So, I repeat, I am a\nwanderer. I have and do wander, both physically and spiritually. I\nwas in my 20s when the local vicar, hearing my story about searching\nfor a way in my vocation in the local reformed church, suggested I\nvisited an Anglican Benedictine Community for women. Now you need to\nunderstand that in the reformed church of my youth, liturgy was very\ndifferent as was architecture and the notion of community very\ndifferent indeed. So this was a big change for me, but it was also a\nvery welcome one. It was there that I first read your Rule and saw it\nlived out. Perhaps if I\u2019d never wandered that way I wouldn\u2019t have\nencountered it. But I doubt I contributed very much, if anything, to\nthat community myself. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later I wandered off\nto other communities, including one in South London and another in\nNorth Yorkshire. I can see that any community has to get a balance\nbetween welcoming wanderers and living as a community. It can\u2019t be\neasy. Whilst I have not contributed much to any of those communities\nI have visited they have given me a great deal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps it was like\nthat in the community you knew: too many visitors visiting the high\nprofile monastery to sustain community life. There has been an\nincrease in wandering. Forward to the 21st century and we can see the\npatterns left by wanderers criss-crossing the globe and the unlooked\nfor effects of all that wandering on culture, language, commerce,\nclimate and our fellow human beings. It\u2019s a layer of human activity\nthat it seemed impossible to strip away until COVID19 came along.\nSuddenly all our plans were on hold. We were, and still are in some\nplaces, in lock down, restricted to our local community or even\nquarantined in one small space. With so much riding on our\ninterconnections, some things began to grind to a halt. Fewer\naeroplanes crossed the skies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If there were some benefits to this reduction in wandering, it was soon apparent that many resented such restrictions and wanted to get back the freedom to wander. \u2018We are a freedom loving people\u2019 said the UK Prime Minister recently, about this. But surely not at any cost. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In 2019 I wandered the length of Britain and once again I learnt a lot. Again I took much and gave little but can we be so sure that our presence as wanderers does give little to our hosts. How will a community practice hospitality if it doesn\u2019t welcome visitors? How will it be open to new ideas and experiences if it doesn\u2019t have an open door? These questions apply not only to monastics but to this whole island. Imagine a monastery that had a sort of little sub cell several hundred miles away, damp and poorly provisioned, run by another set of tired and jaded folks, where it sent unwanted visitors. It might deter people I guess, but would that be Christian welcome? Of course the idea of using Ascension Island for unwanted asylum seekers was just blue sky thinking, wasn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m a wanderer and\nI want to learn about community. So I have wandered into the Lay\nCommunity of St Benedict and I\u2019m trying not to let my \u2018will and\ngross appetites\u2019 get the better of me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n From a remembered\npsalm: Lead me in your ways. May I follow your path.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Move me.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n From A Friend of\nScholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Benedict I\u2019m a wanderer. I use that word instead of gyrovague, because although I think it is a particularly super word, it’s not a 21st century one. Not using words in common use is one of the things that makes spiritual texts like the rule accessible only to initiated people, those that know and … Continue reading “Move 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":[57,55,26,29,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-covid19","category-journey","category-migration","category-rule"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211","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=211"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":213,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211\/revisions\/213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/bambi-1024x878.jpg\")