Notes from Bambi – Traveller's notes

Holy society

Reform is a popular term, frequently on the lips of English speaking people. Looking back to a golden age is a popular pastime. If only we could get back to it, everything would be great again.

It seems a good time to revisit the Benedictine Reforms of the 10th century in England, coinciding as this does with Benedict’s week – sixty years as Patron of Europe. Many thanks to Dr Charles Insley of the Lay Community of St Benedict for his talk on this subject. This interpretation is my own.

I’ll leave it to you to find out about the authorised version or versions: there’s several out there. I’m going to try to write from the perspective of Aelthfryth, wife of Edgar, the first woman to be annointed Queen of England, from about 965-976 AD.

Nothing written by her survives, indeed we don’t even know if she could write, but it seems plausible as she was from the royal family of Wessex. Edith of Wilton was her stepdaughter through her husband’s prior relationship, not sure if it was marriage, with Edith’s mother Wulfthryth.

Dear Edith,

I write to you as a mother writes to her daughter but also as a daughter writes to her mother. We are both mother and daughter to each other and I am blessed by that understanding.

As the bible says, there’s a time for everything under heaven and now my time has come to write about the life God granted me as Queen of England. Not something I ever sought, you will know my first husband was killed by outlaws on a visit to Northumbria. Later I came to question this version of events as I got to know my Lord and King, Edgar, better: maybe the outlaws were inlaws when it came to Edgar’s wishes.

That was the first time that I recognised my life progressing in step with my forebears in the faith. Bathsheba found herself at David’s mercy when Uriah the Hittite, her first husband, was killed on his orders so that he could make her his queen. Such is the power of kings. They often seem to share a similar morality as well. My first boy died, as did hers. I wonder if this also part of the price women pay for the whims of powerful men.

That day at Bath when I was crowned Queen was a day I will never forget yet never expected. I quite thought Edgar would tire of me soon enough. He’d got his heir and I was happy to come to Wilton or a similar house. But instead, perhaps wanting to make the most of the pomp and pageantry offered by his reforms, we were consecrated side by side. Of course, that has been useful since if not in quite the way I expected. I’m certain history will add its own layers of propoganda to my story. We all know powerful women attract harsh claims of which witchcraft is the most common. You will undoubtedly hear me called a witch in good time.

That coronation gave me new responsibilities, particularly as far as Benedictine houses for women were concerned, as you know. How I love Wilton, but the role has been hard in many other places. What should I make of Barking for example? Please pray about this with me.

Most especially pray for all holy women, that they be kept safe from predators that infiltrate even the sanctity of their houses. My husband’s own example is not a good one and as a result laymen up and down the land seek to display their influence in unholy ways, stealing piety and purity from our sisters where they can. So many come to me for help. I will send them onto Wilton and other safe houses when I can.

I remain your mother in life and your daughter in faith, in the hope and help of the Mother of our Lord, she who embraced the role of lifegiver, regardless of potential shame and said ‘Yes’ to the amazing power of God to lift up the lowly and put down the proud. May she pray with us everyday.

Signed by my hand, Aelthfryth, Queen of England.

Actually written in Longdendale, by Janet Lees, Wantering Anchorite, for St Benedict’s Week 2025

Teapot Wednesday

It was the Wednesday before Easter, properly called Teapot Wednesday, and all the followers were out searching for bargain teapots. It was essential to get them before the Easter weekend when everyone would be back at church expecting a nice cup of tea.

Things were not going to plan in the High Street.

‘How much?’

‘You must be joking!’

‘For a teapot, rediculous.’

It seems that teapots had shot up in price since last year. It was a shock for all the would-be teapot buyers. They had to have the latest teapots. People would expect it.

After all, tea was central to their Easter celebrations. Last year a trendy, political sort of minister had told them there was no tea at the Last Supper. What nonsense. Mrs Potts had a teapot with a painting on it of Jesus at the Last Supper holding a teapot. They soon sent her packing.

This year it was back to the old traditions. Happy Teapot Wednesday everyone.

Janet Lees, from the Mobile Chapel of St Scholastica. 16th April 2025.

Palestinian Wail

I recently read the the book ‘Palestinian Wail‘, by Yahia Lababidi. Here’s my review

The first poem in Yahia’s powerful collection ‘Palestinian Wail’, is called Hope. In this short piece Yahia introduces us to the experience that is the foundation of his collection: Hope is smaller than you think.

This truth touched me right away. Although we might not have lived through a genocide, survived mass murder or other atrocities personally, we each know is some small way of the fragility of hope. Thus, I would say to any reader, this collection is for you.

It moves on from Hope to casualties and there’s no doubt it is a tough read. Silence follows for most of the following pages, as I try to find a small green blade of hope. I find one in Yahia’s suggestion that you need to ‘bring a bird’ to a protest to ‘set others free’.

Few of the poems are all that long. This means you can meditate on each one. I had the pages open, one at a time, for a good long look but as he writes in the poem about Columbia University ‘there’s no looking away’.

You might think that would mean I’d want to rush through, skip over and finish this collection as quickly as possible. Not a bit of it. I felt, for once in the dreadful war, that I was doing something positive. So small, so insignificant, but something: I was witnessing. This was a tiny act of solidarity by one who hardly knows how to do such a thing adequately. Yahia understand this. His poem ‘How to protest’ knowingly states ‘Truth, Beauty, Justice, Peace/are not at all easy to wear’. Equally it’s not easy to know what to say during a genocide. Yahai points to ‘tears of kindness and solidarity’ rather than ‘a loud and wounding Silence’.

As one who has often written about the different kinds of silence, I can only weep in my agreement. For him, it is the music of his homeland that finally causes him to weep. The collection is not long, but clearly illustrates the ‘light and beauty’ he hungers for and that he found in writing it.

It is followed by a Afterword drawing on his own experience and an acknowledgement of the role played by his mentor, Mark Burrows, in arranging the collection. Please read it all if you can.

Palestine Wail by Yahia Lababidi

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Time for ……

There’s a time for everything, says one biblical writer. As the summer has now definitely gone, there’s still time. Many will recall statistics about the last few months; the wet weather, the effects on insect species and other populations. Now the swallows are leaving for another year and the wildlife watchers are counting the skeins of pink footed geese across the sky. There’s a time for coming and a time for going.

I’m just back from a visit to Devon, somewhat south and west of Longdendale. One of the the things they hold in common is disused railway lines. By the late 1960s decisions had been made to close most of the railway lines in Devon, except the main ones through the county. They weren’t economic enough for some. Instead small roads were filled with fume emitting vehicles a new roads were built to take all the traffic. The disused railway lines became just that, disused, until the age of slower travel by off road routes came along and we tried to join them back up again. These are the routes we have been walking along.

Additionally one section of local rail line has been re-opened, to Oakhampton station and other small projects have big ambitions. The station at Oakhampton seems to be thriving and has an interesting museum. Of course, it costs more to re-open a railway now than it did to close it then.

Oakhampton Station, once again on the main line.

Religious communities can find it difficult to see ahead at the benefits and costs to changes in community life. It’s not unusual to hear members in many such places moan about the lack of younger members often in the same breath as they complain about those that are present.

The village of Sticklepath used to be on the main road route to Oakhampton. John Wesley came that way and preached at the white stone. A few years ago the small parish church was faced with closure. But today it is a space shared with the village heritage centre and the worshipping community, one at each end of the building.

So too on Lundy Island the church has a new life for visitors but is still celebrating the old one as a place of worship. The Landmark Trust re-purposes old buildings of interest and we’ve found them intriguing places to stay.

Evening at Winsford Cottage Hospital, care of the Landmark Trust

We face similar challenges in our high streets. Don’t make the mistake of thinking the Rule doesn’t embrace community change. The buildings can get a new life along with the people. What’s required is faithfulness in prayer and service, not unswerving adherence to activities that no longer contribute to holy communion.

From my remembered bible: There’s a time for everything under heaven.

Direct my prayers to the opening of your ways.

Janet Lees, the wandering anchorite of Longdendale., 9th October 2024

Narrow Way

Take the narrow path: it is the most life-giving (RB)

I doubt many of my forebears or contemporaries spend much time on the Rule of St Benedict, but then neither do I compared with someone who has lived under monastic vows for half a century. I come from a Reformed heritage and as such the temptation to reform is running through my veins every day. It’s a wonder I stick to any path.

As far as the east is from the west, in Longdendale

I’m not a totally off-piste person either. I do love the edges though, where the speedwell forms vibrant blue clumps or a pale helleborine is shielded from the main trail, where the butterflies are dancing. The trail that makes its way through Longdendale is wider in some parts than in others. Sometimes there is a separate track for horse riders; the spotted orchids thrive there. If you want to see a bracket fungus or a delicate ring of age-old lichen you’ll need to go beyond the edge of the path.

What about a rule for building community? I wonder how I find myself gazing at that. I grew up in a small village in Essex and took that kind of community for granted. Without probing too deeply, I gradually, with age, became aware of its flaws and frayed edges. A child suffocated to death in a grain silo, marriages that fell apart, where Travellers were welcome to pick fruit but not to live alongside us. It was much the same in the rest of the country I expect. I went to South Africa in the mid 1980s and was confronted by other communities and stories of injustice. I came back to look differently at the scenes of children playing in bread baskets on a narrow balcony or Black women doing piece work in tiny flats.

My privilege took me to one of the oldest universities in Britain where I was mostly unhappy, conflicted, lost. I never learnt to revere the Great Men. A few threads of community brushed off on me in passing: we sang ‘Shalom my friends’ in a circle around the communion table in the ecumenical Estate Church on a Sunday. I picked up other echoes in SW London and Yorkshire by the kindnesses of those I met. For a while it was just enough to keep me on the path.

The next valley, where rules were broken.

A school has its rules and Benedict knows that. He writes in the Prologue:

‘Our intention is to begin a school for God’s service’ (RR) ¹

As a school chaplain I was aware of rules and their interpretation, roles and authority. It is with all of this baggage that I stumble along with Benedict’s Rule. There are other rules of course: most religious communities or networks will have them and their unspoken interpretations. A good Benedictine reads the Rule three times a year. A good enough one remembers a few bits of it.

There are those who consider the Rule that is over a thousand and a half years old a gift to the twenty-first century. I am still unsure about that. It contains a lot of words, and much of it is archaic in language and authority. However, it seems to include three main ideas: the importance of stability, accountability and of owning nothing.

Stability is the reassurance that it is ‘a gift to come down where we ought to be’. ²

Accountability is my take on obedience. We seek to live in mutual respect to each other.

We own nothing. You cannot own a valley, though this one doubles as a water catchment area for part of Greater Manchester so swathes of its (mis)management are taken over by a private company that is run for the profit of a few shareholders rather than the eco-system as a whole.³

I am finding stability here. The three-times-a-year Rule is mixed up with the four seasons, the boundaries of which are unravelling. An arctic tern turned up in the black-headed gull colony on a peninsula on the farthest reservoir this spring (2024). A colony that shouldn’t really be there are we are a long way from the coast, and nearly wasn’t there for the two breeding seasons it was ripped apart by avian flu, but it came anyway. Maybe a gyrovague looking for a familiar wave to ride. Not finding one, it stayed a day or two and then went on its way to some other community, some other place, some other stability.

I count stuff and share my observations with a group of enthusiastic wild-life watchers. They see more than me, charting the comings and goings of migratory species and newcomers looking for a place to call their own. As I write this (May 2024) there are rumours that a family of otters has taken up residence on a small body of water towards the moorland. After another wet spring my fears are for the orange-tipped butterflies, their one early breeding flight washed out again. ‘To whom do you consider yourself accountable?’was the question posed at my surplus-to-requirements interview weighing my value to the larger community that saw school based ministry as pointless. My answer, in this valley, more than seven years later, remains the same: To Jesus Christ, the head of the Church. I could go on, but essentially, if no one else wants to know that the climate is changing, as few enough seem to, I can still count stuff.

A heron has just flown over on its way to goodness knows where, and the rain is falling in stair rods (uncommon enough metaphor these days). I own none of these things. Of the things I do own I try to share them with those around me in a not-for-profit way, mindful I still have too many unused possessions other are unlikely to want (the local charity shops have been the recipients of quite a few of them). I can’t take you through the Rule of St Benedict one paragraph at a time, backwards of forwards. I do not keep it under my pillow. I walk through this valley with a remembered bible and a remembered rule and quite a lot of baggage, as a good enough Benedictine.

Come, walk with me. The way maybe narrow but it is life-giving. Tomorrow I need to go and see if the bog-bean is flowering.

Janet Lees, Friend of Scholastica and wandering anchorite of Longdendale, 27.05.2024

1RR is the Remembered Rule – and RB is of course the Remembered Bible. so it’s all about what I’ve internalised, how I have interpreted, what has shaped me.

2Shaker hymn, 19th century USA.

3At the time of writing this is United Utilities.

Northern Lights

Dear Benedict,

Today the internet is awash with photos of the Northern Lights taken from all over the UK. I wonder what you would have made of them 1,500 years ago, or even if they were visible in Italy?

I’ve had them explained to me but actually they are just awesome. Sheets and bursts of colour dancing across the night sky. Last night was clear and ideal for them after such a big ‘solar burp’.

Everyone who saw it is talking about it and everyone who didn’t is kicking themselves for missing it. It seems that lots of people had them on their ‘bucket list’: a must-see sight or event that notion of which would probably puzzle you too.

Between Compline and Lauds, Benedictines still observe the great silence. There’s no more fitting time to contemplate the heavens. They are immense and vital, providing air to breathe, highways for aerial species and space to pray. As human activity messes with the air we must do all we can to raise awareness and right the balance.

Remembered bible: Keep watch and pray.

Make me air aware.

Janet Lees, Friend of Scholastica, Wandering Anchorite of Longdendale. 11.05.2024

Burden

Dear Benedict,

When I think about putting your rule into practice today, it sometimes seems too complicated. All 73 chapters are about how to live in community. It’s a daunting prospect. Would you suggest a top ten perhaps? Most days I barely scratch the beginning and end: ‘Listen’ and ‘try not to be discouraged’ (my remembered versions).

This is partly because my usual companion is the remembered bible, rather than the remembered rule. The bit I’m thinking of today is about bearing each other’s burdens. We developed some strange ideas in the 21st century and one of them that has caught hold and will not seem to let go, is that as we age we become a burden.

We don’t. We are never that. We need a major reboot here.

What becomes tough, daunting, frustrating, can be re-balanced if we can only think of sharing the load, standing by each other, giving a hand. Of course the complexity of our lives has made that harder. Everyone needs to work, and often at several jobs, to maintain the expected multi-holiday, big car, comfortable house, lifestyle that is advertised in our celebrity endorsing, selfie-society.

I haven’t seen a dentist in over five years. There are no NHS dentists in the area where I live or in many other parts of the country. Is this because the NHS has failed. No, it’s more complicated than that. The best dental service I ever received was from the students at the dental hospital (that was years ago now). Yet, even then it was clear that one of the motivating factors for some students was the high salaries they believed they could and should command.

Too many of the people not now able to afford dentistry are now in the grip of the worst post-war poverty epidemic we have yet seen in this country. There’s a two child limit on family financial help via child allowance and too many families are having to rely on food banks.

My first profession was as a speech therapist in the NHS. Even then it was hard to find speech therapists, and sometimes waiting lists were very long. Once again you could look to pay for private speech therapy but it’s not a part of the profession I ever went into. I learnt at a young age to give stuff away and most of all to give away my time. I didn’t get my first paid job until I was 18 and that was as an au-pair. During my adulthood I’ve often worked for nothing, volunteered for stuff, had unpaid roles one way or another. I don’t have a large income, because I’m a woman born in the 1950s so I don’t get my pension until I’m 66. But I still have enough to give my time and efforts to other people, make soup, sew up things, visit people.

I’m fortunate that is the case but it does puzzle me what multi-millionaires think they will need all that money for….Or even why ordinary people get hooked into the must have this or that culture. Later today, I hope I will put my walking boots on and walk up the valley. I’ll see some birds, plants and maybe something unexpected. It will cost me nothing.

If you want to live with the Risen Christ, think about how you can take life beyond the restrictions and false attractions of a culture that promises much but delivers so little. Think about how you can be part of a community that ‘shares each others burdens’. It seems to be a somewhat counter cultural way of life now in a context in which everything costs more and the fear of having nothing dominates the richest, while the poor have to scrap by on several low paid jobs and a bag of free groceries.

Bob carrying Hannah and Sally Bunny, sometime ago.

If there’s a rule it should be ‘Let no one go without what they need to thrive’.

From my remembered bible: ‘Jesus said ‘I have come so you might have the fullest life possible’.

Show us how to bear each others burdens.

Janet lees, Friend of Scholastica, living in Longdendale. Easter Sunday 2024.

Holy Week

Dear Benedict,

Any week can be holy if we let it…

I begin wandering again this week. The winter is over, even with snow forecast. We have passed the Spring Equinox. The geese are going the other way. A lot of other avian migrants have recently arrived. Lapwings make a display of themselves in the fields.

I’m taking Bambi a few miles down the road to see the view. Derbyshire is full of them. Every bush is burning.

The bin men have been, so we’re officially emptied again. The Cross-Wise Way is a way of frequent restarts. A new notebook and a sharpened pencil. Begin again at chapter 1. Some of us never get any further.

Holy Monday is a day for resting your voice after all the shouting and yelling of yesterday. You may need it again later in the week.

Holy Tuesday and Wednesday are days of pondering big questions. Why the fig tree is not fruiting, why a poor woman is putting her life savings in the offertory plate. Why oh Why? There will be other questions later in the week.

Maundy Thursday is a day for washing and plotting.

Good Friday is a day for hanging around.

Holy Saturday is the quietest day of all.

Easter Day is a day for rock rolling and surprises.

From my remembered bible: Blessed is the One who comes this Way.

Any week can be holy if we let it.

Bless us on the way.

Janet Lees, a Friend of Scholastica. Setting out from Longdendale. 25.03.2024

Wandering

Dear Benedict

The season of wandering is nearly over for this year. We are back on Greenwhich Mean Time and the evenings are now darker as the light part of the day shortens. I’m back to my thoughts about wandering.

I think you took against it because by the time you came to found the community for the Rule that bears you name, you’d done your bit of it and were happy to settle down. God help the rest of them. You wanted them to experience stability and that’s all very well but it can be stultifying.

Of course I understand that wandering has its downside too. No roots, shallower relationships, a whole host of questions. But maybe this was just what your community needed. I’m back in the valley after my final wanderings of the season and I’m full of observations, questions and feelings of being unsettled. Maybe that does make it harder to re-integrate into a solid settled community. I can imagine the whispering: ‘Who do they think they are, coming back here with all those ideas?’

Of course most of our communities are not that settled these days. Poverty and inequality, for example, are unsettling. Newcomers need attention and understanding. What should we tackle first?

I settle back to the tasks I’ve taken on; a bit of soup making, reusing and recycling unwanted items, and observing the changes that the seasons bring to the valley. About now many more geese are on the move, from their summer to their winter nesting round. Hundreds at a time fly high overhead to find the right place to spend the winter.

I will spend the winter here. It’s my winter nesting ground. I’ll walk and write and pray in this valley for a few months. I think about the observations and questions that came from wandering. This week I think of the souls and the saints, old and new, their stories of wandering and stability, their homecoming. May they rest in peace and rise in glory.

From my remembered bible: I will walk through the valley without fear.

I am thankful for all the saints, even the most unlikely ones.

From a Friend of Scholastica living in Longdendale, 3rd November 2023

Geese

Dear Benedict

This is called ‘Ordinary time’ but then time is itself ordinary. Now we call it Creation Time, although I’m not sure how much time we have for creation, or how much time creation has left for that matter.

I read about a creature from the deepest ocean, found by an exploration team, one never before seen by humans. It was bought up out of the depths and put in a jar. Dead of course. What if it was the only one?

In ordinary time in your Rule, the early morning worship gets a whole chapter 13 to itself. It’s proceeded by chapter 12 which is for Sundays. This morning I lay in bed and listened to the geese again. They flew past my window and made themselves known in their distinctive way, their calls sounding up and down the valley. They don’t know any numbered psalms, just their own. I’m not sure what an Ambrosian Hymn is (sounds like custard) but if it means sweet and musical every bird I know has a version.

A group of wildlife watchers in the valley, message each other daily on the progress of creatures great and small, sometimes a rare one, sometimes a well ordered flock, sometimes good news, sometimes not so good. They keep alert.

The sun rises and sets, and the valley continues to be the holy space it is.

This morning my copy of your Rule fell apart when I picked it up. I’m not yet sure if this is a good sign or just carelessness.

For now I’ll listen to the geese.

From my remembered bible: Look at the birds…..

Your call comes with the birds. I am glad.

From a friend of Scholastica in Longdendale, 10th September 2023