What Anne asked Father Peregrine and Father John

 Anne said...

I'm loving reading these extra insights into these beloved people. When I think of Tom and Peregrine in his later years it is the scene with the bowl of raspberries that hits me again: the realization of how deceptively easy it is to use power to disempower others, even when trying, we think, to help. I have a question, then, for John and, if possible, Peregrine, which is haunting me. How, when you have been elected into a position like abbot or bishop or any role of authority, do you hold the power given you gently enough to empower rather than disempower others? And how do you stop yourself beginning to take the influence the rôle gives you for granted?

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I waited until the end of the day to bring Anne’s questions to Father Peregrine and Father John, because although I come across them surprisingly in all kinds of places, my own room seems to function as a kind of portal, like the transporter chamber in Star Trek — and I wanted to be with both men together, to see what they would say to each other as well as separately to me.

Abbot John, as he always does, deferred to Father Peregrine when I put Anne’s question to them — looked to him for his answer, and waited quietly for him to speak.

And Peregrine said, “Let me say first how I love the way your friend has worded this: How do you hold the power given you gently enough to empower rather than disempower others? I find that moving, and beautiful, and very unusual as a concept; that someone would hold power gently, with delicacy.

“She has put her finger there on the core of something central to monastic life. Because it is a very authoritarian structure — obedience is at the heart of it — and yet it is intended to travel towards freedom, to fulfil us, not oppress us. 

“Let me come back to that, if I may, after first looking at the second part of what she asks us: How do you stop yourself beginning to take the influence the rôle gives you for granted?

“If I am honest with myself and with Anne, I must at once confess that when I was first appointed as abbot at St Alcuins, I did take that influence for granted. I had grown up on my father’s manor and followed in his footsteps, expecting to command and rule, to decide and choose. I was accustomed to a situation where, apart from my father himself, everyone either did what I said or was swiftly punished. 

“When I entered monastic life, I grasped the idea of humbling myself and denying myself — as a concept, a proposition. I’m not entirely sure that I surrendered to it completely, ever. Maybe, as a tree is espaliered to grow in a particular pattern, so a man will be permanently shaped by early expectation and example. I suppose it must be so. And I was trained to rule.

“But everything in life is a gift, even when we cannot receive it with unfeigned delight. When my hands and my leg were broken, I was appalled by the helplessness, the loss of dignity and autonomy, by the unrelenting and enforced vulnerability it imposed upon me. To say it was transformative is perhaps stating the obvious, but it made all the difference to my handling of the power entrusted to me in my obedience as abbot.

“How can I put this, how describe it? It opened a connection for me with the vulnerability in others, and — this was important — it opened a connection for them, too, with the vulnerability in me. If a man cannot cut his own food or walk reliably along a pathway, or successfully open a door, then both how he expresses authority and how it is received are modified by his own disadvantage and disability. It had of itself a gentling effect, that our meeting ground was in a place of vulnerability — the sons of my house because the Rule required them to submit to me, and me because there was so much I couldn’t do, so many ordinary undertakings where I needed their help. We beheld one another’s frailty, we found one another in weakness. It didn’t matter how aristocratic had been my upbringing, I still couldn’t climb the stairs; and regardless of how skilled was the work of their hands or how briskly they could stride along the track to the farm, they still must submit to what I required of them. Do you see? It established a kind of mutuality. We met in inescapable human frailty. Perhaps because of that, I think they felt I somehow understood.

“But forgive me; I am enlarging on what intrigues me, and I hope also addressing your friend’s question, but I can see that staying present here in a different century is requiring a great deal of stamina on Father John’s part. What were your own thoughts, my brother?”

Abbot John smiled. “Well, firstly that it is such a joy and such a privilege, because of being in a time not our own, to be able to sit with you and talk like this again, my beloved father. It is something I had never imagined could happen. But yes, I admit I am tiring a bit, so I’d better get to it.

“I do not think it would ever be possible for me to get used to the influence of being an abbot. Sometimes it seems ludicrous, other times it is straight up terrifying, always it is a responsibility that I find very daunting. Just for instance — take Father Theodore; he knows more than I ever will of theology and church history, he is more accomplished in every respect; and yet I owe it to him to hold my light steady, to stand in the obedience that has been entrusted to me, to keep faith with its strength which proceeds from the holy Rule. Me fulfilling my obedience and him fulfilling his, is how we stand firm for one another. Even on the rare occasions I may have had to rebuke him, it is not an opposition, far from it. Never more than in those moments am I absolutely on his side. And the same is true of those times when, his abbot though I may be, he has had to challenge my course of action, and hold me to account.

“I think something we all come to understand when we enter monastic life, is that when our superior disciplines us, calls us to account, they are not belittling us or lording it over us, but standing with us in a shared fidelity. The authority of the abbot is a strength to help a man when he wavers, when he falters. At its best, anyway; I mean, there are some rotten abbots as well, of course.”

He pauses then, and adds with a little grin: “Speaking of rotten abbots, did you think to ask William for his response to this question? No?” 

He looks at me, his eyes full of laughter. “I wonder why. No, but seriously, I saw him, you know, with Father Oswald who we took in after he had been maimed and blinded. I saw that Oswald felt safe with William. Not everybody does, and that’s fair enough, but in his way William acquitted himself well as the superior of his house. And he’s a remarkably good confessor. But, yes, he might not be the most obvious man to ask — at least at first glance.

They both look at me, and I ask them, is that all? Shall I write that down for Anne?

“One more thing,” says Father Peregrine. “I think this cannot be complete without speaking of Jesus. The cross is what speaks of his power and authority, because there he redeemed the world. Even in the Old Testament, the scripture framed the power of kings and prophets and judges as accountability. Solomon, Moses, David, Elijah — all of them wielded authority only to the extent that they submitted themselves to the authority of God. On the occasion in the gospels when Jesus was asked by the centurion to heal his beloved servant, that army officer said of himself that he commanded others because he was a man under authority. His power was not from his ego, but vested in him by the Roman Empire. In the same way, an abbot’s power is part of a web of accountability and obedience. I, as a man, am the servant — the property — of Jesus; who in turn gave his life for us, was flogged and spat upon for us, is the servant king. If I remain authentically located in him, expressing not my impulses to power but the true authority of his shalom, then there is real peace, there is no abrasiveness, no oppression. Then our life here flows with the river of grace.”

“And please thank your friend Anne,” adds Father John. “I have no idea if anything either of us said will be what she needs to know, but if nothing else, it has been the occasion for us meeting here, out of time, in the twenty-first century. And these moments of unexpected encounter are such a treasure, such an unexpected gift.”

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I also want to ask Father John about what Isolde wrote to me, but for that I think I should go and find him in the 14th century. He was beginning to look distinctly threadbare at the end of this conversation; being in an unaccustomed timeline can be exhausting.