RSS Feed
Oct 2007
The Best Laid Plans
29/October/2007 Filed in: Jottings
I did wonder
whether it was a little over-optimistic to think in
terms of some major upgrading of the site over the
week-end. We have made a beginning, but only that.
The L.I.E. Group were, as always, a delight but
Sunday was definitely piano after having spent most
of the previous day in the kitchen or, most monastic
of occupations, moving chairs. Monday morning
unfortunately saw two thirds of the community hors de
combat (with maladies quite unrelated to the
week-end's activities). John Gummer MP is scheduled
to view the work of St Cecilia's tomorrow, so let us
hope there will be a rapid restoration to health.
Otherwise Benedictine hospitality may be of the
spartan kind.
Snap, Crackle and Pop
27/October/2007 Filed in: Jottings
This week-end
we begin some much-needed site maintenance and
(hopefully) improvement. All previous podcasts have
now been archived and will soon be appearing on a
special subsite. In the meantime, the "almost normal"
service continues. Today's podcast, recorded under
adverse conditions by our intrepid Scot, draws on a
reflection by Robert Ellsberg on the feast of All
Saints. Two great feasts in the week ahead, uniting
heaven and earth, the living and the dead. What a
heartening thought as we go into the increasing
darkness of November.
The Afternoon Walk
25/October/2007 Filed in: Jottings
Whatever
happened to The Afternoon Walk? Once upon a time, it
was an essential ingredient of university life, an
opportunity to thrash out ideas, mind enriched by the
access of oxygen. Children were driven out in droves
for "a breath of fresh air", accompanied by Nanny/the
family dog/other little monsters, depending on
circumstances. Frail escapees to the South Coast took
a turn or two along the Front, for the sake of their
ailing health. Even monks and nuns could be seen
dutifully pacing round the enclosure, thinking deep
thoughts. What have we done with the time we have
gained by giving up walking?
Dry as Dust?
23/October/2007 Filed in: Chapter Talks
Three times a
year we read through chapters eight to twenty of the
Rule. Three times a year we listen to Benedict's
arrangement of psalmody and lessons for the Divine
Office with a kind of glazed awareness that most
monasteries have adapted Benedict's original schema
to one of their own devising. Is there any point in
listening again and again to a liturgical code few
adhere to nowadays? Would we not do better to omit
all the detail of the preceding twelve chapters and
skip to the magnificent teaching on prayer in chapter
twenty? Perhaps the divine is in the detail. We need
to be reminded how our prayer in common has to have a
structure; how that structure unites us with the
Universal Church — we sing "according to the Roman
custom" — and is itself a facet of the "disciplina"
that helps us towards God. The liturgical chapters
are not easy listening, nor is the quest for God
easy. The "disciplina psallendi" is part and parcel
of our way towards Him.
St Luke's Summer
20/October/2007 Filed in: Jottings
The sun is
streaming through the windows, scarcely noticed by
the toiler at the desktop. That would have pleased A.
W. N. Pugin (of whom, by the way, I am a great
admirer). He had some rather odd ideas about nuns,
one of them being that they should mortify their
senses by not
looking out
of windows. We smile at the notion now, but the idea
that nuns are somehow a race apart still persists in
places. Today's podcast is a brief reflection by our
oldest community member on the relationship between
being a nun and a feminist. It is also a mini-review
of a book that may interest you.
Normal Service Resumes (almost)
16/October/2007 Filed in: Jottings
A fraught and
expensive few days. The G4 duly died in mid-back-up
(blessed be God) just as the proofs for the Catholic
Directory of England and Wales were expected and
final copy for the Portsmouth Diocesan Year Book was
being outputted. We now have a new Mac and Digitalnun
is grey from lack of sleep as she tries to make up
for lost time (blessed be God); the bursar is
whey-faced at the number of zeros on the invoice
(blessed be God); and our guests look a bit pale,
too, as the standard of catering has slipped while we
concentrate on IT and finance (blessed be God). In
short, the kind of problem people face every day,
which we have coped with as best we can, grateful
there was enough in the bank account to enable us to
replace the faulty machine, slightly concerned about
the economies we can make in the future. To bless God
and not curse when one is feeling devastated (and
even the loss of a computer can make one feel
devastated) is not "pi in the sky", provided one can
be honest about what one feels. It is, rather, a way
of finding peace in the midst of the storm —something
most of us aim at but achieve only imperfectly, if at
all. It is humbling to think where Jesus found his
peace during his last days on earth.
Death of a Mac
11/October/2007 Filed in: Jottings
Our trusty G4
is in terminal decline just as we are at our busiest
in the Veilpress, so this may be the last post for a
day or two until we can get a new machine (grey faces
in the bursar's department, notwithstanding). The
computer is the new monastic scriptorium. Each user
has her own peculiar arrangement for the files and
folders she uses most often, quirky bits of software
that no one else is supposed to pry into, pet
projects begun some time since and still "in via".
There are also orphaned treasures that no one lays
claim to, rather like the relics of a bygone age.
There are (digital) reams and reams of liturgical
material, account books, correspondence, chronicles
and so on: an archive on silicon rather than
parchment. There is a special prayer that we use
before booting up, too. Next week we may share it
with you.
Quinces
10/October/2007 Filed in: Jottings
A friend has
picked her quince tree and brought us a basket of
lovely golden fruit.Their strange, sweet fragrance
fills the kitchen. Soon we shall have quince tart and
quince cheese to share with our guests. An almost
Lenten thought!
The Frankfurt Book Fair
09/October/2007 Filed in: Jottings
Troubled by
pangs of envy as friends fly out for the Frankfurt
Book Fair which opens tomorrow. New technologies do
not spell the death of the book as know it (though
from time to time one wonders whether we have
fulfilled Trevelyan's gloomy prediction about a
people knowing how to read but unable to judge what
is worth reading), but open up interesting new
possibilities. In 2008 (D.V.) we shall be working
with the English College in Valladolid on a scholarly
project which will combine the best of classical
bookmanship with some of the latest advances in
information technology. This is precisely the kind of
engagement with contemporary culture that the Church,
including its monasteries, can help to foster.
God's Sense of Humour
08/October/2007 Filed in: Jottings
You have only
to look at a basset hound or read the Book of Jonah
to realise that God has a sense of humour. That may
seem at odds with what St Benedict says today in the
tenth step of humility: not to be prone to laugh too
easily. It is important to remember that there are
several kinds of laughter. Against the kind that
builds up, there can be no prohibition. But there is
a laughter that is more questionable: the sort that
belittles others or derides their sorrows or
infirmities, or is simply tasteless. It can be a
salutary exercise to examine one's own sense of
humour and beware of any tendency to misuse a divine
gift for an evil end. From all tendency to mock and
scorn, good Lord, deliver us.
Autumn
07/October/2007 Filed in: Jottings
An autumnal
morning here in Hendred: shimmers of heavy dew,
leaves turning orange and tawny, the tang of
woodsmoke. There is a definite chill in the air, and
it will not be long before we talk of the nights
drawing in. How lucky we are to experience the
seasons!
St Bruno
05/October/2007 Filed in: Jottings
St Bruno
makes me think of silence and solitude and snow.
Cardinal Hume once remarked that every Benedictine
should feel a certain sadness, a certain regret, that
the great vocation of the Carthusian is not for
him/her. But of course, every vocation contains
within it the need for silence and moral solitude,
even if physical solitude is not a possibility. When
Jesus told his disciples to go to their inner room
and shut the door and pray to their Father in secret,
he can hardly have meant to be taken literally since
most people in first century Palestine had no private
room to retreat to. We must make a Charterhouse of
the heart, and allow our prayer to embrace every
need.
Of Doms and Dames
05/October/2007 Filed in: Jottings
Every craft
or business has its own special language. As a
printer, I delight in the the "devils", "monks",
"friars" and "hell" that inhabit the world of
letterpress, so much more colourful than the
"hickies" and "jaggies" of offset and digital
printing. Monastic life also has its special terms.
"Dom" and "Dame", abbreviated in both cases to "D.",
are the customary English titles for a solemnly
professed Benedictine monk or nun. They come from the
Latin "Domnus" and "Domna", late forms of "Dominus"
and "Domina", the ordinary forms of courteous
address. Benedict was very keen that we should show
courtesy to one anotherr and actually prohibited
calling people by their bare name. Instead, everyone
is literally entitled
to respect.
The use of "Dame" sometimes causes amusement among
our guests, more often pleasure. It is also quite
useful for disconcerting a pushy "cold
caller".
St Francis
04/October/2007 Filed in: Jottings
St Francis must be one of the best-loved saints. There is something immensely attractive about his joyful embrace of poverty, his delight in natural beauty, his engaging simplicity of manner. But there is another side to Francis that comparatively few dwell on: the Francis of the stigmata, the mystic. Holiness is never one-sided. It is we who are not holy who try to reduce it to terms that we can grasp or feel comfortable with. I suspect that St Francis was not always easy to be with. His Master is not always easy to be with, either.
Guardian Angels
02/October/2007 Filed in: Jottings
Siegfried
Sassoon once wrote to D. Felicitas Corrigan that he
had seen an angel. His description was such that D.
Felicitas retorted wryly, "How could a mighty spirit
be so circumscribed?" I daresay many people think of
today's feast in terms of chubby winged bambini
forever flying through Tiepolo skies and utterly
irrelevant to their existence, or perhaps as a kind
of Jeeves-with-wings, quietly extricating them from
uncomfortable scrapes and observing with a little
moue of disapproval their less admirable antics.
Trivialising angels is only one step away from
trivialising God. An angel is, after all, His
messenger. A mighty spirit in very truth.
St Thérèse of Lisieux
01/October/2007 Filed in: Jottings
Feastday of
the Little Flower. Feastday of the Little Diamond,
more like. The irritating touches of soppiness ought
not to mask the strength of Thérèse's character and
whole-hearted pursuit of holiness. She is a good
reminder to contemplatives of the apostolic zeal
which should exist in the cloister, and in her
longing to be a priest, a good reminder to the clergy
of the immense privilege of their vocation.