{"id":206,"date":"2020-10-10T10:13:03","date_gmt":"2020-10-10T10:13:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/?p=206"},"modified":"2020-10-10T10:16:46","modified_gmt":"2020-10-10T10:16:46","slug":"fill-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/2020\/10\/10\/fill-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Fill me!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dear Benedict<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I get the feeling you had little time for the \u2018sarabaites\u2019. It\u2019s not a 21st century word so I\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The idea that two or\nthree people might live in an unregulated community and actually\nmanage to follow Christ\u2019s way didn\u2019t seem possible to you. You\njudge what they do what they like: \u2018anything that strikes their\nfancy\u2019. I assume you mean they have abandoned the work and worship\npatterns of more formal monasticism. They call anything \u2018holy\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s difficult for\nme to bridge a gap between 6th and 21st centuries, however I try.\nThere are 6th century gems I go back to time and again, like the\nBreastplate of St Patrick for example: \u2018Christ before me, Christ in\nmouth of friend and stranger\u2019, but this section of your Rule is not\none of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Apathy is common to\nhuman beings. We get worn down, frustrated, disappointed, and apathy\ncreeps in somewhere. It\u2019s been a common stumbling block in the\nChurch through the ages, as has the unexplainable need to defend any\nsort of criticism that might uncover those very things in the Church\nitself and thereby might deter followers. As a Reformer yourself,\nyou\u2019ll know why reform continues to be needed and you must have met\na few good ones. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps when you\nwrote this you had some specific places of apathy in mind. Maybe some\nyou had valued chose to leave the community and set up like this.\nThere\u2019s certainly passion here and that only comes from personal\nengagement. These apathetic ones had been your friends and you felt\nbetrayed by their decision to enter the unregulated sheepfold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Me, I\u2019m pretty\nmuch unregulated. After 1,500 years deregulation has continued on and\non, one reform after another, some more successful than others. The\nbranch I have previously belonged to has been dwindling for nearly a\ncentury and for all its strides forward, for example with the\nleadership of women, it\u2019s a hot bed for apathy. These days I call\nmany things holy: I walk the way trying to listen but also\nquestioning. I do get frustrated and I have walked away from some of\nthe more frustrating tangles. I wonder if any of those apathetic ones\ncame back to the community of the Rule?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA: Mother and daughter walk on in 2003<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From a remembered\npsalm: As a deer longs for water so I long for you, God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fill me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From A Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Benedict I get the feeling you had little time for the \u2018sarabaites\u2019. It\u2019s not a 21st century word so I\u2019ll 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. … Continue reading “Fill me!”<\/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":[57,35,45,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-rule","category-walk","category-women"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206","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=206"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":210,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions\/210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}