Snow

 There are two poems about snow that I love. One I'm entirely sure you know already — Robert Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. 

The other you may not have come across; Ben Jonson's poem about Charis. That one isn't about snow strictly speaking, it just has a couplet that crops up within the general effusing about the endless charms of Charis. Where he says:  

Ha' you mark'd but the fall o' the snow

Before the soil hath smutch'd it?

I draw it to your attention not only because it is so very evocative — surely every one of us must have marvelled at freshly fallen snow before somebody took the chance to trudge across it in winter boots with the kitchen compost bin — but also because it has that excellent word 'smutch'.

More than once I've had occasion to incorporate that word into fictional prose, only to have an editor argue with me, insisting that there is no such word in the English language. But then being able to say, "Oh, but there is. Ben Jonson put it in a poem in the 16th century" gets you a free pass to include it in any story you like, because every editor knows they should have read Ben Jonson. Pleasing.

And this morning, here on the Sussex coast, snow was falling in soft light flakes before daybreak. I know this is not big news to anyone living in Minnesota and it's not as startling as if it snowed in Dubai, but here in the very south of England we hold our breath every year wondering if it will snow this time. Because some years it does, but most years we have only frost and not all that much of that.

Our Hebe and Alice absolutely love snow. They are the only people I know who don't mind me banging on their door at six o'clock in the morning in the middle of winter just to make them get up and see the snow. I didn't do that today, but as dawn broke we were excitedly messaging each other photos of our respective gardens.

Their cat Miguel had been out frolicking about in it, and came it to gaze on the beauty from the warmth of the sitting room.

And here, a mile down the hill, we had the most glorious sunrise.

And all this — thinking about the endless flowering of beauty across the face of the earth, so matter how grim and dreary the news might be — reminds me of another dearly loved poem (I'm sure you know this one too) by Gerard Manley Hopkins.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

 

 

Finding a moment of inspiration for the year ahead.

Today — New Year's Day — has been happy. In the morning I walked up the hill to our Rosie's place for what has become a tradition for the women in our family. Together we watch the BBC broadcast of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra's traditional New Year's Day concert at the Musikverein's Golden Hall. This year Yannick Nézet-Séguin conducted — joyously and well — and as always, it was brilliant.

This is accompanied by Rosie's wonderful hospitality; she makes us a delicious brunch, and we finish with a New Year toast from champagne glasses (but with what you might call children's champagne because our tases have been shaped by Methodism).

We had such a lovely time together, and it's always a little sad to go our separate ways at the end of the morning.

This afternoon I was writing letters, and then I had poached eggs for tea, and while I was eating them I watched this video from the St Elisabeth Convent in Minsk.

Oh, I love and admire these women, so much! Their output on YouTube is an inspiration and a refuge.

I think my favourite of all their videos is this one, about Sr Iohanna.

The St Elisabeth of their convent is the Grand Duchess Romanov, one of the new martyrs of the Orthodox Church, and as it happens our priest here in St Leonards has a particular devotion to her. So one way and another she hovers near, I think.

And now the video has finished and my plate and mug need washing up, and then I must take the letter I've written along to road to the post box. It's dusk but not yet dark, and our road runs west to the letter box, so sunset is a good time to go.

I hope your first day of 2026 was also a happy one, and that you saw people you loved and found things online to lift up your spirit.

Waving to you from England's south coast. May you be well, may you be blessed, may you be happy, may you be free.

Dog muck and murder

Hollington where I live was once a country village. You can still discern traces of the old ways that shaped it. Two minutes walk from our house (which is part of a large 1930s housing development) the road curves round to the right at the foot of the hill, and you can walk  along the path alongside the Hollington Stream. 

Leaving the main road from St Leonards for Battle (called, unsurprisingly, the Battle Road), and coming down to the same place by the stream, runs a narrow little street, the first section of Hollington Old Lane. It's flanked with small Victorian artisan dwellings, the family homes of the Victorian poor who would have provided the daily labour supporting the households in the fine and elegant grand houses that have become dilapidated multi-occupancy places in the present day. 

Coming off Battle Road down the steep slope of Hollington Old Lane, on your right you pass the Tivoli Forge (that's it in the photo above, on the right, and you can see the mock Tudor houses of our road in the distance). It still is a working forge! That is such a treasure. As you travel through the towns and villages of England, everywhere you go you can see houses bearing the name The Old Forge. That's because nothing happened without blacksmiths in the days before the arrival of motor cars. Even in my 1960s childhood, every afternoon at the close of the school day, there'd be a knot of children gathered at the door of the forge on the way home, watching the blacksmith shoe a horse. I remember it so well, the sight and the smell, the horse patiently standing while the smith changed a shoe.

Then if you turn left at the bottom of that part of Hollington Old Lane to walk along the stream, you pass a row of three small Victorian terraced cottages (row houses, US) that until the 1990s had long front gardens, now parcelled into yards and parking spaces. It used to be such a pretty place and it's ugly now. Walking on past these houses, there's a larger (but still not big) Victorian house, a white house with a substantial chimney, standing alone in a garden that stops where the Hollington Stream comes splashing and gurgling out of the brick conduit built to channel the water by the wonderful Victorians. You can see that house from my bedroom window.

I learned only this last week from an old man who gives his time in retirement volunteering for Tidy Up St Leonards (one of the teams of good people who — all unpaid — go through this sprawling town gathering up the rubbish people drop heedlessly onto the street) that the white house by the stream used to be the laundry; the water of the stream is so clean and pure that it was used for washing clothes in the Victorian era (and doubtless before), and going on into the days when that old man was a boy.

The Hollington Stream bed is the foot of this valley, and I am so blessed to have it and its adjacent footpath running right along just behind our house. On one side of the footpath rises a hillside with four 1960s tower blocks scheduled for demolition to make way for low-rise apartment blocks, but the path passes through little stands of trees and all along it at the foot of the valley flows the clear and beautiful stream, with old oaks and other trees growing on the banks, the remnant of this stretch of Sussex woodland that continues if you follow the stream along.

The tower blocks on the hillside rising up from the stream are surrounded by greensward, so as you can imagine it's a very popular place for people to walk their dogs. Often when I go for an evening stroll along the stream I get into conversation with dog-walkers exercising their pets.

And then there's this.

At the ends of the footpaths are bins put there by the council for rubbish, always faithfully collected, and you are allowed to deposit dog muck in them. So dog-owners buy rolls of bags for the purpose, and gather up their dogs' droppings into bags, tying up the top. 

Some of them carry their bags along to the bin at the end of the path and drop them in; others can't be bothered, and either lob the bag of shit over the brambles into the clear and pure waters of the Hollington Stream, or else hang the bag on the trees and shrubs growing along the banks of the stream, to be someone else's problem.

The particular bag in the photo I unhooked and carried to the bin provided. 

I have often wondered about the mentality of those people who do that with dog muck. It puzzles me. Imagine going to all the trouble of acquiring and feeding and caring for and exercising a dog, fencing in the garden, paying for vaccinations and vet check-ups, buying a collar and lead, going out in all weathers for morning and evening walks, making sure the sofa has a blanket on to keep it clean from a muddy dog (and the same in the car), remembering to get dog meat and biscuits at the grocery store, getting treats and toys for the dog, buying rolls of bags and faithfully gathering up the droppings . . . and then you can't be bothered to carry the bag as far as the end of the path to the bin (and there are bins at all the places the paths end). What? Why?

Not only do some people leave their dog's shit festooning the trees, but there are others who can't be bothered to take their household rubbish to the tip. They think it's a great idea to carry it down the footpath and toss it onto the banks of the clear, pure Hollington Stream.

Sometimes people go to the supermarket and, instead of leaving their shopping cart at the exit, decide it's a great idea to bring it all the way home. And then there it is being a nuisance. So instead of taking it back to the store, they take it instead down to the stream, and throw it in.

And maybe at the end of the summer, the kiddies have trashed their play house. What to do with it? Well, maybe pull off the cover and throw that out in the bin for weekly garbage collection. And the frame? Well one could dismantle it and put that in the bin too. Or why not just . . . throw it in the stream?

As I looked at these items, and considered this recurring problem, mulling over it, I remained baffled. It takes more effort to carry a Wendy House frame to the stream and throw it in than it does to pull it apart and put it in the bin you have right here in your own yard, provided by the council for the purpose, not less. You have to be quite strong and determined to get a supermarket trolley down the grassy hillside and pick it up and throw it over the railings of the bridge into the stream. And the bags of rubbish? So you went to all the trouble of gathering it up in bags, carefully tying them up, and then took four bags of rubbish from your car (which you could just as easily have driven to the dump a mile along the road) and struggled them (along with the wood from your broken fence panels) all the way down the steps and down the footpath, past the council bin alongside the footpath, to throw onto the banks of the stream.

I don't understand it. It makes no sense to me. And I realised, I find it easier to understand why people commit murder than I understand why they do this.

The Christian tradition of submission

 From time to time the question of submission (or headship) in the context of Christian marriage comes to the fore again.

We're in a season of question and re-appraisal, amid all the political turbulence and cultural upheavals. People who hadn't given much thought to Christian observance are finding their way into it, some returning to childhood faith left behind and others discovering it for the first time. 

Those who are most uneasy about directions of cultural change are exploring Catholicism and Orthodoxy, attracted by the faithfulness to Christian tradition in those denominations — seeing in them something less politically driven and less subject to the zeitgeist than is the Church of England.

If they were familiar with the biblical texts, which likely they aren't, I think these seekers might find resonance in the words of Romans 12.2 (KJV): And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

And maybe also the words of Jesus (Matt.7.24-27 RSV): “Every one then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock. And every one who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house upon the sand; and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell; and great was the fall of it.”

There's a hunger for something that abides, a sense that we are in a time of sifting, subject to winds of cultural change. The winds are blowing and beating against the house, and we hear all around the creak and crash of what is breaking and falling.

Struggling with what feminism has led to and become, adrift on a stormy sea of social transition, seekers encountering the Catholic and Orthodox traditions with their male priesthood and (in some cases) veiled women are wondering aloud on social media what this might mean for their personal relationships and the relative cultural position of men and of women. How to be a strong woman, while yet adhering to feminine norms in the Christian tradition, is not clear to them.

Questions about this are sprouting online, especially with reference to marriage — what does submission in marriage mean or look like? The answer is almost always that it means the husband has the final say when it comes to making decisions. 

Though that is the most usual interpretation, I personally don't think it accurately represents the New Testament teaching on this topic. My reading is that leadership as Jesus talks about it and demonstrates is means showing the way, being the one who goes first, creating the template everyone else can trust. It's not 'do as I say', it's 'do as I do.'

I don't often quote at length from something I've written, but I did go into this subject in some depth in my novel The Breath of Peace. Because these questions are being raised again, and in case it may therefore be useful, here follows a sizeable chunk of The Breath of Peace in which Abbot John addresses the issue directly. He's talking to his sister Madeleine about her relationship with her husband William.

*       *       *

 ‘But look, William aside, there are some constant features of living together in peace that I am thinking must be true for a man and wife as well as for a monastic community. Here in the abbey we are only human too, and all human beings argue. We – in community – have two big safeguards against the contention and bickering that afflict every group of people who try to live together. One is silence and the other is obedience.

‘Our blessed father Benedict laid down that we enter silence after Compline and don’t come out of it again until the morrow Mass is said. People take that sometimes for a purely religious discipline to encourage private prayer and reflection, and it does hone our spiritual practice, of course. But I think primarily it was put in place as a practical measure to safeguard community, because the two main danger times for antagonism are when we get too tired to be bothered with patience, and when we’ve just got up in the morning and haven’t had breakfast yet. Benedict did away at one stroke with those daily pitfalls by instituting silence from before we were too tired to be rational until after we’d properly woken up and had something to eat. In a family household I guess it can’t work in the same way, but you can follow the same principle: when you’re tired or hungry – don’t be drawn. Keep it sweet, keep it simple, keep it short.

‘Silence supports community peace on the one hand, and obedience supports it on the other. What obedience boils down to under this roof is that I’m the abbot so the brothers have to do what I say. But because they have to do what I say, I have to be very, very careful what I ask them to do. They are in my hands. If I become capricious and demanding and fall in love with my own power, the community will rot from the core. Our vowed obedience puts a responsibility on me as well as them. The brothers depend on me to be humble and gentle and understanding because my word is their law; and I depend on them to be loving and patient and forgiving because I often get it wrong. I can be hasty and scornful, I can be impatient and obtuse – and they just have to bear it respectfully, because I’m the abbot. But it’s an obedience of love, so they don’t just take it with their teeth gritted; they accept it with humility and compassion. They know I’m doing my best. They know when I come out the other side of my bad mood I’ll be ashamed of myself. They have to trust me, and I have to trust them, and that’s what the obedience means – it’s putting ourselves into each other’s hands, deliberately making ourselves vulnerable, making our daily life into a gift to one another. It takes a whole community for a man to be an abbot. 

‘Let me pause there. Is that making any sense to you so far? Shall I go on? Don’t worry, I’m coming to you and William in just a moment.’

He waited for her affirmation. She said nothing for a little while, then: ‘That’s what William does,’ she said very quietly. ‘What you said – deliberately making himself vulnerable. And times beyond counting he’s told me that he’s sorry for his shortcomings. I apologise too, but usually after him, and not as often.’

John visibly relaxed on hearing this. If she would receive what he had to say, and not resist it as a lecture or even as impertinence, he thought he had something to offer. He waited. She lifted her gaze from the flames to read his silence, and realised he was still courteously waiting for her permission to continue. ‘Go on, then!’ she exclaimed. He smiled.

‘Well, that was the easy bit – where I’m on my own territory. Now this is where I go off the map into Terra Ignota, so of your charity I beg you to be patient with me. I can’t look to my own experience, for I know nothing of marriage, so I’m going to look to the Scriptures, which I know I can trust.

‘I’m thinking about the fifth chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians. The bridge from our life here in community to your life at home with William is in the verse that tells us to humbly give way to one another – submit to one another – in the fear of Christ. Subiecti invicem in timore Christi. Sister, I’m sure you must realise that doesn’t mean anything like “knuckle under because you’re frightened of Christ”. It means that because we aspire to holiness and want to make our whole lives into a reverential space, cultivate a reverential mind, practising recollection, we maintain an attitude of humility. Are you with me?’

Madeleine understood him perfectly, but she wondered where in the passing of time the teasing urchin she had played with by the streams and on the moors had grown up into this. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Go on.’

He looked at her, his lips parted in uncertainty.

‘I’m listening, Adam,’ she reassured him. ‘You don’t need to keep checking.’ [Adam was his birth name, before he was a monk. Ed.]

He nodded, with a smile at the unintentional asperity. ‘All right. Then this is where the apostle comes to teach about husbands and wives. He takes as the model for marriage the relationship between our Lord and the church – because we think of the church as the Bride of Christ. Gazing on that relationship, he sees that our Lord has suffered and died for the church, stopped at nothing in the self-giving of his love. And he sees that the church is the community of people who call him Lord, who give their lives in his service. So the model is of a relationship in which neither party has held back anything; each has surrendered all they have to the other. Each gives their whole life in order that they might be made one. This is a picture of absolute trust and vulnerability: Christ pinned helpless to the cross in love of his Bride, and the church kneeling in submission to his lordship. Do marriage like that, the apostle says. Wives, love your husbands like the church loves Christ, offering your very lives in submission to your menfolk. Husbands, love your wives like Christ loves the church, holding back nothing, suffering everything, laying down all you have because you love her so much.

‘Now then, this is a beautiful picture, we can all see that. As a picture it works wonderfully. Where it all comes unstuck is when real people really try to do it. Then, without fail, the same old problem crops up: who’s going first? Human beings are scared of being trampled. When it comes to actual flesh-and-blood mortal beings, not one of us wants to put up our hand to take the risk of doing our part of the bargain until we’ve satisfied ourselves that the other half is on the table first. So we never begin. Do you see?

‘Actually… in your marriage to William – dear sister, don’t be hurt or take offence, bear with me – I can see him struggling to do his part, but I can’t see you doing yours as well as you might. He’s a proud man, and used not only to absolute governance but also to admirable competence. To set that aside and let himself look foolish and inept will be completely crucifying to a man like William de Bulmer; but he thinks you’re worth it.

‘What he needs from you is what the brothers here in their charity and humility give me: obedience. Not to him, I mean, but to Christ; just as in their vow of obedience to the abbot, the way the brothers here are taking is not obedience to me, John Hazell, but to Christ. Sister, William needs you to trust him enough to submit to him, even when he isn’t doing all that well. Even – indeed especially – when he’s said or done something stupid, he needs you to submit to him for the sake of divine order, out of reverence for Christ.’

John looked anxiously at his sister. He could not imagine this going down well. Madeleine could not have been described as meek in any imaginable circumstance.

‘So… what does that mean in practical terms, in daily life?’ She frowned. Her tone of voice expressed the suspicious end of caution. ‘It hasn’t got to be all “Yes, William” and “No, William”, “Of course, William”, and waiting on him hand and foot, has it? Give me a few instances.’

John thought about that.

‘Well…’ he said slowly, ‘let’s say you were out at the market all day and when you got home it turned out he forgot to shut the hens in and as a result a fox had caused mayhem and you’d lost half the flock. Might that happen?’

Astonished, his sister searched his face. ‘Has he spoken to you about that?’

John grinned. ‘Oh. I see. It did happen. No, he never told me so. Still, it makes a good example then! Well, “in the flesh” as the apostle would say, if a man did such a thing his wife would go beserk and think she had every good reason to do so. She’d call him every name she could think of and pour indignation on his head until boiling pitch began to look like a merciful alternative. She’d scold him until he felt completely humiliated, and he’d go to bed scowled at and unkissed and lie awake in the moonlight trying in vain to think of some way of making amends.

‘But the apostle is saying that’s not how we do it under Christ. That’s because Christ really sees us, with the insight of love. Christ is quick to compassion, and knows full well the man is more ashamed of himself than he can bear already. In marriage as the apostle imagines it, the wife offers not a word or look of reproach. She accepts that accidents happen. Her love is magnanimous and generous. She hooks up the dead birds quietly, out of sight. As she spins at the fireside that night, maybe she seems a wee bit quieter than usual – that would be because through gritted teeth she is silently praying: “O Fountain of Wisdom, thou hast saddled me with this dolt, this nincompoop, this addle-brain: right then, give me the grace not to kill him!” But she takes it to God and she leaves it with God. She offers her husband no reproach, because she is submitted to him.

‘But then let’s suppose this is all too much for the wife. She comes home, she finds the hens dead and dying, and she lets rip like thunder and lightning. What’s her husband to do? Well, “in the flesh” as St Paul has it, he might go on the defensive. Where was she all day anyway? What did she mean by coming home so late? Aren’t they her dratted poultry in the first place? How much is it going to cost to replace them? This will be the last time she goes to market if that’s where it’s all going to end up. He might even hit her, if her scolding winds him up past what he can bear.

‘But the Scripture teaching says no, don’t do it like that. Submit to one another. Love her like Christ loves the church. If she wants to hammer nails in, lie there and take it. If she’s minded to jam a cap of thorns on your head, bite your lip and wipe the blood out of your eyes. Keep your eyes fixed on one thing and one thing only: letting nothing – but nothing – sour the sweetness of love. Let it hurt you, let it shame you, let it lacerate you; but don’t let it stop you loving her.

‘Have I exhausted your patience? Have I said enough for now?’

Madeleine was sitting very still, her face brooding. ‘Go on,’ she answered him.

‘Well, then: this thing has to be mutual, it has to be reciprocal to work properly, to get the result it’s meant to achieve. If in our community here the brothers are humble and submissive and the abbot is arrogant and self-serving and demanding, it all starts to unravel. If the abbot is gentle and humble but the monks are proud and lazy and insubordinate, the whole thing collapses in an instant. Same in a marriage. If the woman serves her husband humbly and he thinks “Oh, good!” and sits back self-satisfied, “Wife, get me this, get me that!” then it isn’t what the apostle envisaged. If the man is forbearing and gentle and the woman takes it as her opportunity to get away with being a nag and a shrew, then it’s just hell on earth. It takes two.

‘How do you keep your hens from roaming too far afield and roosting in the trees, Madeleine?’

‘What?’ Surprised by the sudden question, she turned her face to him. ‘You know what I do. I clip their wings.’

‘Oh. And how do you do that?’

‘What are you talking about? You know perfectly well how to clip a hen’s wings.’

‘Pretend I don’t. What do I have to do?’ 

‘You just trim the tips of the flight feathers on one wing. It unbalances them, so they can’t fly.’

‘Exactly so. That’s why the apostle urges that in marriage a man and a woman be not unequally yoked, but be both submitted to Christ; because it takes two to make this work. Unbalanced, it can’t take off, it can’t fly. One of you can start the ball rolling maybe, but in the end the thing takes two. The man must be as humble and vulnerable as Christ stripped naked with his arms opened wide on the cross. The woman must be as gentle and submissive as the faithful people of God kneeling in simple humility before their Lord. Madeleine, am I describing your marriage?’

No sound followed this question but the settling of slow-burning logs on the hearth as the smoke drifted peacefully up the chimney above their red glow.

‘What do you think?’ she asked at last, her voice low.

‘I think it’s a hard lesson to learn and it asks a lot of anyone. I think even when we’ve practised for years it takes more than most of us have, to get it right. Again and again in community here, I have to ask my brothers’ forgiveness when I forget myself and say something cutting or contemptuous or intolerant. And I imagine it must be exactly the same in a marriage. Except, in the night, where we have our holy silence to help us, you married folk are also blessed with an extra way to put things right.’

She said nothing. Then she moved uneasily, her face contorted in puzzlement. ‘This sounds all very attractive, but… well, in real life I can’t always be stopping to think about William. There’s work to be done, and only the two of us to get through it all. That’s mainly where we fall out – there’s so much to do, and I get exasperated with him when he forgets things and he’s clumsy and slow. It’s all very well for you, there’s a veritable army of men here to work together; at home it’s only me and William.’

John nodded. ‘I know what you mean. Not all our men are equally skilled of course – if you’d ever stood and watched Brother Thomas trying to work alongside Brother Germanus you might think twice about saying it’s all very well for us; but I do know what you mean.

‘I understand that the work has to be accomplished – the beasts fed and the place maintained and the crops sown – of course it does, but… shaping a life as God meant it to be involves paying attention to the way we do things. The thing is, the journey determines the destination, if you see what I mean. The way we take is what settles the place we will arrive at. If you spend the next ten years bickering with your man and belittling him, you will be sowing the seeds for a harvest of misery in your old age. He won’t leave you. William would never leave you, of that I am sure. He’s no slouch – he has the most phenomenal application and tenacity. But you could lose him in other ways. He could become very bitter and withdrawn, and he is capable of great coldness. He was a ruthless man once. 

‘I think, if you are willing to let things go sometimes, not have to have everything done right, that will help. So what if the fox steals a hen or two? Is that more serious than letting the devil steal your marriage? Do you really want William dancing like a puppet while you pull the strings, afraid to offend you, frightened of what you’ll say if he makes a mistake?’

He observed her quietly. ‘Is that… am I being too harsh?’ he asked her gently.

She shook her head. ‘I think you’ve put your finger on it,’ she replied, her voice dull and defeated. ‘I’m not a very good wife at all.’

John’s hand moved in a gesture of protest. ‘You’re the right wife for William. It’s hard, in middle life, to make adjustments, is the only thing. It’s the same here when older men who have been widowed feel a vocation to monastic life. But never mind that. Could you do it, do you think? Might you be able to make the choice to be kind a higher priority than being right? Could you keep your mind’s eye on the way you’ve chosen and trust it will arrive at somewhere worthwhile?’

‘Yes, but – the “way” you’re talking about is only my demeanour towards my husband, which is only one part of my life. That way might arrive at a beautiful marriage, but a sloppy homestead!’

‘Yes,’ said John. ‘So what? Anyway, it won’t, it couldn’t. I haven’t known William de Bulmer long, but long enough to be astonished at the power of his focus on housekeeping accounts. I promise you, if he let a chicken die unbudgeted, there is no one on God’s earth who would feel it more keenly than him. With or without constant scolding he’ll make a fine householder in the end. He’s as sharp as a honed blade and diligent with it. I think you have to trust him.’

He watched her as she weighed these words carefully, frowning in concentration.

‘Has that… is that any help at all?’ he asked her.

Life Advice — Final Chapter

 I can't believe I really have to say this because it ought to be evident, even more obvious than that ripe nectarines are best eaten in the bath; but observation has taught me there are people who have somehow evaded its wisdom.

It is this:

You should never walk backwards in a supermarket.

 

Life Advice — Chapter Four — Currency

The matter of currency is central to human life; and it's important to grasp that it's not synonymous with money. Money is a variety of currency, but currency is a lot more than merely money. And indeed, money is a rather debased form of currency. As Jesus said, "You cannot serve God and Mammon." Of course there's more to Mammon than simply the love of money, Mammon is the slime mould of cynicism that grows into as much of our life as we give it permission so to do. It's a temptation and a tendency, and we have to be watchful.

Currency is flow and exchange, much like blood within a human body, facilitating, nourishing, enabling.

I think of life as sustained and carried by the flow of grace, which is the will of God in the world, the direction of God's purpose. When we are aligned with that, then what we offer and contribute swells the tide of goodness. So it's a kind of river that bears us up. A current of life. Currency. And money can be part of that, if we let it be; it all depends how we direct it.

The crucial thing is that it should be allowed to flow. Hoarding and stagnation produce toxicity, necrosis. If you dam up currency you're asking for trouble. 

In medieval England, a conduit would be created to direct the flow of water from a spring in the hills down to a building on the hillside. They'd have picked a spring that would keep going of course, not one that dried up in the summer, but even so the flow of water would be more plentiful after rainfall. And a household wouldn't want water pouring through at all times, but they would want it available at all times — much like us with money. In consequence they created cisterns to capture the flowing water and establish a reservoir, so it was there when they wanted it. That's in effect what we're doing with our bank accounts. They establish a reservoir, but the crucial thing is the flow. Capital is helpful, but income is the main thing.

So we give thought to how we might generate income, and we establish a reservoir to assist in ensuring the flow of income is reliable at all seasons.

And we also consider the different kinds of currency and how to facilitate its flow in our lives. Goodwill is a form of currency, and so is grace; it's important to establish the flow of all three in our lives — money, goodwill and grace. Goodwill could be seen as earned grace, the positive regard of our neighbours on account of how we have treated them. Grace, conversely, is unearned goodwill. It's like those two characters in Charles Kingsley's book The Water Babies, Mrs Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By (grace) and Mrs Be-Done-By-As-You-Did (goodwill).

It's also the case that our Father owns the cattle on a thousand hills and he is the God of mountainous provision (El Shaddai).

The art of living is to trust in God's amazing grace, to entrust ourselves to the flow of that stream and align ourselves with its direction. To receive its blessing we open our hands to its streaming — trying to grab it for ourselves is useless, because in closing our fist to secure it, we find we have lost it all. The way of blessing requires that we open our hands, in giving as well as in receiving. Blessing is currency — the currency, of which money and land and fecundity and goodwill and grace are all part.

To live in this way releases us from anxiety and timidity, dissolves the fear of scarcity, blooms into hope and confidence.

When it comes to provision, then, the way to follow is to make of our lives a conduit from the spring that never fails, setting up a cistern en route so we establish a reservoir that will even out cyclical variations, and to see to it that goodwill, grace and money are blended together, flowing our with generosity and flowing in with thanksgiving and trust.

I know it all sounds a bit woo-woo, but I'm sixty-eight now and so far it's never let me down.

One pitfall to avoid is any kind of debt, because debt is antagonistic to freedom and flexibility, and successful living requires both. "Owe to no man anything except the debt of love" [Rom.13.8 KJV]

Simplicity, wanting little, is wealth. Currency — the flow of grace, goodwill and money — promotes wellbeing. Stagnation and hoarding undermine health. 

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,

    his mercies never come to an end;

they are new every morning;

great is thy faithfulness.

“The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,

    “therefore I will hope in him.” [Lamentations 3.22-24 RSV]

In thinking about money and worldly goods, I've found a shift in perspective away from "mine" to "ours" very helpful. I owe this insight to the Poor Clare nuns, who observe a discipline of calling everything "ours" and nothing "mine". So a Poor Clare nun wears "our clogs" and "our habit", nothing is her own, she's just using something that belongs to us all. 

This is another way of looking at the concept of that spring in the Middle Ages, directed down the hill by a conduit that includes a reservoir to keep the flow even. The reservoir in this case is the stock of items currently in your possession. So at the moment you may have our jeans or our stick blender or our freezer or our winter coat or our comfy chair. But it belongs to God and to all of us.

The cheerful thing about this is it eliminates any hesitancy in passing it on. If someone else needs a winter coat and frankly you're too fat for yours now, you don't lie awake agonising in shame that you spent all that money on a good coat and it hasn't worked out — you just add it back into the flow (through Freegle or the local give-and-takery page on Facebook, or eBay or the charity shop or your sister or a friend). Don't mothball it, don't worry about it, just give it away because it was always God's and ours anyway, not just yours. 

I should say in passing that I am not advocating communism, which is a depressing philosophy under which nothing is God's, nothing is ours, it's certainly not yours, it all belongs to the state, and you'll be allocated what you can and can't have according to a list kept by a bureaucrat inside a building who doesn't care about you at all. The allocations of the state are one-size-fits-none, and its bureaucrats farm you like ants farm greenfly. You are better off with God, who made you and knows you, who loves you and watches over you, who has the power to heal and transform you and fit you with hope and peace — which is more that can be said for any political régime since the dawn of time.

So live like a Poor Clare but not like Joseph Stalin, let the flow of grace nourish your life like a stream flowing down off the moor into the small but adequate stone cistern you have made to catch its provision. Let goodness flow into you and let it flow on from you to nourish the lives of others, generating cheerfulness and gratitude and the joy of giving. Let your currency be a blended flow of grace, goodwill and money, and live under God, in peace and trust.

There's a song about this.

And as another monastic friend (Fr Tom Cullinan) remarked to me, "It helps to want what other people don't." 

Life Advice — Chapter Three — Where will you live?

The principle, "she who sleeps on the floor will never fall out of bed", is about the wisdom of immediacy, simple and humble lifestyle, close to the earth. 

Building on that one wisely forms one's community, whose company affords the protection and encouragement necessary for the journey, as well as enhancing perspicacity by pooling knowledge, intuition and insight.

The next question is where to live. This is important.

I have lived in a variety of homes, and none were expensive. I've lived in a rented apartment, occupational accommodation, a caravan, an apartment I owned, and various houses that I (or we) owned.

In every case I looked for particular characteristics.

1. Good windows that opened for effective air circulation (sash windows are best) and afforded good natural ight to the living space.
2. A wood stove or open fire. This is important, because if push comes to shove you can keep warm and cook by burning rubbish (discarded cardboard packaging and wood pallets or old fencing etc) and foraged twigs, boughs and fir-cones.
3. Some possibility of off-grid water storage. We've used water butts to harvest rain water from the roof, and we collect drinking water from the spring in the park (we filter it). A bath, not just a shower, is a good idea. If water outages are frequent you can store water while it's on, and you can do your laundry in it.
4. Solar panels, preferably with a house battery. This is going to become more important in Europe and the UK if Net Zero goals remain in place, because of the power outages that will result from the instability (surges as well as deficits).
5. Good public transport links to minimise the need to run a car. If several of you share a home you can get by with just one car, and do without altogether if money is tight.
6. Some outside space to sit outside in the sunshine and fresh air, dry laundry, and for a compost heap and to grow some vegetables and herbs. If you can have a garden (rather than just a small yard), this better allows space for humanure to be neutralised of pathogens and safely composted in an urban environment, should you wish or need to do so. If you can manage to get somewhere with a big enough garden to grow a few trees, they are a better choice than vegetables; not only is fruit more expensive than veggies, but you can eat weeds for veggies so you can get them elsewhere than your garden, and trees let you use the space twice — you can walk or play or sit in it at the same time as growing food there.

With these measures in place, you are well placed to live frugally and to pass through the disturbances of utilities disruption as calmly and evenly as possible. 

The right home makes freedom and flexibility considerably more realistic. The best location (in my opinion) is a quiet residential street near to a main road or central area, so you can walk to the grocery store and the bus/train station, there will be be a post office and doctor/dentist nearby, but your actual house is just set back from the hustle and bustle. It's worth saying that if you (like us) live on the coast, you need to be a mile inland and up a hill so your cellar doesn't flood in the spring tides and the salt air and gales don't force you to keep painting the windows and walls. 

Direction makes a difference, too. There's a lot to be said for an east-facing bedroom to get the morning light, a south-facing garden for growing plants and enjoying the passive solar heat in your sitting room that overlooks the garden. A north-facing pantry is a valuable asset as well.

Inside the house, hard flooring is better because you can sweep or wash it, no need for a vacuum cleaner and lasts longer than carpets.

How you live inside this house is up to you, but the fewer possessions you have the more room there is for the people, and the less clutter and less soft furnishings or curtains, the less vulnerable you will be to beetles and mould etc. Also the less stuff you have the less curation is required, so you can deal with house-cleaning with little effort and simple equipment, making money go further and channeling your attention into more interesting things.

If you prioritise these choices, and add to it the habit of wanting what other people don't — so you can pick up the fruit that drops unheeded from their trees, gather for your salad and omelettes the nettles and dandelions others don't bother with, pick mushrooms and blackberries in season, and make use of fly-tipped items and other things thrown out by your neighbours to furnish your needs, then you can make a very little money go a long way. Only this week, lacking a laundry basket I was pleased to bring home a large plastic bin with a lid someone had fly-tipped full of their rubbish (which I sorted and disposed of appropriately); and I found a lovely blanket thrown out on the pavement, getting wet and dirty in the rain. I brought it home and washed it, and it is both soft and beautiful, perfect for these frosty nights.

I think in writing about this I've moved on from choosing a dwelling to how to go about living in it, but these seemed to be all housey things, so I put them together. 

Next I want to say something about currency, and then I think I'm almost done for life advice.