A Word about Oblates ..... In St Benedict’s Rule there are two routes into life membership of a monastic
community: the adult who comes and asks to join and the child who is given [for life] by his parents – see
Chapters 58 and 59 of St Benedict’s Rule.
To us the giving of children to a monastery – for life – may be unthinkable, but we need to remember that in St
Benedict’s day parents arranged the marriages of their children too.
The children offered in this way were the first oblates. This form of oblation was gradually replaced by
another, approved by Pope Urban II in 1099, in which people dedicated themselves, without taking vows, to
the active service of a particular monastery and lived under obedience to the abbot or abbess.
In more recent times the Roman Catholic Church drew up a document: The Statutes and Declarations of the
Oblates of St Benedict, which says that by making an Act of Oblation “adults spiritually affiliate themselves
with a Benedictine monastery and its community, in order to lead a more perfect Christian life in the world
according to the spirit of the Rule of St Benedict.”
The last half century or so has seen a massive rise in the number of people wanting to associate themselves
with Religious Orders in both the Anglican and Roman Catholic communions, and at the same time there has
been a marked decrease in the number of people actually joining the Orders. The result is that there are fewer
and fewer communities with which people can be associated.
At Mucknell Abbey we receive upwards of a dozen enquiries about oblature each month – mostly from people
who have never visited the monastery, though some are from people who know us well and have done for
many years. There are also many of our friends who live a deeply “Christian life in the world according to the
spirit of the Rule of St Benedict” who feel no call to oblature.
Since the beginning of 2012 we have been discerning the way forward for Mucknell in this regard. We have
come to the decision not to invite further oblations but rather to develop our FRIENDS’ ASSOCIATION as the
umbrella for the varying degrees of friendship and commitment of those who wish to share the Benedictine
ethos of our life.
In 2013 we shall set aside a number of weeks and weekends when we can invite members of the Friends’
Association to come and share more deeply in the quiet rhythm of our monastic life, sharing the silence and
worship, the manual labour and the corporate reflection on the Scriptures and the Rule.
Every monastery in the world has its own particular ethos; no two are the same. Some have oblates and others
don’t, and amongst those who do, the definition and expectations about how the oblature is worked out differ
enormously. Most of those who do have an oblate group will welcome Christians of traditions other than their
own, and will have something on their website about it.
An Advent thought (2011)
In our recent Refectory reading we have been hearing about the joy and enthusiasm of the early
Methodists as they explored the Gospel s and began to experience new life in the Risen Christ. We
have also heard of the horror and disdain with which their enthusiasm was greeted by the so-called
‘faithful’ of the Church of England!
In a recent copy of ‘The Tablet’ there was a letter from a young Roman Catholic – one who is faithful
and proud to be an RC – whose girl-friend is a member of a large free evangelical congregation made
up of people of all ages, but with a large number of young people participating fully in its life. He
writes to express his frustration at the lack of vision and enthusiasm which seems prevalent in the
majority of the traditional denominations. He writes, “In my gap year I worked at a Catholic retreat
centre and saw the massive difference Christianity can make in people’s lives. There are also
individuals in parishes that I have been to who work extremely hard to involve young people in the
parish. Unfortunately they are often crushed by the lack of vision and enthusiasm.”
How is it that so often there is such a joyless lack of ‘vision and enthusiasm’ in the inherited
churches, and such a suspicion of passion and enthusiasm – so much at odds with what we read in
the Scriptures?
It may be that people are rightly suspicious of ‘froth and hype’, of a superficial reading of the
Scriptures which gives rise to a very partial and simplistic preaching of the Good News – but it may
also stem from a lack of personal engagement with the Risen One, and with the God we profess to
be caught up in.
As we have pondered the person of John the Baptist in the Advent readings I have been struck by
John’s apparent passionate confidence and self-understanding – his ‘vision and enthusiasm’. John
knows exactly what he is and what he is not. He knows he is a necessary part of God’s unfolding plan
as he alerts people to the coming of the Christ.
In her commentary, Jane Williams talks of the ‘barely suppressed excitement in his voice as he scans
the crowd, waiting for the face that he knows he – and only he – will recognize.’ He doesn’t mind
that his work will be eclipsed. He understands the job of the herald – both its importance and its
transience. John knows that the prophets foretold his coming and that they longed to see what he
was about to see. He is content to be where and what he is – and he knows that he is a vital part of
Christ’s coming.
Similarly, many of the first Christians understood that they, too, were a vital part of the story of
Christ’s coming. In one sense they shared John’s vocation as herald: they were to be heralds of the
Good News that Jesus had come, been crucified and had risen – but their vocation was infinitely
more than John’s: now the Christ-life was to continue in them; they were parts of the mystical body
of the Risen One, alive with the Christ-life, caught up in the life of the Trinity, sharing God’s vision
and his ache/longing/enthusiasm for his creation.
It’s mind-blowing! It’s amazing! It’s true! - And, what’s more, it is the same vocation that we share
with them. We have the theory. We have the words, and yet – so often the reality, the vision, the
enthusiasm and the joy of it all seem to elude us.
We are to be heralds to the people of our own generation – to alert them by the way we live, rather
than by what we say, to the Christ who comes.
But for us it is so much more than simply being heralds. It is tremendously hard for us to grasp, in all
humility, that we ourselves really are members of, parts of, expressions of the Christ who comes.
This is the source of the joyful enthusiasm of the early Methodists and the Free Evangelical Churches
– AND IT IS ALSO THE SOURCE OF THE JOY AND INFECTIOUS ENTHUSIASM OF THE GREAT MONASTIC
FOUNDERS AND REFORMERS who, on the whole, were devoid of ‘froth and hype’. It’s also the
source of courage in the face of huge trials and adversities – as we see in the martyrs – of our
generation as well as those in the past.
John the Baptist ‘scanned the crowd’ to find the face of the One who was to come. Jesus’ message is
that, in a sense, every face in the crowd is the face of Christ; the Christ who comes in friend and
stranger; the Christ who promises to be present in a special way whenever two or more are united in
his name; the Christ who comes to us in silence and solitude; the Christ who is always there in the
depths of our being, even when we seem to be turning our back on him and making a mess of things
and living anything but generous sacrificial love.
We take a lot of convincing, but perhaps the best present we can prepare for the Christ-child is to
ask for the grace to become more and more open to the amazing reality in which we are caught up,
own it and ENJOY it for, as Archbishop Rowan maintains: JOY IS WHERE GOD HAPPENS.
Older posts ....
25th March 2011 and the dedication of the Oratory by the Archbishop of Canterbury is one very
significant date in the brief history of Mucknell Abbey; 13th August 2011 is another.
On Saturday 13th August Br Ian Mead made his profession in Simple Vows: the first monk to be
professed at Mucknell Abbey and also, we believe, the first Methodist presbyter “in full connexion”
to make monastic vows – 70 years to the day after our community was founded to pray for the unity
of the Church.
‘Simple Vows’ are made for three years, during which the monk or nun lives as a full member of the
community as a preparation for making ‘Solemn (or Life) Vows’. Ann Lewin wrote a little poem
when she witnessed two of us renew our ‘Simple vows’ some years ago. [After promising obedience,
stability and conversion of life, the one being professed is required to stand with arms extended and
sing a verse from Psalm 119: Sustain me according to your promise that I may live, and let me not be
disappointed in my hope.]
Simple Vows
Simple, not easy.
The economy of words
Belies the depth of the surrender;
No complicated debate about
How much to give:
Life is stripped to the riches of poverty,
(Sustain me according to your promise)
The requirement is, everything.
The nails of obedience
Fastening me to this place
Scar like crucifixion
(That I may live).
Totally costly;
Totally rewarding;
(Let me not be disappointed in my hope);
Simply all.
The Rev’d Bill Anderson, Chair of the Birmingham Methodist District presided at the Eucharist
[Methodist Rite!] and preached, Abbot Stuart received Br Ian’s vows and the Bishop of Worcester,
before commending Ian to the prayers of those present at the end of the service, added a few wellchosen words, pointing out that while he himself had been educated at the Methodist school in
Canterbury, Bill Anderson had been educated at an Anglican school in Canterbury, and incidentally,
Ian was confirmed at a joint Anglican/Methodist service in Canterbury Cathedral!
Our prayer is that our shared monastic life with Ian will contribute to the fulfilment of the Covenant
between our two Churches and result in their eventual re-union. Certainly what unites us is so much
more than that which divides us. In Christ we are one, all members of his mystical body on earth.
It is in the context of that unity in Christ that we understand our vocation and the ministry of
hospitality to which we are called.
Amongst the marks of a genuinely spiritual life is that of warm and generous hospitality – not ,
perhaps, a quality for which Christians in western Europe are renowned. When it is genuine and
spontaneous, it can be gloriously freeing and healing; when it is forced or comes from a sense of
‘ought’ it can be deathly.
One of the things we are invited to ponder is the amazing hospitality of God who gives us our
existence and invites us to share intimately, as members of Christ’s mystical body on earth, in the
hospitality of the Holy Trinity.
The sad thing is that so many of us fail to waken up to the reality and awesomeness of that
invitation: to BE part of Christ’s ‘body’, alive with the eternal and universal life of God. It’s mind-
blowing even to begin to glimpse it, let alone begin to discover the implications and ramifications –
yet we can begin to experience at least something of its depth in any particular moment as we live it
well.
As we ponder God’s hospitality seen lived by Jesus in the gospel stories, we may begin to recognise it
in our own lives and in the generosity and compassion we meet in others; and the more we do, the
more we can be freed to be spontaneous in our own generosity…and the clearer we may become
about the need for space and time to nourish that pondering.
We are still learning how to live at Mucknell Abbey and how best we might express that mark of
hospitality. In the ‘design process’ for the new monastery we were asked to list our ‘needs’. Among
the priorities was a place for groups to meet where people could talk without disturbing people who
had come specifically to share in the silence of the monastery. This was the one element of our
expressed ‘needs’ that wasn’t able to be incorporated in the design; the ‘footprint’ of the old farm
simply wasn’t big enough and planning policy wouldn’t allow us to overstep the mark.
The fact that we have fewer guest [and community]rooms than we had at Burford means that we
are having to re-imagine our ministry of hospitality. At Burford we had a lot of day groups, parish
and retreat groups and clergy cells. These are no-longer possible – and the positive fruit of this is
that there is more custom for the many retreat houses that are desperate for business in order to
remain open.
So what of the hospitality that we are able to offer at Mucknell Abbey? Essentially the invitation is to
come to be quiet and enjoy some precious space in which to ponder; to join the Community in the
rhythm of its day, sharing in the worship and the meals and, for those who wish, in the manual work
as we try to transform the 40 acres into a lovely place of hospitality. The Community library is
available for those who wish to use it, and the Abbey is surrounded by a network of footpaths for
those who like to walk [or run!!] – and for those who simply wish to sit and stare, the views are
magnificent.
We also have an ‘alongsiders’ programme for a limited number of young people who wish to live
with us for a period of months. Anyone interested in exploring this possibility should first come to
visit and speak with members of the Community.
Some people have enquired about the possibility of an individually guided retreat and we would like
to know what the take-up might be if some weeks were dedicated to this.
Older words from the Abbot .......
The Feast of the Annunciation – 25th March – will for ever be a special celebration in our
Community: the anniversary of the Dedication of our Oratory by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
You can read his sermon in the ‘Sermons’ section of this website – a sermon in which he called us
back to the essence of our vocation: God’s invitation to us to allow the Word to become flesh in us
so that God can speak; God’s invitation to us to model LISTENING – listening to God, to each other
and to the world around us.
Easy? ?????
There is a reading we sometimes use for the Feast of the Annunciation – the day we celebrate the
Angel Gabriel’s announcement to Mary that she was to become the mother of Christ. It talks of
Christ, the Light of the World, entering the darkness of Mary’s womb in order to become flesh.
We are attracted by Christ, the Light, and we respond to his invitation to follow him – and, as often
as not, before we know it, we seem to find ourselves in darkness. Darkness, because as human
beings we simply don’t have the intellectual capacity to comprehend the Mystery of God, as so it
feels as if we are left in the dark. That reading about the Annunciation alerts us to the fact that
something very important may be going on: Christ the Light may be becoming flesh in our flesh and
we need to have patience and perseverance, and also a sense of expectation and a desire to say our
‘Yes’ as Mary did, and yield to the overshadowing of the Spirit.
Ann Lewin wrote a little poem: ENTRANCE
Pause at the threshold
Of the sacred space;
Bow low.
Prepare for fresh
Encounter
With the Holy One.
It’s that ‘fresh encounter with the Holy One’ that prayer is all about.
Prayer is essentially allowing God to love us – it’s about that ‘fresh encounter’ with the One who
loves us more than we can ever imagine --- and it’s because we can’t imagine it that we run into
problems, and this is where perseverance is so important.
What might it feel like to be loved utterly and completely by God? – and who is God anyway?
Perhaps we might go back to Moses as he notices the Burning Bush. He turns aside from the path to
explore the strange phenomenon. “Take off your shoes. This is holy ground.” Moses obeys and
asks, “What is your name?” – ‘Who are you?’ “I am who I am,” came the reply. ‘I am who I am, and
no human mind will ever be able to comprehend.’
The God we are turning aside to encounter is and must remain MYSTERY. This God who created the
utter vastness of the universe – and we are just beginning to discover that the vastness of the known
universe is only a tiny fragment of what there must be beyond! – and the God who created all the
planets and constellations also created tiny spiders capable of weaving such delicate, yet immensely
strong, webs – with no instruction manuals!!!
‘I am who I am – and though you will never comprehend me, know that I created you and love you.’
One aspect of this persevering in prayer is making our selves stop and wonder. Ponder the vastness
of the night sky – or the ocean. Open our eyes to wonder and to notice the tiny spider weaving her
web, or the beauty and strength of the dandelion as it pushes its way through the tarmac; the
amazingly lovely feathers on a pheasant; the wonder of our own bodies that we take so much for
granted – or the devastating power of an earthquake or tsunami. As the old children’s hymn says,
“the Lord God made them all.”
The earthquake and the tsunami take us well out of any comfort zone we may have, and we think
about our sisters and brothers in Christ Church New Zealand and in Japan – and all those whose
plight no-longer interests the media….and we hear the echo of Jesus’ cry from the Cross: “My God,
my God, WHY…..?”
If this God, whom we say loves us, is real, then this love isn’t a cosy, make us feel good, kind of love
– it’s a kind of love that goes way beyond what any human language can describe … but which we
can glimpse in the stories of Jesus in the Gospels, and which we hear in that gut-wrenching cry of
dereliction from the Cross – the very moment when we believe Jesus shows us most clearly the
nature of God’s love: “My God, my God, WHY….?”
Perseverance in following Christ and in prayer will bring us to this point, and the invitation to us is
not to run away; to stay still and to try to be open to the presence of God – the God who has created
the universe; who has given each one of us life, with all its joys and heartaches; to be open to the
God who is the ground of our being, closer to us than the air we breathe.
The trouble is that, so often when we try to pray we feel nothing – except perhaps a tickle on the
nose, the urgent need for a cup of coffee or to write a note – remember the important phone call we
should have made yesterday – or we simply feel empty and want to give up.
Meister Eckhart tells us with all the authority of a 14th Century German mystic: “Stand still and do
not waver from your emptiness”.
It is when we are at this point that real encounter with the Holy One can begin to happen. There’s a
lovely passage about prayer in Archbishop Rowan’s book ‘Tokens of Truth’:
“It means letting go of the images we are used to, moving beyond ideas and pictures of God that
belong in our comfort zone. It means letting go of the emotions that we’d like to have, letting go of
what we think makes us happy – not to cultivate misery, but to get used to the idea that real joy
might be so strange and overwhelming that we’d fail to recognise it unless we’d put some distance
between us and our usual comforts and re-assurances. As the prosaic and daily level, it can involve a
great deal of sitting there facing frustration and self-doubt of the most acute sort: God calls me to
delight and eternal fulfilment – so why exactly am I sitting here twiddling my thumbs, shifting from
buttock to buttock, and wondering where and what and who God is?”
He goes on: “Bit by bit, the props are being taken away. In the work of one of the very greatest
masters of Christian contemplation, St John of the Cross in sixteenth century Spain, the picture is of
a journey into deeper and deeper darkness, a sense of being completely lost, imaginatively and
emotionally. We face not only dryness and boredom but spells of desolation and fear that can be
shocking in their intensity. As John says, we have to pass through midnight before it turns towards
dawn. Only when the last traces of self-serving and self-comforting have been shaken and broken
are we free to receive what God wants to give us. Only then shall we have made room for God’s
reality by disentangling God from all – or at least some – of the mess within our psyches. Prayer is
letting God be himself in and for us.”
And, of course, once that begins to happen, we begin to be aware of God at all sorts of moments in
the day, not just in times we have set aside for prayer.
The Epistle to the Ephesians says, ‘Christ ascended in order to fill all things’ – all things, all people, all
situations – so every encounter we have, every situation we find ourselves in, is potentially a ‘fresh
encounter with the Holy One’. The invitation, the challenge, is to continue in that attitude of
alertness, of expectation, as we leave our prayer time and get on with the ordinary business of living.
I’m reminded of the story of an old Russian Orthodox lady who had been brought up on the
sentence of Scripture: “Pray at all times”. Faithfully over the years she had trained herself to repeat
constantly the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.” She prayed
it to match her breathing: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God --- have mercy on me a sinner.” One day
she met Archbishop Anthony Bloom who was one of the greatest teachers of prayer in the Orthodox
tradition in the last century. “Why is it,” she asked, “that even though I pray continually, I have no
sense of God’s presence, let alone that God loves me?” The Archbishop thought for a moment and
then asked her what she liked to do when she had a moment to relax. “I knit,” she said. “Well, take a
half hour every day. Find your most comfortable chair, make a mug of tea, stop saying the Jesus
Prayer, relax and enjoy half an hour of knitting. Then come and see me next month.”
This she did, dutifully, every day, and after a couple of weeks she realised that she was beginning to
look forward to her half hour. As the days went by, she found herself relaxing more and more,
enjoying her knitting in a way she never had before. “Do you know,” she told the Archbishop the
following month, “I’ve begun to feel I’m not on my own. Not that someone is there … but just a
companionable peace – a deep sense of joy.” The Archbishop raised an eyebrow and smiled.
And our own Archbishop Rowan often says, “Joy is where God happens.”
But that mustn’t be the motive for our prayer – that would be the self-seeking, self-serving, that
Archbishop Rowan was talking about in that extract. We must simply be prepared to be there for
God: still, quiet, attentive.
A couple of weeks ago I visited an elderly couple who have been married for 61 years – both are 96
and though quite frail, they are still very much in love with each other. The husband said to me: “We
very rarely speak. We sit on the settee and hold hands and watch the birds on the feeders. When
she squeezes my hand I know it’s time to put the kettle on!”
You probably know the story of the old French peasant who used to sit at the back of the village
church for hours on end. One day the priest asked him what he did all that time. “I just look at Him
and He just looks at me.”
When someone asked the late Cardinal Hulme about his experience of prayer he said, “At its best, it
is like sitting in a darkened room with someone you love. You can’t see them, but you know they are
there.”
If that’s prayer at its best, it doesn’t exactly get the adrenaline flowing if you’re looking for a cosy
feeling - but the fruit of it is a deep joy and a sense of connectedness to the rest of creation. Just
look at the late Mother Teresa of Calcutta, or frère Roger of Taize … and people like Archbishop
Desmond Tutu: all of them exude an infectious joy, born in every case from saying ‘Yes’ to deep
suffering and perseverance in prayer – the prayer of simply ‘being there for God’, sharing God’s
heartache at the world’s suffering and responding to it appropriately, and also, a joy that comes
from a recognition and acceptance of the truth about themselves resulting from having been still
enough for long enough to face their deepest fears and doubts – it’s a joy which links with moments
of wonder and awe and delight, which bubbles up into laughter which is pure and wholesome and
life-giving, and which gives courage to make hard and difficult decisions – as did Jesus on that first
Maundy Thursday evening: “Father, not my will, but yours be done.”
I close with another short poem by Ann Lewin. It’s the Risen Christ speaking to Mary Magdalen on
the first Easter Morning … but he could be speaking to each one of us:
Do not cling…
Let me be bigger than your
Heart can hold.
Rise with me to a
Larger vision.