OWEN EDWARDS REFLECTS ON THE COMMUNITY ROAD
I must preface the following "travelogue" by noting that this has been put together from my interview and background notes, and my own diary. Any mistakes or confusions (or accidental misrepresentations or libels) are entirely my own fault, and I beg forgiveness for them; I trust what remains will give readers a flavour of the Anglican religious life, so full of variety and holiness. My work here consisted of visits to 5 communities (meeting with members of 6). I wish I could have reached out further yet - to the thriving women's communities at Wantage, Whitby, Derby and elsewhere; to the storied Mirfield and Cowley Fathers and the variegated spectrum of other men's communities - but time was limited and so here we are.
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Ham Common - Community of the Sisters of the Church
The first trip took part quite apart from the other four - a sunny (if windy) March day spent at Ham with Sister Anita CSC (a friend of the show, as DJs like to say). The particular approach I took to the Convent helped, I suspect, to set the scene - a District Line train, running entirely overground, from Earl's Court to Richmond; and from there on foot from the old, close-clustered town buildings, down to the riverside, and along it to the gorsey expanse of Ham Common. Then across that, avoiding careening dogs and Bonart-clad ramblers, to the edge of the village of Ham - down a side alley, up beside a beautiful church (a visitor of which almost ran me down as he parked up!) and thence down a long, looping cul-de-sac beside a green.
The Convent itself is not ancient, though it is impressive, with a beautifully cared-for drive and a front garden containing a relative, I am sure, of the "birdbox Christ" at Bishop Woodford House in Ely. After ascertaining from departing guests the correct entrance, I was greeted by Sister Anita - a dignified figure in a green suit - who gave me the "tour". Almost 140 years old, CSC has the rare accolade of having been founded by a woman, and never having had a male warden - a rare accomplishment amongst those early women's communities, founded in the wake of the Catholic Revival in the Church of England. CSC was founded in the context of the high tide of Victorian altruism - driven by determined governments and the Church, slums were cleared, workhouses reformed, sanitation more or less invented, and education spread to the farthest reaches of the nation.
Since then, CSC has gone through the same sorts of experiences and transformations most other Anglican communities have - notably the shift from focusing on schooling to a less formal engagement with adult education, alongside some of the "sharp end" work (for instance, with sex workers in Bristol). It has also found a new role, not quite unique, but still relatively rare: in that CSC has an international presence, in Australia, Canada and the Pacific Rim as well as in the UK, it has been able to give rare perspective to the controversies in the Anglican Communion of the last 30 years. (As Anita put it, being "international and independent".)
Indeed, one Canadian sister was ordained 10 years before that storm hit England; and the community's continued presence at "liberal" Niagara as well as in "conservative" Melanesia gives them an opportunity to comment on the current problems of the Communion that many other individuals and groups cannot give.
And then there's the civil war in the Solomons. One aspect of that sad affair never seemed to surface on the news - and is an aspect I have keenly researched since Anita told me about it (Damian SSF, aka "The Boss", later told me more, as well) - is the role of the Anglican religious communities in it. Quite literally, the religious WERE the peacekeepers - camping between the rival factions, helping in negotiations, and being the only trusted body to receive decommissioned arms. The Governor-General declared that "I have no-one to rely on but you religious!"
Perhaps the specific nature of their life commitment helped the sisters of CSC and the brothers from SSF and the Melanesian Brotherhood take up that particular, most dangerous, cross - regardless, one can only be awed by their achievements.
But back to the Convent. I was only there for, I think, two hours, being gently disabused about my misconceptions and ignorance of the religious life - but one did instantly feel a sense of stability and tender care, from the spartan-yet-welcoming chapel, to the beautiful gardens and fruit trees. And this in London! Indeed, it took a serious transport hiccup and the bustle of King's Cross to remind me that I had not been more than a couple of miles from the most densely populated parts of England.
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Burford - Order of Saint Benedict
Now, Anglican Benedictines are a funny thing - there are a few "OSB" abbeys, and they all work closely together, but they do not form a single, cohesive whole (as with the three-order Society of Saint Francis). I suspect this is what has led to their the remarkable differences in praxis between different communities. What is common to them all is a focus on prayer and hospitality - where CSC or SSF are "mendicant", out in the world, the Benedictines are "contemplative" (an inadequate term), remaining in one place and doing their own special work for God.
Burford has a few special distinctions. First, it is a mixed community - 4 brothers, 4 sisters (though one older sister is now living at Wantage so her needs can be better met). Second, the community presently occupies a splendid country house, with some parts (notably the stunning Lenthall Chapel) dating back to the English Civil War and earlier. And yet - it is moving. For reasons of ecology (most important, as I shall get on to) and economic, the community has chosen to live more "sustainably", and is presently preparing to sell and move on.
After a somewhat hectic journey to arrive on time for a midday Eucharist and lunch (including a taxi experience to remember), our designer, Mark, and I spent a long, pleasant afternoon at the Priory. Taking part in two of the daily services (including a later None Office), as well as the communal lunch (with the rule of silence specially relaxed for us) definitely drove home the two cornerstones of all religious communities - prayer and common life. To engage in a regular pattern of prayer, every day, every week, every month, for the whole of your life - to go over the same areas again every now and then, and find new insights - and to sacrifice your diary (as Damian would put it) to the smelt of the common life is to come in to a most close understanding of the Gospel message.
These realisations were to come up again and again over the next two weeks - Burford, Holy Island, Hilfield and Malling being tightly packed - but hearing Sister Mary Bernard, 50 years a nun, former Abbess, and, according to Abbot Stuart, a great catalyst for change in the community, speak about the stability-through-transfiguration she had seen in her time...Quite unrepeatable!
Indeed, from a postwar foundation as an enclosed women's community, to the present state of a mixed, pioneering group of folk "relating across the gender divide and across different orientations - in the celibate context" is quite a change. But as Anglican religious life finally can look back on a long-enough history to learn from, some transmutation is necessary and desirable. Stuart - a warm, generous bear of a man with the gift of a prophetic tongue and prone to pungent anecdotes and metaphors - spoke with some interest about the Fresh Expressions movement, and about the community's own engagement with 21st century environmental and theological concerns. The community keeps its own extensive organic garden and orchard (alongside the less practical but incredibly beautiful rock garden tended by Mary Bernard), and one of the foremost reasons for moving was the moral conundrum regarding the cost heating and upkeeping a rambling mansion. For all its nurturing qualities, Stuart told me, it was time to key in on the real mission statement.
The contemplative life also has something else going for it one can only envy - almost universally, the separation from the world and the spiritual environment in the community seems to lead to a flourishing of talents. At Burford, Brother Philip's singing, iconography and incense-making blossomed from nowhere; Sister Mary Gabriel's Chinese brush-painting too; and the time apart gives Brother Antony the chance to work as the RSPB's local officer. Things were similar at Malling, the other "contemplative" community we visited; but more of that later.
I shall certainly visit Burford again before the Big Move, and after; Burford, or rather the community it has housed for 60 years, represents in microcosm the grounding of the religious life - full of wonderful characters, finding a way to live together in prayer and community.
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Holy Island - Society of Saint Francis
Now, Holy Island - three incredibly important days, both for this project and for me. For the project, Holy Island is a brilliant story - a brother as the Vicar of an island famous for its religious past, famous for its monks, and still a major pilgrimage destination. The story goes rather deeper, though - as I shall try to explain. For me personally, living with two brothers (and for one night, Mark), on a place that, perhaps uniquely in Britain, can comfortably combine worldly tourism with daily isolation was a landmark moment. Three days, indeed, was enough to instil me with the habit of calling people "brother" and "sister" (what else are we?), and profoundly affect my mindset on what constitutes a "good life".
I reached Newcastle "International" Airport on the morning of the Thursday - carbon offset fee dealt with, of course. Damian arrived to pick me up - a slight, cherubic, middle-aged man in a brown habit wandering around an airport is a sight to see. I suppose, actually, it's most fitting - the mendicants who follow in St Francis' footsteps SHOULD almost shock us with their "holy difference".
Damian is "The Boss" - well, after a fashion. He's been the man we've gone to with all our petty concerns and difficulties as we've made the pilgrimage that was this project. He's done it with characteristic patience and warmth (what relation these qualities bear to his background as an accountant I am unsure).
So - we reached Holy Island (after some shopping at a mainland village for the real essentials), and I settled down to settling in. Brother James Anthony, recently returned from a 30 year stint in Tanzania, and sharing an interest with me in Byzantine history, took me round the Vicarage garden - which Damian says was more or less scrubland before James came, but now bustles with over a dozen varieties of vegetable. He's also built a seat just outside the wicket gate at the end of the garden, for Sister Tessa, the Roman Catholic sister on the island. He sells seedlings, does much brilliant cooking, and does dishes at a local cafe. One wonders what everyone did before he arrived (such, I would note, is the characteristic verve and energy of the religious I met - so many throw their joy and heart into the work of God-as-Jesus, the "man for others").
I spent much of the afternoon, apart from a chat with Damian and a pleasant lunch, exploring the island, whilst the tide was still out and visitors still graced the island. Only about a third of the island is "used"; I mean that the village, its attendant fields, the castle and the harbour only take up that much. The rest of the place, barring two holiday homes, is gorse and dunes. The harbour (visibly reduced from its former extent, as one can see by observing the relative levels and soil of the nearby land) is full of fishing and other boats. Sheep gambol around a field through a well-trod path runs; the Lutyens-designed castle (replacing a former fort) sits at the end of one arm of the bay, facing the fragmentary remains of another watch tower on the other. In the distance, across the North Sea, one can see the Farne Islands and Bamburgh Castle. Back by the vicarage, down a field and a beach, one can, at low tide, wander across to an islet known as Cuthbert's Island, a former retreat of the Saint - a truly lovely little place, covered in flowers, with convenient windbreaks, and a great cross above the ruins of what is probably a relatively recent chapel.
The village is small - very small - with 4 or 5 shops, a couple of cafes, a few pubs, some B&Bs, two museums and three churches: Damian's Anglican church, the Plantaganet-era St Mary's; St Cuthbert's Presbyterian Church, an imposing 19th-century chapel that is now a Centre for the use of the community; and St Aidan's Catholic Church, of modern advent, which Sister Tessa looks after.
Now, for 12 hours a day, Holy Island is inaccessible; the tides rush across the causeway, and the 150 inhabitants are left alone with the seabirds in this "thin place of the world". So by 3pm of that Thursday, whilst I shinned up 75-degree slopes and wandered over pebble beaches, I was cut off from the rest of the world. After evening prayer at St Mary's, and one of the most delicious dinners I have ever had, Damian and I drove to the causeway as the tide lowered, and headed to nearby Berwick. He had been invited to an exhibition he had contributed to, on the Celtic religious history of Northumberland. Greeted with canapes and drinks, we looked at the wonderfully presented panels (of which one is destined for Holy Island, for a year's stay).
From Aidan (the first Bishop of Lindisfarne, who introduced monasticism of the Celtic form to Holy Island, and who loved to walk around and talk to strangers) to Oswald (the converted King of Northumbria, a pious warrior), one clearly sees the roots that Damian is tending - the island had a substantive Benedictine community for some three centuries up until the Dissolution, and before that the Celts. The Benedictine Abbey, indeed, is a most impressive sight.
The next day was set aside for "work" - including a visit from Sister Chris CSF (the Community of Saint Francis, a mendicant female community which, along with SSF and the enclosed female community OSC forms the Society of Saint Francis). Based at the Society's house in Stepney, Chris specialises in work with deaf/blind people (that is, those who are both deaf AND blind). We discussed the threefold vows of the Franciscan tradition - poverty, chastity, obedience. Whilst it pans out that obedience - the aforementioned sacrificing of one's diary - is usually the hardest of the three to stick to, the discussion of the requirement of celibacy was most illuminating. The idea of breaking the view of the greatest love as something "exclusive" to one's partner, and the idea of other forms of love flourishing in eros' absence, explains, quite apart from any pragmatic reasons, the value of celibacy in the Christian context. As a demonstration of the great commitment - in both directions - involved in the "me and God" transaction, the celibacy of the religious is something to be respected and admired (though it is not the right path for most).
Also in that afternoon, we joined Damian at the local (tiny) school's sports day, and visited James at the Stable Door cafe. We were joined for dinner - the five of us, Damian, James, Mark, Chris and myself - by Sister Tessa, a bubbly, good-humoured Roman Catholic Sister, whose primary concern, as she put it, was not where people were religiously - but that they had Christ in their lives. It was one of those dinner experiences - you know, THAT sort, where there is a removal of barriers, amongst friends and amongst strangers, where a group of people, if only for an hour or two, give in to the spirit of joy and common purpose that we all share.
One story I particularly enjoyed was Chris talking about a Catholic Mass she had attended, where she had been asked to sign for the deaf. The priest afterward asked her: "So how did it feel to concelebrate?"
The next day - the end, alas. After three days of change, development, and a fine chance for writing, back to Newcastle and the plane home.
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Hilfield - Society of Saint Francis
The next week, and another Franciscan trip. This time - the famous Hilfield Project. Francis, the man who taught the bird about God, and who met the Sultan and taught him and learnt from him, calls us - it seems obvious, really - to reconcile ourselves to others and the world. And this is what Hilfield, and the Hilfield Project, is about. Near Sherborne, in Dorset (a lovely town with a lovely Abbey and a lovely used bookshop), Hilfield is an isolated "complex" down winding roads. The Provincial Minister of SSF is a Friar here, and it's currently pretty packed - with 2 recently-joined postulants, some novices, and many brothers of longstanding, as well as visiting brothers from the Pacific, here for Lambeth.
Being the home house of SSF, Hilfield came into being to give succour to those left bereft by the fallout from World War One. Indeed, up until recently, it was still primarily a homeless retreat house. But, as the skills and personnel needed changed, Hilfield found itself facing a crisis: what could it do next. And eventually, with prayer, the answer came. The Hilfield Project combines courses, retreats, lectures and outreach work, relating to inter-personal and inter-faith relations, with an extensive enviromental project - including vigorous recycling, self-sufficiency, a large organic garden, regeneration of woodland and meadows, and more.
Apart from the by-now-traditional midday service and lunch (a loud, happy affair, with yet more good food - I've never eaten so well as on this project), I spent my afternoon interviewing a series of people - the thoughtful, erudite Sam, for instance; or the resident volunteer Richard, articulate and passionate. Richard made some points I must confess I'd never thought about before. An organic garden isn't a rejection of artificial means; it is, rather, a positive decision to grow in a particular way (just as the religious life sacrifices some facets of life as a positive focus on others). And if that methodology proves bountiful - how bountiful nature is! Here is the proof. We need not interfere so much. He also made the shrewed observation (which I had privately wondered about) that the resident volunteers at Hilfield - individuals who, without taking vows, live and work at Hilfield for a period of time - are really like a more actively informed "lay brotherhood" in the modern paradigm. Lay folk who, for a time, give their time over to assist the celibate religious in their project of reconciling the world to God.
As with Burford and the first half of Malling, our day in Hilfield featured heavy rain (indeed, as we ascended the hills near Sherborne, we were positively blinded by mist). But there was something curiously affecting about Dorset woodland, and the tenderly cared for acres of Hilfield, receiving the life-gift of water. Rain often feels, to me, like a form of absolution, a sweeping away - a visitation by the Divine.
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West Malling - Order of Saint Benedict
A different Benedictine house, abuzz with excitement as it prepared to receive a new postulant. A very different Benedictine experience to Burford, but also very similar. Malling has a spacious retreat house, which had many guests when we visited. Its building range in ages from Norman times to the 1970s. Supremely quiet, not far from Greater London, inhabited by a group of nuns dressed in THE archetypal habit. A silent lunch, with the guest sister reading aloud from a book - this one a recounting of a priest's experiences on pilgrimage to Jerusalem.
That same philosophy of hospitality and welcome, coupled with a slightly different focus - a more traditional stance, of enclosure and separation, in an effort to engage more with the world in different ways. The contemplative life - a former Abbess at Malling described it as "the prayer of the heart" - consists of, in part, joining in the prayer of Christ for the world - whether directly effective or not (as one sister said), there is surely no better precedent for how to live a life. The Gethsemane Commission, as it were, demands of all Christians prayer; the engagement with one's own soul and with God, relating to the needs of others.
In a meeting of the entire Community, Mark and I asked a lot of questions - and got a lot of answers. Damian's suspicion was fully borne out - not only did the sisters have a wonderful way of explaining their life, they were also more informed about world events and current concerns than we were! It was clear this emphatically was no retreat from the world; but a different sort of front line.
I then spoke with Mother Abbess alone, whilst Mark collected photos. I think this was when I realised that the journey was over - a short journey, in its way, but also a long one. Walking round the cloisters at Malling, hearing anecdotes and pearls of wisdom, it became apparent just what a profound example these communities had given me, and could give others. Obviously, I am biased as I say this - I have been involved in the making of this website! - but I nonetheless mean it.
CSC is pioneering and engages at full-throttle with the world; it sees its role as a celibate religious community as part of bringing God to secular communities. Burford seeks to find, in its own gyre, the spirit of community - and it seeks to do so in a practical, externally-explicable and sustainable way. Damian and James (and Chris, and on the other side of the fence, Tessa) all seek their ways of engaging with people and "demonstrating Christ" to them, through love and service and sacrifice. Hilfield, meanwhile, seeks to conciliate man with man and man with nature; blessed are the peacemakers. And Malling's hospitality and Divine Office of prayer, in a particular tradition stretching back some 15 centuries, keeps continuity with our roots, and keeps shaping and being shaped by the cornerstones of the religious life.
There is such variety in Anglican religious life, such beauty and joy, and so little knowledge of it. I am, I confess, very happy that I had the opportunity of taking part in this project; because, really, all these men and women do is live out the Christian life in a particularly accentuated way. They seek to be, communally, a sort of exemplar for how lay Christian communities might operate. I will leave it to Mother Abbess at Malling to sum this whole demi-ecstatic experience up:
"I think that religious communities are based on the Lord's commandment to lose one's life in order to gain it. They're about offering God's wonderful gift of freedom back to him in order for a much wider freedom. All Christian vocation has this element of losing and finding. And every Christian has a vocation!"
