What Emma asked Abbot John

Emma sent Abbot John a thoughtful question that I think will resonate for many of us. Any of you who have read all the Hawk and the Dove books, including the three from Series 2, will quite likely immediately respond “Ah! Brother Felix!” — because what she outlines here is so much along the lines of the struggle he had/has, and his story is told in Brother Cyril’s Book and A Path of Serious Happiness. But I know Emma has not got as far as Series 2 yet, so Brother Felix will have to wait until she catches up with him. And yes, he wants to gently remind us it’s Father Felix now.

Emma, if you decide to skip a few books and read those two I mentioned, just to say that can be done without becoming completely bewildered, but of course there will be spoilers with regard to the books you skip over.

Someone who understands Felix very well indeed is my friend Debi Peck, who has written the most excellent pastoral book, The Hijacked Conscience. Emma, I commend that book to you. I think you would find it helpful.

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So, here’s the question Emma sent to Abbot John.

Something I want to ask is about healthy introspection/self-examination vs. obsessive and damaging introspection. I want so much to always do what's right and do it in the right way, without hurting any people or doing anything wrong in the process. It's such a strong desire, though, that it leads to what I've learned is a very unhealthy perfectionism, which keeps me terrified to take steps forward if they're not guaranteed to be the right ones, and then keeps me second-guessing beforehand and ever afterward about whether I did the right thing (in the right way, at the right time, to all the right effect—especially when other people are involved and will be affected). 

It also manifests in the area of what I believe, not just steps I take. Say I've searched the Scriptures on a particular matter and come to believe this is what God is saying; well, how can I be sure I have the right interpretation, especially if others have also searched the Scriptures and come to a different conclusion? How will I ever know which one is right? How can I ever believe and live in confidence regarding matters that aren't black-and-white this-or-thats?

I wondered if Father John could speak to this. How can I self-examine without vortexing into a spiral of uncertainty and fear that maybe I did wrong (with no way to unequivocally prove the rightness or wrongness of the action either way)? (Or, in regard to beliefs/interpretations: a spiral of uncertainty and fear that maybe I believe something wrong, and therefore might live wrongly because of it.)

It seems like it would have to be either all or nothing: either I self-examine—to infinity and unsatisfied compulsion—or I don't self-examine—leading to blindness and arrogant self-assurance. What's in the middle? I truly don't know how to land there, and I drive myself and sometimes others crazy with this need to KNOW that I'm doing right / believing right. I would love to hear any thoughts / insights / advice Father John could share about this.

I find Abbot John sitting at his big oak table in his atelier on this grey, misty October afternoon, with its lowering sky and the air full of damp. Brother Tom isn’t there — Brother Stephen is weaning and castrating the bull calves at this time of year, and usually needs Tom's help. If they aren’t doing that, they’ll be trimming the hedges.

It’s gloomy out of doors, but lovely in here. There’s a modest fire glowing on the hearth, fragrancing the air and taking the chill off the room, and the candles in the wall sconces are lit. Father John has a candle on his table as well, by the light of which he’s been reading the question I left with him.

One of the chairs that usually stand near the fireside has been moved for me to sit across from Father John, so I do. Oh, my goodness, I do like it here. The sense of calm and kindness, the sense of welcome and acceptance — I just love it, I treasure it; it’s become a rare thing in a touchy and antagonistic world.

“Thank you for this,” says Abbot John, looking up at me from the piece of paper I gave him; “and please say thank you to Emma. To live with a good conscience and do your best to walk in holiness is something beautiful. I esteem her for that.

“And you — I think  you might already know what I’m going to say — you have explored some of these matters with our Father Felix; who is well at the present time, settled and contented, although . . . well, let’s hope it lasts.

“The first thing that came to my mind, when I read Emma’s question, is to wonder — who is her confessor? Those of us who try with all our heart and soul to walk in the light authentically can so easily tie ourselves in knots over matters of conscience. Having the corrective of someone we trust and esteem bringing a different perspective can help a lot. Living under monastic discipline that’s a given, of course. It does have its frustrations, admittedly. If you live under obedience, there may be all kinds of courses of action that seem like straightforward common sense, but if your abbot or your novice master says ‘No', you just have to let it go. But when it comes to examination of conscience, it’s more often reassuring — it cuts the binding cords of tension and obsessive shame. To be heard, to be seen for what you are, by someone who accepts and understands, can be such good medicine. When you confess whatever vile and embarrassing thing you’ve done, and your confessor smiles and says, ‘Yes, we all do that,’ it's such a relief. And to hear his absolution, telling you with certainty that your (very real) sins are forgiven, is the best thing in the world, sometimes.

“But that might not be the framework Emma lives in. Maybe she just has to think things through for herself. If that’s her situation, I think my counsel would be to find a trusted friend — someone of holy life and intelligent mind, someone she can rely on for good counsel and wise discernment, to help her with these moral choices and matters of conscience.

“Then there’s her concern about interpreting the Scriptures — theologians have argued vehemently over this since the ink was wet on the page. I mean, look at the letter to the Galatians, St Paul saying, ‘When Peter came to Antioch I told him to his face I was opposed to what he was doing, because it was clearly wrong.’ Except it obviously wasn’t clear to Peter. And if those two great apostles had such entrenched differences of opinion, what hope is there for the rest of us? It’s a tangled knot, is this one. 

“I think — and heavens, I’m an abbot but I’m not God; I might be barking up the wrong tree entirely — I’d counsel two things about this. The first is that the New Testament urges us to be gentle, to be kind, to be mild-mannered, to cut each other a bit of slack, to be merciful. I dare to suggest that it might not matter if you’re right, but it always matters if you’re kind. If it comes to a choice between being right and being kind, choose to be kind — because if you do that, you’ll be right. Sometimes, of course, you have to be a lone voice speaking up for what you believe, sometimes you have to call someone out on seriously bad personal conduct, and sometimes you have to deliver unpalatable truths. Even then; be kind.

“The second thing I’d say is that even the Scriptures are not static, the books of the Bible don't all speak with one voice. They delineate a journey. For instance, the Old Testament Law says adulterers must be stoned to death; but when Jesus is confronted with someone caught in the very act of adultery, he will not condemn her. The Law teaches an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth — so, a system of enlightened justice that sought to place limits on vengeance. But the Sermon on the Mount teaches us to love our enemies, to bless those who curse us, to make peace and forgive, leaving any vengeance we had in mind in God’s hands. So Scripture isn’t fixed, it’s a pathway, a journey, it develops, it continues. The secret is — well, this is what I think, anyway — to look for the direction it travels, which is consistent. It’s travelling away from violence and towards peace, it’s developing justice into grace. It’s moving from exclusion to inclusion, so that in the Old Testament you get Jephthah thrown out of the family circle because of who his mother was, but in the gospels you get Jesus looking round the company of his friends saying, ‘These here are my mother, my brothers.” It gives hope to the lost and the lonely, it addresses the warring factions of tribalism. Look at where the scriptures are moving, and walk in that way; don’t get hooked up on legalising insistence on the static moment. Let it relax. Let it flower. See where it’s going. Live into the potential of hope and grace and love.

“And I’d just like to say that even people who are entirely certain they’re right sometimes get things all wrong. And that getting the wrong end of the stick is very human. God understands. In my own life, I do my best, and sometimes I get it wrong — and when I do, God forgives me. That’s how it is for all of us, isn’t it?

“Now then, little Ghost, in no time at all the bell for Vespers will be ringing; you’re welcome to come in to chapel with us if you’d like to do that. I hope what I’ve said to you is of some use to Emma. Tell her she will be in my prayers. And, please tell her that God loves her; he isn’t a tyrant. His kindness is very spacious, very understanding. God can cope with Emma being wrong about some things, and even with her messing up right royally on occasion. God . . . you know . . . God is on Emma’s side.”

 

The Long Fall — our Humilis Hastings edition of this is now published

At last we have this available on Amazon in both paperback and e-book.

You can get it here on Amazon UK and here on US Amazon.

 It's taking us a while to gradually bring all the first Hawk & Dove series out under our own imprint (Humilis Hastings). The work is slow and patient, requiring multiple checks, because of the changes in formatting needed as we take the text from the files the original publisher used, re-format them to something we can work with, edit and proofread, then format again to upload for paperback and (different format required) for e-book. Each time the format changes, oddities occur in the text — eg the paragraph indentation slips or the italics vanish — so the text has to be proofread and corrected again.

Happily, both Jonathan who works on the paperback and creates the cover from Alice's and Hebe's artwork, and Tony who prepares the e-book, are meticulous and thorough. Without them, you would not have this book.

Anyway, for those of you who are collecting this new edition, or reading it for the first time, here it is.

As this book has been through different editions with different publishers (originally Monarch in England, then Good News in America, then Lion Hudson in England, finally SPCK), most of the tiny errors that slip through in a text had been spotted and nuked. But in editing this time I wanted to correct a few historical errors occurring from simple ignorance when I first wrote the book at the beginning of the 1990s. At the time, though I knew that such vegetables as potatoes and tomatoes were not available in the 14th century, I assumed that other root vegetable were — for both human and farm animal consumption — but they were not. The introduction of roots for cattle feed in the eighteenth century revolutionised farming and human wellbeing. Until then, both animals and humans were dependent on grain to see them through the winter, and in a hard year there wasn't enough to go round — especially in the 14th century as it happens, when they had a lot of wet winters and the grain harvests suffered.

So the practice had been to slaughter the animals they could spare at Martinmas (early November), when there'd be a big feed-up followed by lean days through the winter as milk gradually dried up and egg yield dropped off and the grain stores eroded. They had dried beans, of course.

Once roots (turnips, beet etc) became a thing, there was more food to go round both humans and cattle, so slaughter for food could be more measured, not all at one go at Martinmas. 

The food of the fourteenth century, then, was mainly animal products (meat, poultry, eggs, milk, butter, cheese), grain, fruit, and green vegetables. We read of garlic, onions and leeks being eaten, but I suspect they don't mean what we take them to mean — the kind of fat, round garlic and onions we buy at the supermarket now, and the hefty leeks.

If you look up three-cornered leek, also known as white-bells, also known as three-cornered garlic — Allium Triquetrum — you find these:

The whole thing is edible and tastes like spring onions (scallions US), but with a somewhat milder taste. They're easy to grow, spreading like wildfire if you plant them in the garden.

So I think that's what they meant when they talked about onions/garlic/leeks. There's also wild garlic — sometimes called ramsons — and as it's a ubiquitous indigenous plant I assume they had that too. They also ate nettles and rocket and chervil and cultivated lots of herbs. So, plenty of green fare, but not much of starchy veg before the 1700s.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, because there was thriving sea trading, the cooks of the fourteenth century did use ingredients like oriental spices, almonds and rice — and I think they may have had citrus fruits available to them that early by the same means. Certainly they did by the Elizabethan era.

When I first wrote The Long Fall, I just assumed roots were available for both humans and animals; so for this new edition I went back into the text to correct that error. Other than that, it's all pretty much as it was in previous editions. This, the third book I wrote, mattered to me very much; I had grown in confidence enough to dig my heels in about some editorial changes (yes, specifically "hot and soft and wet") urged upon me for the American market — I wouldn't change it. In this book, written out of experience working as a care assistant and and a hospice chaplain with people going through chronic/terminal illness and end of life, I wanted, even working with the somewhat anodyne requirements of Evangelical publishing, something real, something that gave a voice to lived experience.

Six more of Series 1 to publish under our own imprint, and two more of Series 2 to write (I've made a start).

I hope you like this story. 

What Debi wanted to say to Father Francis.

 Debi, who helped me so much with understanding Father Felix, had a question for Father Francis. This was what she wanted to say to him:

“When you had your "dark night of the soul" and discovered Jesus outside in the darkness, it changed you. In the aftermath of my own dark night experience, I say that God rewrote my story, helping me see Jesus' presence throughout the most difficult parts of my life. I also say that my healing journey has been one part instantaneous and nine parts hard work. I am wondering what your experience has been. What did Christ's presence instantly change for you, and what has been the work you have done to find peace and wholeness? 

I would also like to let Francis know that his story was the first time I ever knew someone else struggled in the same ways I did — with shame — and was part of my own healing journey.”

I wondered if maybe I should ask the abbot’s permission to seek personal and private information from his prior, with a view to writing it up on the word wide web. He looked at me with a certain level of amusement. “Go ahead,” he said: “I mean, you always do.”

I suppose he’s right, isn't he? 

“If you want a good moment,” he added, “catch him after Vespers. He’s usually here, there and everywhere, and rarely on his own, in the middle of the day. I’ll tell him you’re looking for him. You can talk to him in the parlour if you like — I’ll ask Brother Thomas to light the fire for you.” 

You must admit, these are exceptional men: how many people do you know who would set up an appointment, fire and all, for one of their community to talk to what appears to be a ghost?

Everything’s earlier in the abbey after Michaelmas — Vespers and supper at a quarter past four, and Compline at half past six, which is when darkness falls in north Yorkshire at this time of year.

The parlour Father John meant is between the abbot’s house and the refectory, and opens onto the abbey court. So I turn up there at half past five, and find Father Francis sitting quietly by himself, waiting for me. Brother Tom has lit a small fire on the hearth there, as promised — just enough to be cheerful and warm the room: a fire for an hour or so; sticks, fir cones, some charcoal, and two or three chunky not-quite-log-sized bits of birch. It looks friendly and it smells nice.

I think Francis was considering Debi’s message, which I wrote out and left with Father John to pass on. He’s certainly looking thoughtful; but he stands up to greet me with that smile everyone who comes here knows and loves, welcomes me in and invites me to sit down in one of the chairs, and closes the door so we won’t be interrupted.

Something that makes me very peaceful here in this place — balm to my soul — is the lack of small talk. Don’t get me wrong, they’re kind and courteous, never blunt or rude, in fact I think I could learn quite a bit from them when it comes to that; but they get to the point. There is never that long for us to talk before the next obligation claims their attention. In fact they are even better at gentle and courteous goodbyes than they are at saying hello. There is, in short, no point in hanging about. So, “Did you read what Debi said, then?” I ask.

And Francis nods. “I did,” he says. “I certainly did. I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon. Will you tell her, please, how grateful I am that she let me know my own struggles helped strengthen her and gave her hope. That means a lot to me. If her path has been similar to mine, then one thing I know is that she has many times been lonely, and scared. When — even across a separation of centuries like this — someone stretches out their hand to you, looks round to say, “Me too”, it alleviates loneliness. It is encouraging. It lifts you up. Say thank you to her, please, from me.”

I promise him I’ll pass that on.

“Then, that’s such an interesting thing she asks,” he says, looking down at the scrap of paper he holds in his hands, tilting it so it catches the light from the candle in the sconce on the wall: 'one part instantaneous and nine parts hard work . . . and, what did Christ's presence instantly change for me, and what has been the work I have done to find peace and wholeness?'

“Honestly? I had to think hard about that. The moment when I had that . . . vision, I suppose; when I found the presence of Jesus in the place of abandonment and despair, and realised he would be with me always, even there — it did, right then, change everything. It healed me and gave me the hope I needed to  . . . er . . . well, just to live, to carry on, to let myself be seen and known. And also to trust, I think.

“So then I had to ask myself, how did I build on it? What work did I have to undertake to find peace and wholeness? That’s what I’ve been asking myself all this afternoon. At first I couldn’t find my way to the truth of it, but then when I was sitting in chapel just before Vespers, I managed to identify it. 

“I think, for me, the healing was complete, not partial. There was born in my soul, right then, this sense of peace, the companionship of Jesus — that he is with me, that he goes ahead of me into any thing I have to face; that he will never leave me, never abandon me, never let me go.

“This isn’t to say that everything since that moment has been straightforward and easy; by no means! But I realised the difference — maybe — between my experience and Debi’s is that she had to work toward wholeness and peace: ‘one part instantaneous,’ she says, ‘and nine parts hard work’!  But it was different for me. In my case, the hard work came as a consequence of the wholeness and peace that the Lord Jesus gave to me as a gift of healing, as a grace. It wasn’t, for me, that I had to work for it, but that from that moment on I knew I must work from it. It became, I suppose, the obedience laid upon me to fulfil — doing whatever might be in my power to live out that wholeness and peace, to let it be seen, and to pass it on. Nothing forced, nothing beyond what is simple, just committing to be real with people, so they would somehow sense that I am with them, that I am for them, in the same way that the Lord Jesus let me see he is with — and for — me. Unconditionally.

“I — er — I hope that makes sense. It’s a matter of remembering, when I feel uncertain or inferior or under attack, that this loving presence of Jesus is something I can entirely trust, he will not abandon me. So I can afford to let myself receive that, and open my heart, my soul maybe, to pass it on, until we have a continuum of love, an infinity loop of companionship and healing. And . . . I hope this doesn’t sound conceited . . . you don’t wait. You just move forward in trust that it will work, that the peace will hold firm, that somehow it will make the change that’s needed in any given situation. I hope that makes sense for Debi. Please thank her for the connection, and for making me think about it — this undeserved enduring gift of peace.”

And this, as it happens, is the feast day of St Francis of Assisi; how pleasingly apt.

What Tony wanted to ask Brother Conradus.

The thing about Brother Conradus is that he’s always busy. It took me a little while to find a time when he was free to chat. But I waited and an afternoon did eventually arise that looked promising. So this is what happened.

The kitchen faces east, and the door leading out to the garden and the well stays open most of the time through the summer months — more or less from late April until the middle of October, where we nearly are. So the morning light comes in, a good time for food preparation; handy because their main meal is at midday. Now, after the bowls and mugs and spoons and all the serving dishes from that main meal have been washed, the serving platters and tureens stacked on their shelves in the kitchen and the rest of the crockery returned to the frater in readiness for supper later on, there’s a moment of relative calm in the kitchen. Brother Benedict has gone for a walk, Brother Cyril is in his cell pursuing his studies, and the couple of men who come in from the village to help out have gone home — pleased to each take with them a bag of apples from the store and a small barley loaf from yesterday. They’ll bring the bags back with them; Conradus always finds he has a bit of this and a bit of that he can spare for hungry mouths at home in their cottages.

The afternoon light is more diffuse and dim, but not enough to need a lantern lit at this time of day. The open door lets the room air, but the main kitchen fire is kept in, for the soup that hangs over it to simmer in its iron pot, and also for the bread to rise in half an hour or so.

Because that’s what Brother Conradus is doing right now — making the bread. I watch him measure out the flour and the oil, the dried herbs and the salt, and fetch the jug with the barm in it for raising the dough. Then as he starts to mix it, I read out to him what Tony wanted to know, which was this:

“Lent is a difficult time for an enthusiastic cook catering for the needs of a monastic community. What is your favourite Lenten meal? How do you reconcile the requirement to feed hungry men and to embrace the spirit of the Lenten fast? What is the first meal you serve at the end of Lent?”

“Oh, Lent!” says Brother Conradus. “Yes! Glory be! It has its challenges. We eat just the one meal a day in Lent — and it’s a very cold time of the year. And damp. Very damp. Everyone wearing his mittens and a drip on the end of his nose. 

“The responsibility of the cook is to find something sufficiently sustaining to help them through the fast without getting dispirited. You know — I take it — that the brothers never eat the flesh of fourfooted beasts? Well, that is, except anyone in the infirmary who is frail enough to need building up, and for them we make exception. So, most of us rely on birds and fish, eggs and cheese, along with plenty of butter and cream, for the strength and substance we need to get through the day. But in Lent all that is gone. It’s down to grain and herbs, nuts, and such fruits as we have still in store or dried.

“So anyone might wonder, do we eat our bread with no butter then? Do we make our porridge with just water? Penitential indeed!

“Now, I take the view that the requirements of the fast are stringent enough — no need to make them harder.” He scoops a scant handful of flour from the wooden tub of it standing open on the table where he’s working, and sprinkles the surface in readiness for kneading his dough. 

“So, yes, we have no milk, no butter, no eggs — but that need not defeat us! There are options, there are possibilities! My mother always used to say there is always hope, and that — it turns out — is entirely true. With patience and a pestle and mortar you can reduce cob nuts to a butter. It takes ages, and of course it isn’t as smooth as butter, but with a little salt in it the result is very pleasing. Tasty. And you can make a kind of milk from rice, or from almonds. Not the same as from the cow, of course, but palatable enough if you understand even Lent doesn’t last for ever. I believe you can make milk from some beans too, but you have to be careful with beans. They can be poisonous if you don’t cook them long enough, and a bit barkish on the tongue, furthermore. Acrid, you know? Rice or almond milk are better, especially with a couple of dried dates in to sweeten them. Honey’s frowned on in Lent, of course — after all, it is a fast! But fruit we can have. Dates do very well. They're expensive, of course; we can't grow dates in Yorkshire! I have to be frugal in my use of them, very sparing.

“But I think the meal the brothers most look forward to in Lent is hot bread. The herbs and a little salt make it flavoursome, it elevates pottage to something you can actually enjoy, and served with cobnut butter it is very sustaining. Sometimes we add a bowl of rice pudding to end the meal, especially if the bread wasn’t hot that day, and the pottage was less hearty. They also appreciate herb dumplings to go with the pottage. Anything hot and filling. But with all that said, for sure it doesn’t take you through like a nice flan with plenty of eggs and butter, or a roast bird basted with plenty of butter. And then of course, in Holy Week, we go down even deeper; just bread, herbs salt and water. The whole week.  As you can well imagine, the bread had better be good!”

I watch him kneading his mound of dough, so deft and practiced, stretching it, turning it, adding a little oil, a little flour; watch it grow pliable and silky under his capable hands.

“And my favourite recipe for the end of Lent, you said? Well, it’s lovely to enjoy something sweet again; I always make them a simnel cake. Oh, it’s delicious! Lots of eggs, a generous dash of wine, fruity and spicy and plenty of almond paste on the top — March bread, as they call it — with rosewater and honey and a handful of cob nuts ground in with the almonds. And then eleven little balls of it on the top, one for each of the apostles after Judas — Lord have mercy on him — had taken himself off. I think our brothers would be bitterly disappointed if Easter Day dawned and I’d not made them a simnel cake. Outside the wall, of course, they often make them on Laetare Sunday, because they’re allowed that break from their fast. But here in the cloister we plod on right through to Easter morning; and then it’s eggs back on the supper table, porridge made with milk, and cream and honey on it as well for a special treat.

“Lent — it’s a special time, a holy time, recalling us to the serious purpose of our lives, a time to sit quietly in the presence of Jesus and open our hearts to him. Lent is a treasure, in the journey of faith. But to my mind it’s all the better for knowing there’ll be a good wedge of simnel cake waiting at the end of it.”

He takes the kneaded dough in a great bowl covered with a dampened cloth, and sets it down to rise on the hearth, near- — but not too near — to the embers of the fire.