Dear Benedict<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Let\u2019s push onto\nchapter 1, it\u2019s one of my favourites. So I missed a bit out: it is\nquite long you know. I may come back to it. I did wonder when you\nwrote it all and how long it took?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There are four kinds\nof monastics, you say. I doubt most people these days would think of\nmonastics as coming in four kinds. But to get to the bottom line,\nyou\u2019re basically saying there are people who want to make community\nand people who don\u2019t, mostly because they don\u2019t know how. You are\nkeen on the community makers and that\u2019s what the rule is about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So let\u2019s start with that: \u2018Make community\u2019. As far as this section of chapter 1 is concerned, in the beginning was the Rule. Only of course it probably wasn\u2019t. You had to live it first before you could write it. Community is a big word in the 21st century too. At the beginning of the COVID19 pandemic there was a lot of talk about community and how we would all support each other. Now the pandemic is still out there and interest in community has come and gone and still hangs about here and there. So too with the Rule. That there are, 1,500 years later, communities that still live by the Rule, is amazing. Just as it was informed by other earlier rules of life, so too it has also led to the development of different examples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I grew up in a\nvillage; it was a community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I got a job as a\nspeech therapist: I was serving a different community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I went to\nministerial training college: we were urged to try to be a community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I served as a\nminister in several places. In the first I was the unpaid community\nminister and in the second the group of churches were said to be\nparticularly community orientated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I did my PhD: it was\nabout a community response to families of children learning to talk\nwho were growing up in poverty (the very phrase is long enough to\nindicate what a meal we make of community).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was a school\nchaplain: my role was to gather and nurture the school community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have retired and\nmoved to a different place and a different community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I belong to the Lay\nCommunity of St Benedict, it even has community in the title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the last of these (LCSB) we keep things as simple as possible. Our promise, which you can see on my t-shirt on the previous post, goes like this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c<\/strong>In\nresponse to the call of Christ we seek to live<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n \nholy\ncommunion, create holy space and offer holy service.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n laybenedictines.org <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n For us, that is what\ncommunity is. It is a Christ centred holy space in which service is\noffered and relationships can develop. It has no walls because we are\na scattered community. We do what we do \u2018as we are able\/as we are\nenabled\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Each community has its own pattern or flavour. Your rule tried to sort out the things that help or hinder when making a community and the fact that the Rule still does this suggests it includes a great deal of positive energy. But it won\u2019t suit everyone. I\u2019m not sure that it suits me completely. As we shall see later in the next bit of chapter 1, I\u2019ve got quite a lot of characteristics of the other three types of monastics that we\u2019ve not visited yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But one thing that\u2019s\nclear about community is that you\u2019re not alone. You can\u2019t be a\ncommunity of one. In a community there\u2019s always more than one. In a\nscattered community it might be a challenge how to connect, but there\nare others on the same quest. In a gathered community, the others are\ncloser, more apparent and may be difficult to live with, but they are\nthere. In the 21st century, this pull and push in community is still\nvery apparent. During COVID19 we\u2019ve seen people get connected in\nmany different ways and try to bridge divides and make communities.\nWe\u2019ve seen people left out and alone and noted how that has such\nnegative effects on human beings. As far as the Rule goes, \u2018Make\ncommunity\u2019, seems to be in line with human inclination to a certain\nextent. Until we reach a point, not necessarily determined in\nadvance, where it starts to get wobbly and we want out again. Much as\nwe want in, we may also want out. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n 21st century people\nwill probably be wondering if we need a Rule to make community work\nor not? Other people try different ways: a constitution is popular\nwith some, a pledge or promise does for others. Many will just think\nit happens on the back of culture and habit. Other may say following\nthe Gospel is enough. As a 21st century person I\u2019ve been collecting\nmany kinds of spirituality during my life time. For those who haven\u2019t\ntried it yet, the rule is there to explore. Monastic or not, we can\ntry it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From the remembered\nGospel: Jesus said \u2018Come to me\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n May I make community too.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n From a Friend of\nScholastica\u2019s, and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Benedict Let\u2019s push onto chapter 1, it\u2019s one of my favourites. So I missed a bit out: it is quite long you know. I may come back to it. I did wonder when you wrote it all and how long it took? There are four kinds of monastics, you say. I doubt most people … Continue reading “Make community!”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-rule"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":201,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions\/201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}