We are now in recovery from the excitement of a couple of Ikea runs, choosing the sofa, having it delivered in sixteen boxes two days later when we thought it would take weeks, spending an entire Sunday building it, having three washers left over and not getting divorced, and now sitting (or rather reclining) on it. We bought a 'Gronlid' combination in the end with the chaise option at one end, say no more, I adore it, bring on winter, I'll cope.
And I have a little pile of peaceful, mindful reading on the chaise in progress at the moment which I thought I would share with you over the next few weeks; books to calm the nerves and realign spirits that may be feeling a little more depleted after each news bulletin.
The first is A Time to Keep Silence by Patrick Leigh Fermor in which Patrick recounts his retreats in two monasteries capturing both the atmosphere and all its transforming qualities.
'No automatic drains such as conversation, small talk, catching trains or the hundred anxious trivialities that poison every day life.'
That was 1957, imagine it now.
The assimilation of a strange new world creeps in gradually and not without some sense of inner panic verging on depression at the solitude.
'The period during which normal standards recede and the strange new world becomes reality is slow, and, at first, acutely painful.'
That power to calm is quietly but powerfully wrought as Patrick Leigh Fermor feels his own life calming and slowing down in the midst of the monks and their daily round of prayer and contemplation....
'As the monks dispersed after Vespers and a few hours later after Compline, I had a sensation of the temperature of life falling to zero, the blood running thinner and slower as if the heart might in the end imperceptibly stop beating.'
Back in the middle of that hot summer we have just had I went along to an evening concert during the Exon Singers Festival, which comes to Tavistock for a week at the end of July each year. It was an evening of anthems amongst other things, Parry's I Was Glad, Handel's Halellujah Chorus, Zadok the Priest, sending shivers down my spine and lifting the roof off our ancient Parish Church. As part of the week-long church-based festival Compline is held every evening at the end of each concert. The candles are lit, the clergy and choir sing the antiphons and responses and time slips away, it could all be hundreds of years ago. As the last notes dissolve back into the ancient stonework I walked out of the church in silence into a summer's evening of complete peace. Our town's abbey, like so many, was a victim of Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries, I passed the abbey ruins on the church green and it all made me wonder...had that not happened what might its fate have been.
I had been sitting in the North Aisle with a long view of the St Mary Magdalene Chapel with its William Morris window and the Fitz monument. Sir John in his armour (which he probably never wore in anger as he was a lawyer) who died in 1589 and his wife Mary.
On the wall by my pew the board with names of all the Abbots...
990 Aelfmaer
1009 - 27 Lyfing
1027 - 43 Ealdred
1043 - 82 Sihtric
1082 - 88 Geoffrey
1091 - 1102 Wymund
And so it went on, through Osbert, Robert, Walter, Godfrey, Baldwin, Herbert et al until the final name on the board 1523 - 1539 Peryn
'And on the morning of 3 March 1539 the twenty Tavistock monks gathered under their abbot in their beautiful octagonal chapter house, just as their predecessors had done for five and a half centuries. They were faced with an ultimatum to surrender to the Crown the abbey and its lands. The monks duly signed the deeds of surrender and went their ways...the finest of the abbey's ornaments and fixings were dispatched to London....'
Other sundry items were bought by the churchwardens with 'two-pennyworth of drink for anyone who volunteered to help carry the items on their short journey to the parish church' where I had just been sitting.
'The physical loss that followed the dissolution was the destruction or decay of beautiful buildings....at a level more immediate and more profound the loss was of an institution that was both civilising and supportive of the local community. Tavistock in 1539 must have been a town in which shock and disbelief gave way to alarm and foreboding.'
With their tendency to be domineering and pocket taxes there may have been some relief at the loss of the abbey, but there was much 'worried pessimism' too. The monks ran the school, healed the sick, supported the poor, conducting a whole range of social services...'the economic prospects looked equally hazardous'. The abbey employed large numbers of people...centuries of economic management were now under threat...tourism was surely destined to dive. The keynote was uncertainty, all the familiar props had been removed.
This is 1539 by the way not 2018, in case you were sensing similarities to our current predicament here in the UK, and my thanks to the late Gerry Woodcock's wonderful book Homage to St Eustachius's A History of Tavistock Parish Church for this enlightening background and the sense that plus ca change when it comes to turmoil.
Patrick Leigh Fermor considers the fate of the monasteries too, exploring their place 'as the only guardians of literature, the classics, scholarship and the humanities' for many centuries. France ultimately fared no better than Britain, the French Revolution saw to that apparently. Monks scattered, libraries split up, buildings sold or demolished, but the faith lived on as did the order, indestructible in the face of persecution and ready for reinstatement when the time was right. Patrick offers a deep and insightful reasoning for the existence of these orders in the modern world needed then and well.... many would argue still very much needed now...
'They are the anonymous well-wishers who reduce the moral overdraft of mankind.'
You have to wonder where it all leaves us in the twenty-first century and the digital age, because times have certainly a-changed since Patrick Leigh Fermor escaped from the daily round to write a book or two.
If you haven't come across digitalnun maybe check her out. Dame Catherine Wybourne is bringing the Benedictine Order right up to speed with her internet presence, forging an innovative online version of Benedictine welcome and hospitality. You can find her as a daily prayerful presence on both Twitter (where she has twenty thousand followers) and also on Facebook.
A Time to Keep Silence is a very special little book, less than a hundred pages of intense and precious reflection which I have read often. It's a book for the spirit; to calm, to uplift and to encourage, especially when the world order at large seems slightly chaotic, and either out of anyone's control or in dubious hands.
If you don't know it I can highly recommend, and if you do I would love to know your thoughts.
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