Equity and Faith belong together

St Wandrille in July is almost unnaturally lush, green and leafy. It seems a completely different place to the austerity of November. I greatly value these weeks away from the internet, emails, etc. — indeed I have now spent 3 months of my life here, spread over the past few years. On my first visits I used to take a pile of books, but these days everything centres naturally on the office and the Church.

One theme that has been jumping out of the psalter for me this week is “equity.” Some people talk as though justice and equality issues facing the Church were some kind of imposition from secular culture, to be treated with suspicion as a post-enlightenment racket.

The insistence of the psalter that God is a God of equity and justice, whose people should strive to reflect these qualities gazumps this whole illusion. If, quoting Michael Ramsey, “The Church exists that Christ may reign,” our life should be characterised not by weird exceptionalism, but intentional striving for equity and justice. What equity means pragmatically differs from age to age. However the challenge remains constant. God’s justice may transcend that of the world, but it has to be at east as just. And after a week praying the collect, much more elegant in Latin than Engilsh, that Christians may reject those things that do not fit with the name we claim and choose those that do, it just doesn’t make any sense to suggest that basic issues of justice and equity are marginal or secondary, or merely secular impositions. They spring, in fact, from the core of our faith, as reflected in the psalms.

It’s not what you say...

Three times a year, many of us who take the Rule of Benedict as our guide come to the Prologue. This opens with an appeal to start with God, to open our eyes, hearts and ears, paying careful attention to what happens when we open our mouths. Benedict, always life-affirming, quotes Psalm 34:

Who is there who really desires life,
long life, to enjoy good?
Keep your tongue from evil,
and your lips from speaking deceit.
Depart from evil, and do good;
seek peace, and pursue it

This isn’t saying that bad words are especially naughty compared to bad anything else. Rather, the Rule takes our speech patterns as a window into our souls, laying bare our real attitudes and intentions. We are accountable for far more than the content.

The psalm values truthful rather than manipulative or deceitful speech, but not merely as a defensive, negative thing.

God looks on the heart.

Disciples are called to a grace that actively does good, seeks peace and pursues it. Merely to avoid harm is better than causing it, of course, but it feeds self-righteousness, and leads ultimately to a life of stagnation and mediocrity. The intention behind defensive living, like that behind righteous words, can be defective or even evil. If our purposes are anger, self-righteousness, spite or destruction, we are falling short of all we are called to be. Blessing comes from nothing less than nonviolence as an active pursuit.

So there’s a challenge at the beginning of new year. Driving a car is not just about avoiding accidents, but deciding where we want to go, and aiming for it singleheartedly. We need to be ashamed of those times in Church, of all places, we do not tell the truth, we walk in fear and reactionary anger, we allow our mouths to run away with us. And if we should find ourselves this year feeling we cannot speak up for justice, as positive peacemakers, in the face of the Church’s own institutional blindness, apathy, inertia or even conformism that can open the door to abuse, we need to seek gracious ways of opening ears, eyes, hearts and even, dare I say it, mouths.

A tall order! But to the extent we fulfil it, our local churches become real, credible, and authentic as Christian communities: Good News in the communities they serve.

Two ways to win an argument...

Some people have been asking me what I think the way forward might be on serious non credal issues arising from cultural diversity.
Somewhat in haste, it strikes me there are two well-worn but very different paths the Church could take to handle them:

1. From the outside in.
   Pressure groups enforce their perceptions and will by political means — alliances, smokescreens, salvoes, outmanoevring others, Big Position Statements, threats and throwing wobblies, ignoring and belittling the others, doing down the opposition until it’s as though they didn’t exist.
   
   
2. From the inside out.
   Hearts and minds stuff. Begin with a serious pragmatic realism and clarity about the people concerned. Apply the Gospel = (Benedictine hat going on) radical mutual accountability at every level, about the means and notives as well as ends, combined with a commitment to excellence of execution within an overall aim of fostering discipleship

One is fun, but... But what do I know?

Clergy numbers and deployment

I return from a period of monastic study and reflection, and meet with a group to discern a clergy apppointment. Meanwhile Doug Chaplin has been raising significant questions about local clergy deployment cuts under the challenging title “The Big question in an elderly and inward-looking Church”. This relects acute and timely ventilation of similar and significant issues by Ruth Gledhill and, especially, John Richardson. I don’t know details of the various anecdotes circling the ether, but it’s good these questions are being raised openly.

What I wonder about is the quality as well as quanitity of staff appointments and the criteria we put in parish profiles, and the way they relate to the rule.

Benedict’s criteria for job selection are clear. Relying on pragmatic knowledge of a person’s deeds revealing their character and intentions in community, people are given opportunities to prove themselves faithful, diligent and competent. They should work to the best of their ability, in an ordered way, within the fundamental balance of prayer, contemplation, work and rest, accepting radical mutual accountability to God through the community, incuding the disciplines of chapter and listening to the least voice. Discernment should be led by the abbot, shared with the community. High commitment to Conversion, stability and obedience, Gospel zeal, competence, openness to others score high. Ego, opinion, outside status and Politics score low.

Such appointments are difficult, if not impossible, if we...

• are not sufficently a community to know our people properly and what they bring to the party;
  
  
• pretend or waffle about our intentions for the job
  
  
• do not observe the highest standards of justice in our equality and diversity practices. There are indications in Jesus’ teaching we would aspire to even greater and more honest relationships with our people than, say, Marks & Spencer, but we have to treat our people at least as fairly as they would treat theirs.
  
  
• score results rather than motives, surrender awarenss of competence, balance and intentions for a vague concept like “performance.”
  
  
• allow dirty information or untested assumptions into the process, including politics in the mean sense and anecdotal based assumptions
  
  
• measure character mainly by checking for failings, rather than accounting it in positive descriptive terms as we weigh any offer to take on a job
  

Winter refreshment in Advent colours

Over 10 years, I've never stayed at Saint-Wandrille this late in the year. Winter is a wonderful time for de-fragging. This year I decided to take a complete break from the Internet and all its works. In comes all the stuff and information from the year, and, as you enter a world of marked time measured by the psalter, everything begins to float towards its own level. Monastic life is paced by Scripture, not phone and screen. The psalter, as ever, articulated and absorbs an incredible range of feelings in an immensely varied range of emotional tones. So, over a week, everything begins to decompress, anxieties are acknowledged but not absolute, and a sense of God begins to emerge from the ordering of time.

The liturgy is absolutely plain in the last week of the year — a flatland before Advent. Benedict’s line about Monastic life being a continuous Lent, something about simplicity and refreshment, comes very much into its own. That meant a week of the traditional “stir up” collect, that feels gloriously straightforward in the Latin (Excita, quaesimus, Domine tuorum fidelium voluntates, ut divine operis fructum propensius exsequentes, pietatis tua remedia maiora percipiant...). This meant an easy ride through the psalter — especially to be appreciated in the early mornings!

The Monastery itself is approaching the barest it can be in the year. I was especially struck by the stick-like desolation of a glorious avenue of limes. If you»ve seen them in July they freshen the whole Courtyard with their soft verdant leaves and goo. Now they were so many sticks, with strangely bright spiky red tips. The hillside is equally plain, relieved only by occasional confiers (I could only count two or three) and, more sinister ivy strangling one or two tree trunks up the slope. The Vine is doing well in its own house, though. There are occasional green survivals on some trees, which makes me wonder whether the house is ever entirely leafless.


As to content, even though Advent felt further away than it was, you can’t ever get away from the Incarnation in an Abbey. The purpose of Christ being formed in me, however resistant material, is foremost. I spent some extended study time in the forites of the Rule, which I haven’t done before. As a new model Terms and Conditions of Service Tsar (!), I thought it might be good to work through Benedict on competencies and accountability, around RB46. It’s a part of the rule where Benedict innovates and simplifies considerably over and above the Rule of the Master, and I came back with a pile of fresh ideas, some of which may turn out not to be silly...

Punishment, Stability and Community

In my ordinary daily sequence of reading, prayer and meditation, I’ve been reading the really uncongenial part of the Rule of Benedict, chapters that deal with punshment in the community. To put things in historical perspective, corporal punishment was universal in the sixth century, and Benedict’s use of it minimal compared to contemporaneous sources. The Rule is not designed to absolutise the disciplinary practices of its age any more than the Parable of the Good Samaritan is designed to make people beat up Samaritans.

However, it is interesting to note who gets punished in the rule. Unlike our age, Benedict does not punish incompetence, human failing, ignorance, lack of spiritual intensity, failure, or saying the wrong thing openly. The rule does punish subversive grumbling, and sabotage of the community life. He expects dissent within the community, indeed encourages it as an expression of repect, but takes its toxic forms very seriously. A stable community cannot grow without basic respect, humility and realism all round. Community is not a syrupy and largely meaningless synonym for “everybody”, but a testing ground for character and motives.

So farewell then, if we want to walk in the way of Benedict, to email firestorms, hypocritical finger wagging, control by threats and manipulation, angry cynicism, and ego driven community sabotage. These need to be exposed for what they are, not tarted up with Conservative, or for that matter Radical suspenders. The community needs to be honest about what is really going on. Nobody gets punished for making bad tea, but however passionately they feel they are right, if they start slipping arsenic into it, three strikes and they’re out (another interesting Benedictine principle)

The Ascent of K[irchentag Day] 1

A smooth and easy journey across Europe, including a curried sausage in Köln! It's amazing how train connections in Northern Europe snap together to the minute over hundreds of miles, in a way they don't always in the UK. It’s also good to see the back of the Mrs Thatcher memorial slow patch on Eurostar.
I am deeply moved by the hospitality of ordinary people who open their homes to complete strangers for Kirchentag. My delightful and engaging host is a Roman Catholic, originally from the South, with a passionate interest in art and Thomas Merton. It’s really moving to be treated with a Benedictine warmth, hospitality and generosity. I’d like to think we’d do the same. I hope so.

I’m trying to develop my desperately bad German a bit, and this is certainly one way to do it. The main headline events are available in English, but how far my language skills are up to some of the more interesting but abstruse events here remains to be seen. This morning we meet in the International Centre to plan the campaign. The clever bit will be grabbing internet access and time to blog in a complex and fast-moving scene; so if nothing more is heard this week, that’s why.