfortunately in the mean time the corner Co-op has closed. Good thing we got those picnic items the previous day. My first visit was to Beverley Minister where John of Beverley is remembered by a skilful piece of embroidery. After leaving Beverley I was on the Rail Trail route of the old railway line to Market Weighton.

Day 3 saw me start that again at Kiplingcoates and while I ambled along to the Kiplingcoates Nature Reserve in a disused chalk pit, Bob began to other side of Market Weighton and came towards me. There were many common blue out, or uncommon common blue as I called them: the first I’d seen this year. We eventually met at St Helen’s Well, which was a cool shady spot on what had by now become a very hot day.

Day 4 began at the A163, where Bob had been the day before, and I took the Bubwith Rail Trail to Bubwith. This one won the award for Route of the Week, it’s quiet, green, well maintained straightness made it an ideal walking route for us. We also saw a partial eclipse of the sun on the way. At Bubwith, ice cream can be had at the Jug and Bottle in the High Street.

Day 5 began at Bubwith, with the last section of the line through what the locals called Dingle Dell, a beautiful green path to where the bridge runs out over the Derwent. From there it was down the riverside path and small roads. I met Bob at Wressle at the Parish Church of St John of Beverley. A more modern building, John’s reputation has survived locally for more than a thousand years. It’s Bede who recalls him in his Ecclesiastical History and may have known him as a young man. What came across to me from the various accounts was his humility and peacemaking. May such gifts of leadership be valued and promoted by us all.

Our week ended at Bamby Barrage where freshwater Derwent meet salty Ouse. We were last here on 25th August 2020 when I was walking east on the TPT. We had one of our picnics in the car park. It was a lovely week to ‘join up some dots’ in East Yorkshire and we plan another visit in September when we shall return to see Acorn Glade in Autumn glory.

From my remembered bible: Show me your ways, O God. May my path be straight.

Walk on

Janet Lees, in East Yorkshire, 7th to 11th June 2021. I hope to add photographs over the next few days.

Green

It isn’t so long ago that I recall all the Sunday’s after Pentecost were numbered. The numbers varied depending on when in the year Pentecost fell and that in turn depended on when Easter had been celebrated. Anyway, there were always a lot of Sunday’s after Pentecost. Time enough to forget the life changing power of the Spirit and sink back into post-Pentecost lethargy.

More recently a different habit has been suggested. The period after Pentecost should be considered as Creation Time and celebrated with this in mind. A time to take a look at our world and celebrate the diverse stories that the word Creation embodies.

For me the colour green is one of my favourites. The valley is currently full of all things green: so many shades, so many species. Words cannot describe them all. I go to green places and drink it in like some kind of environmental smoothie. It all reminds me of walking through the green on my End to End in 2019, every green day of it.

How green is my valley? (the Hope Valley in Derbyshire)

A blade of grass is a solar panel of cells making energy freely from sunlight. I salute each one. At the moment we are waiting for the report on Roughfields to see if the local council agrees to ‘Keeping it Rough’. I have reported on the myriad of species that makes a home on Roughfields throughout the year. Creation time is not just after Pentecost, it’s life long.

From the remembered bible: We shall go out joyfully and the trees will applaud loudly.

May we keep it green!

JAL in Longdendale, another green valley in Derbyshire, 02.06.2021

Wind!

Wind is the particular type of air that is required for Pentecost. On the day of Pentecost there’s no such thing as a weather forecast that says ‘too windy’.

Which is good because there has been a significant increase in the amount of UK energy requirements produced by wind over the last year. The UK is a windy place so why not make use of this free resource that is carbon neutral. After all we have a centuries old history of doing so and you can still see the old brick windmill towers in some parts of the landscape.

There are of course old towers on some churches. Maybe a new life for some as the bases for wind generation. that would be in keeping with the Spirit of Pentecost (note that some churches already generate power from solar energy).

Most of all, of course, the church needs wind inside its structures. not just a sort of gentle breeze but a full blown wind that ‘blows the bleeding doors off’. If the wind of the first Pentecost blew the followers of Jesus away how much more energy would that take today, after centuries of windless stagnation?

As a so called’ breath of fresh air’ I can tell you first hand that it takes a lot. I no longer concern myself with the inside of the church and its stagnant air. I can tell you that out here the wind is blowing freely and it’s wonderful.

From my remembered bible: At once there was a sound like a rushing wind.

Blow wind, blow.

JAL 23.05.2021 In (windy) Longdendale.