Category Archives: Parish Monasticism

Chapter 1: the different kind of monks and their customs

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…let us with God’s help establish a rule for Cenobites who are the best kind of monks.

Who is my community?

This opening chapter is sober reading. I return to the wise warning of Sister Catherine Wybourne,

Pray and read. I didn’t speak about RB until I’d lived under it in community for 15 years.

It is obvious that Cenobites, ‘those who live in a monastery waging their war under a rule and an abbot’ are St. Benedict’s ideal (aside from the Anchorites/hermits). This is right, of course, for not only am I reminded of God’s statement in Genesis, ‘“It is not good for the man to be alone.”’ (Genesis 2:18) but also we return to the question we asked last week, ‘Who is my master?’

It is clear that the monastic life is never to be done in isolation; an individual, personal choice unconnected from others but, rather, a public commitment to others with whom one binds oneself. St. Benedict establishes early, the call to monastic life is the call to a cenobiac life (the Latin derivation of the Greek koinos, “common”, and bios, “life”.) The Sarabaites and the gyratory monks are spoken of with such distain, ‘unschooled’, ‘untested’, ‘soft’, ‘openly lying to God’,

It is better to be silent as to their wretched life style than to speak.

Philip Lawrence, OSB, Abbot of Christ in the Desert, helpful suggests,

I suppose that we are all Sarabaites to some degree, and must fight constantly against that tendency…Humanly, of course, we all tend to call holy what we believe in and to consider forbidden that which we dislike. This is part of the gift of having a tradition that we can accept and grow in. (Philip Lawrence, “Chapter 1: The Kinds of Monks”, Benedictine Abbey of Christ in the Desert, January 8 2014, http://christdesert.org/Detailed/66.html)

The Sarabaites and the gyratory monks both are marked, not by the lack of other human beings but by the lack of a human authority; an abbot who is the focus and teacher of a Rule. A community, it seems, must have a shared set of principles (A Rule) and one who lives it out and interprets the Rule for the community (An Abbot) in order for it to be beneficial. It is of no use engaging with a ‘community’ if you are not willing to be obedient to others; sacrificing personal desires and will and allowing yourself be taught. Again, Lawrence wisely observes,

There is a real formation in having to deal with other human persons in a community and with having to learn to live with a superior who is not perfect and yet to whom we give our obedience.(Lawrence, http://christdesert.org/Detailed/66.html)

Even the Anchorites ‘have spent much time in the monastery testing themselves.’ Here I am reminded of Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk and spiritual writer of the 20th century, who yearned to retreat into a hermitage but was continually called to remain in the community at The Abbey of Gethsemani,

The hope of finding a more solitary life now seems to be quite well founded. There are definite possibilities, but also there are still very great obstacles to be overcome, not least of which is my own Abbot. (October 8, 1959, Thomas Merton to Jean Leclercq, ‘Survival or Prophecy?: The letters of Thomas Merton and Jean Leclercq (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002) p.83)

This statement of desire to enter a solitary life was penned in 1959. Seven years earlier in Merton’s journals he is making decisions to enter into solitude,

I am now almost completely convinced that I am only really a monk when I am alone in the old toolshed Reverend Father gave me. (September 3, 1952, Thomas Merton, ‘A Search for Solitude: The Journals of Thomas Merton: Volume Three 1952-1960’ (New York: HarperCollins, 1997) p.14)

Remembering that Merton entered the monastic life in 1941, that’s a cenobiac life of 10 years before coming to a definite conviction to becoming an ‘Anchorite’ (although Merton always disliked the categories given to different types of monk). Even then, He would have to wait until 1965 until entering his own hermitage and living the life of solitude.

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The Common Life

There is no escaping this question of human community with whom to live out the ‘common life’. As an ordained minister in a parish, who is my community? Who are the people who will share a ‘common life’ with me? The answer should be the congregation with whom I find myself but this is problematic.

There’s a popular notion that it is difficult and dangerous to be ‘friends’ with members of your own congregation. The reason is given that you can’t be close and intimate with one member with out being so with others. I think this is a silly notion and dismiss it. Ordained ministers must have personal relationships and will always have closer and stronger relationships with some members than others. Unless one either cuts themselves off from all close relationships then you will always spend more time and be more open with one, more than another.

The Cenobite, however, in order to give themselves completely to a ‘common life’ must know the trust and safety of deep relationship. It is difficult to enter into a life-long committed relationship without some degree of trust. Vulnerability requires a sense of safety, however small that might be. Here is where, community becomes tricky in parish.

Ordained ministry can become very much one sided in terms of commitment to relationship and community life. The reasons people attend church are many and varied from duty to a deep call/vocation to the life and work of God’s Church. Some turn up just for a quick fix, or because it is just part of their routine; they desire nothing more than to hear the same old words and to be comforted and propped up by a sense that it’s still going on. Others go to be challenged, to be given something to think and pray about; they want to reflect deeply about their faith, to encounter God. As a pastor to all of these, as well as to those in your parish that don’t attend church, you want to enter into their lives to be there in every aspect. You want to be able to speak words of comfort, consolation and challenge at the important moments of life; ultimately, you want to point to God at those times when He’s most needed.

This desire for that kind of relationship and community is not shared with everyone or fully understood by others. Some actively reject such intrusion whilst others seek it too much. Whichever way people go, the impetus comes from you. There’s rarely a sharing of life, equal and balanced in a ‘middle of the road’ Anglican parish. To call a whole congregation to a more committed ‘common life’ is not desired by all members as we all, as Lawrence suggested, ‘we all tend to call holy what we believe in and to consider forbidden that which we dislike.’ Where might the cenobiac commitment to other human beings challenge the consumerist approach seen at different degrees within parish ministry?

In the Diocese of York we have been looking at Five Marks of Growing. one of these is ‘commitment’. ++Sentamu wants to see disciples of Jesus growing in commitment. This must, I feel, include, at some level, a growth in the commitment to a common life and a more ‘monastic’ call.

So what does it look like to be in community, in a parish, when even members of your congregation aren’t interested or inclined to increase their commitment beyond their Sunday attendance?

I’d want to suggest a formalizing of the observable norm in most congregations: a central core group and a fringe. This is not about creating a boundary around the core people, stating some are ‘in’ and others ‘out’ but rather a marking of a central point with which one can place oneself; a shared set of principles (A Rule). Most congregations have this in some form or another but often it remains unspoken, and therefore unshared, or it is spoken of ambiguously (the generic, ‘In, Up and Out’).

Reflection

To be protected against myself I need to take up the yoke of A Rule, under the obedience to an Abbot.

I have committed, for three years, to the Rule of the Northumbria Community but I am currently struggling with the lack of a physical community around me with whom to share that walk. I also see the need of an Abbot under whom I can allow the Rule to shape and challenge me. The leaders of the Northumbria Community are available but are not sharing life with me; the everyday moments. Without an Abbot I am a Sarabaite with all the tendencies described in the Rule of St. Benedict.

Holy Trinity, Divine Community, You make us to share life with others. Help me to establish a rule under which I might learn the joys of obedience. Show me the human abbots with whom I can share the common life and to whom I can look for protection against my ‘unschooled desires’.

Come, Lord Jesus 

Prologue

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Listen, my son, and with your heart hear the principles of your Master.

Who is my Master?

The, almost direct, quoting of the Book of Proverbs must be deliberate.

Hear, my child, your father’s instruction (Proverbs 1:8)

In Proverbs, wisdom is explored in a series of parallels and paradoxes and from what I have read of the Rule it is similar in approach. There is deeply practical pieces of advice but each of these prosaic ‘teachings’ has a subtle challenge to issues of the heart.

As I set out on this journey, I turned to Sister Catherine Wybourne, a Benedictine nun and Twitter user, to ask for her advice on reflecting on the Rule of St. Benedict. Her reply was characteristically wise,

Pray and read. I didn’t speak about RB until I’d lived under it in community for 15 years. Not sure if that’s a tip or a warning!

It would be too arrogant to dismiss the clear instruction of St. Benedict to listen to the human abbot, the earthly father but there is a clear double teaching here, I feel, to see an abbot as an ambassador for God, our heavenly Father. As Benedict continues it is hard to discern when he is talking of following God and when he is talking of necessity to live out the Rule. It is fair to say, however, that I am challenged in this; who is my Master? Who has oversight of my obedience to God to ensure I am not just following my own flights of fancy and desires? Who is my abbot?

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Seeking His Kingdom

Throughout the Prologue I see the word ‘Kingdom’ jump out. It reminds me of a comment a dear brother made to me in Advent,

You speak of the Kingdom of God much more than other Anglicans I know. They prefer to speak of the Church.

What he meant was I speak more about growing the Kingdom of God than I do about getting people into church. Don’t get me wrong, I would love to see Christ’s Church grow but I don’t see that as our main objective. I believe, rightly or wrongly, that the Church will grow when the Kingdom grows. If Christians receive Christ in them when they open the doors of their heart to Him, that same Spirit will seek to unite with itself it will draw us to others who have Christ in them the hope of glory. Christ calls his disciples to be his hands and feet and if we, as individual Christians believe that Christ works through us by His Spirit, we should also believe that others must receive Christ’s Spirit and thus be conduits for His mercy and grace. Why wouldn’t want to be there to see that manifest in the reality of life?

I also don’t think that ‘other Anglicans’ disagree with me on that but I do feel we all fall easily into a trap of speaking about Church much more than Kingdom. We have found a pearl and buried it in a field but now we spend more time protecting and tending the field than we do about remembering the pearl. When the field is threatened we protect it with all our lives. It’s not that we have forgotten about the pearl but it lies in the ground all the while that we are unsure whether it still resides where we buried it or if it has been stolen away already!

I ‘wish to be sheltered in this Kingdom’ to possess the pearl, or rather to let it possess me* and so I ‘ask our Lord (with the prophets),

Lord, who shall live in Your Kingdom? or who shall rest on Your holy mountain? (Psalm 15:1)

Benedict outlines clearly the call to wholehearted commitment to obedience to God’s commandments and ridding ourselves of inner desires to stray from ‘God’s path’. Our response is to ‘prepare ourselves, in body and soul, to fight under the commandments of holy obedience.’ It will not be easy nor can we do this on our own. God becomes, once more our teacher and Master but equally we return to the call to commitments to a community.

Do not fear this and retreat, for the path to salvation is long and the entrance is narrow… Never departing from His guidance, remaining in the monastery until death, we patiently share in Christ’s passion, so we may eventually enter into the Kingdom of God.

The Prologue opens and invites a novice to step in and take on the life-long and life-giving commitment to God. We submit our wills to His in pursuit of knowing His Kingdom born in us and the world which we inhabit. God is our teacher and Master but because we are weak and prone to disobedience He graciously gives us earthly ambassadors who have walked His paths longer than us and thus community centred on a shared seeking of the principles of His Kingdom is necessary in our discipleship.

Reflection

As I set out, what is God inviting me into? The invitation, for me, is the same as when it first was given: to radically submit to God’s will for my life, moment by moment. To discern that I need to know His voice and humble myself to obedience of His ambassadors and gifts of discipline until His Kingdom is established here amongst us.

Father and Master, I submit. Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Place me with whom Thou wilt. Gather Your people around me that I might be defended within the Body of Christ. Defended from ‘the tortures of Hell’ and from myself.

Come, Lord Jesus.

*This idea is explored by Peter Rollins in ‘Advent’ in his book, How (not) To Speak Of God (London: SPCK, 2006) p.103-108

Parish Monasticism?

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Suscipe me, Domine, secundum eloquium tuum, et vivam;
et non confundas me ab expectatione mea.

Receive me, O Lord, according to your word, and I shall live:
and let me not be ashamed of my hope.

Since training for ordained ministry at Cranmer Hall in Durham, I have felt a call to a form of monastic life. Monastic life comes in many different forms and, with the rise of New Monasticism in the UK and USA, as well as other places, the word ‘monasticism’ has become a bit of a buzz word. I think this is down to a move of the Spirit; a conviction to return to ‘life together’. Our society and culture loves the concept of community but it has, as I have said before, ‘become vacuous by its overuse’. Community, in the religious/spiritual sense, does not just mean individual autonomous units living side by side but rather means a breakdown of our personal boundaries to enter into a deep communion with others. In this respect I’m indebted to the writings of John Zizioulas, Thomas Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Henri Nouwen, Miroslav Volf and Stanley Hauerwas, who have become significant in the New Monastic movement*.

Whilst in Durham I encountered the Celtic Saints; Cuthbert, Bede and, of course, Aidan! Through their lives and witness I was inspired to live out my discipleship in a meaningful and deeper way. It wasn’t that I wasn’t inspired by other, non-monastic Christians but there was something about the commitment they showed to their Lord that opened my eyes.

I am an ‘all or nothing’ kind of guy. I have always been passionate and if my heart and gut isn’t fully committed to something I rarely engage. It’s been a good thing to have been brought up to be intensely fascinated by the world in which I live. My mother, one of my greatest inspirations, was a teacher fueled by her love of learning. she finds the world an awesome place and, with child like wonder, explores thoughts, ideas and experiences. After separating from my dad, she never re-married. She loved the solitary life (well with three children!) Over the last five or ten years, as her children left home and she experienced increasing personal freedom with her space and time, she has discovered a spirituality that not only enriches her but has transformed her.

She has struggled and experienced a difficult period within those years which had a major impact on that spiritual awakening but whatever has grown in her has been present in her, certainly, through my life. I look at her and she is a ‘monastic’ person; a woman who structures her day around encounters with her heavenly Father, who dedicates every moment of her life to prayer and service and who intentionally seeks God in the everyday.

As I look at my own life and come across decisions I find myself wanting to live a life like my mother because through her I see Christ, his compassion and his Passion. I see the fruit of a life that is dedicated in this way where integrity of character is based on an undiluted desire to be transformed and aligned to that of Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God.

Whilst discovering the Celtic Saints I also found the Northumbria Community who, from the moment I read their Rule of Life, I knew would have an important part of my discipleship.

It was during my second year at college when I experienced the pain of a particular approach to ministry. This experience un-settled me (that’s an understatement, to say the least!) I found myself uncertain of what I was being called to as a minister in the Church of England. Most of my reflections around this time were around ‘home’ and the feeling of ‘exile’ was very prominent. In this emotional landscape I visited the Northumbria Community and the language that they used was a fresh homecoming… but that’s not quite right: A homecoming in the desert. The feeling of ‘edge’, ‘fringe’ and being an ‘outsider’ remained but I felt a peace about that place.

Since that time I’ve been grateful to God for sending me to the Northumbria Community and I have dedicated myself to attempting to live under their Rule of Life. I began their novitiate process and have been exploring it ever since. That process has, in recent months come to a halt as I struggle to ‘fit’ into parish ministry. It is this struggle which has encouraged me to start writing on the ‘monastic’ call to my life, whatever that ends up looking like.

Over Advent this year, I read Esther de Waal’s ‘Living with Contradiction: Benedictine wisdom for Everyday Living’. I enjoyed it, partly because it is clearly an inspiration for the Northumbria Community’s love of paradox but also because it opened up the cloisters of Benedictine monasteries to everyday life. It made me ask the question, ‘is it possible to have an open monastic house in a parish?’ What might it look like to be a parish priest with a monastic call?

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During a stay at Nether Springs (the mother house of the Northumbria Community) I was speaking to Rev. Pete Askew about this sense of call to monastic life. He wisely suggested,

It’s impossible to live the way of life we live here at Nether Springs and be a parish priest. You’d have to be very stubborn to achieve it.

Then he looked at me and joked,

You may be able to do it!

There’s something in my gut which says I should try. I will probably fail. I will probably discover that I am naiive and have completely misunderstood the monastic call. I have reservations about the outcome but I still feel the journey should be made and if, after prayer and seeking, God leads me to a place of humility where I learn from the wisdom of obedience then so much the better… I guess that is my aim; to learn what obedience means.

I plan to read and pray through the Rule of St. Benedict. I will take one chapter each week and reflect on it. This is not (and I want to emphasize this) an exercise of understanding Benedictine monasticism. I will not write my reflections as advice on how to live out the Rule; I am in no way qualified or experienced in that. My reflections will be a personal journey of how I read the Rule of St. Benedict, what the way of life, that is lived out by those who have committed their life to it, inspires in me, encourages in me and challenges me. I do hope it is of benefit to others but more than that I do hope God uses this journey of exploration to speak to me and shape me into what would be of benefit to him.

Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near. (Isaiah 55:6)

*Of course there a female writers, Esther de Waal, Karen Ward, Nadia Bolz-Weber and Sister Catherine Wybourne.