Seeking God, Seeking Life: The Way of St Benedict - Esther de Waal speaks at St Paul's Forum

well good afternoon and a very warm welcome to simple's and to this Sunday forum my name is Mark Oakley and I'm the canon Chancellor here and it's my privilege today to both welcome you and introduce today's speaker when I look back in my own life and ask which books acted like magnets as it were pulling me towards the mystery of God it's quite easy to answer Harry Williams is true wilderness for instance had a very profound effect on me in teaching me that Christianity might be interested not just in truth but in honesty as well and one of the other books that inspired me around at a guess 1985 was Esther Duvall's seeking God the way of Saint Benedict and I can recall in very vivid colors the way in which that book translated a little rule of life written for men 1,500 years ago in rural Italy into a very fresh and practical guide to Christian apprenticeship for lay and ordained people today and her books living with contradiction and seeking life the baptismal invitation of the rule of Saint Benedict continue to open up the resonances of Benedict's rule for people today it's like ancient wisdom is hoeing our soil and turning up earth badly-needed if we're going to spiritually flourish so Esther Duvall is someone to and for whom I've always personally been very grateful but I've never actually had the opportunity of meeting her until today so I'm very thrilled to be able to welcome her she is a historian with a particular interest in landscape and architecture who grew up in my own town of Shropshire and as well as an interest in Benedictine spirituality she studied Celtic spirituality and written a number of books on the Celtic vision as well also as on Thomas Merton in 1991 has to receive the Templeton UK award for making the way of st. Benedict accessible to lay men and women and so who else should we have here to speak on this very topic today Esther will speak for about 30 to 40 minutes then we'll open up the floor to some questions we will end very punch lit two o'clock and then there'll be an opportunity for you to buy books by Esther so would you please welcome Esther Duvall as she speaks on seeking God seeking life the way of st. Benedict thank you very much for that extremely sympathetic introduction I'm very pleased to be here a letter came out of the blue from Elizabeth Foy and I'm sorry that she can't be present inviting me to talk about the role of the Benedict in my life and my subsequent thinking about it well that really really couldn't be a more attractive invitation it gave me a chance to think back and it is perfectly true that I think it's next year it will be thirty years since I wrote seeking a guard the way absent Benedict thirty years and how utterly extraordinary that is and how grateful I continue to be that I read that book actually entirely by chance to get publishers out of a difficulty hitherto the Lindt book had always been written by a pillar of the establishment and of course by a man and it had always been commissioned at least two years in advance and then one year there came a time of crisis and I was approached by a publishing friend who said can you get us out of a difficulty and so I said yes because it was a challenge so I read that book in six months hitherto I'd written very dull books about local government so it was quite a challenge nevertheless here is a chance to pay homage to the extraordinary way in which some benedict came into my life and high-back on there as a mystery of grace or if you like God's sense of timing or even God's sense of humor I didn't know that Marc and I shared Shropshire my father was a country vicar outside Ludlow where I went to school his church had been a Benedictine Prairie Church in the Middle Ages but that meant nothing to me as I grew up he belonged to that old school of antiquarian archeological enthusiasts I knew the dates of the Charter so I knew all sorts of lists and facts but the students didn't cry out the vicarage looked across at the Prairie gateway that was really all that remained intact of the old Prairie and it was as if I never passed through those gates and realized that the remains of a Benedictine Prairie could speak to me about a way of life that might actually touch my heart might bring me some sort of deepening of the way I prayed and saw the world instead of that like every other good vicar's daughter in the old days I went to church the pews were arranged hierarchically we sat in the third pew because the Earl of priam earth sat in the front and his estate agent we said the Creed standing to attention as if it was a national anthem and being the younger of two sisters I was determined to out pray my younger sister in saying prayers at night in a chilly draft Dybbuk Ridge bedroom and all the time or time rule of Saint Benedict could have showed me a wider more humane vision of the Christian life but then I married I arose a historian I'm really a local historian and I come to Canterbury my husband becomes the Dean of Canterbury the tide cottage that gays were the jobs if you happen to be an Anglican priest meant that we were living because can't we have been one of the very greatest of Benedictine foundations and Middle Ages we found ourselves living in the Pryor's building the prior lodging of the medieval Benedictine community it was a medieval house it had been slightly cheered up at the Reformation but essentially it was a medieval house no bad thing if you have four little boys in five years I think Thomas the youngest was then about seven we could put them four to seven stay in steps of a star or staircase and they would be out of earshot the building impressed me being trained escaped from Cambridge and it's terrible text approach to life to lest where I could study leg or history and begin to read the landscape and visual evidence and read buildings I began to read the buildings and they fascinated me the back of the garden the brew house the Baker's going out of the left of that side entrance the infirmary say went on and there was one day which I remember so vividly they were doing some excavations damn coming in to the under craft and outside digging the ground outside there were three skeletons three lying in the ground at the east end of the Cathedral and I thought these are the men whose hands built this place but whose vision furnished this place and so I want to learn more about it so as a result I picked up the room Marco clay will I'm sure finds some interest in the fact that it was the visual reading the buildings that preceded reading and the text I picked up the rule I thought thank goodness is very short it's 9,000 words I don't think it will be of any particular interest to me and then suddenly I found that are all family alive and a very full and complicated demands made on one as the wife of the Dean endless hospitality and all sorts of expectations laid on one that meeting about how Benedict held together a community a household of men who had to earn their own living who had to pray together and who had to study together well that wasn't so very unlike the sort of life that most of us live but it was because they had to earn their living that that really was the first moment in fact I can still remember because Benedict and this is so unlike really my childhood experience of religion where I thought you had to be nice and you had to say prayers and you had to be good Benedict is much more realistic than there and he begins with matter with material things with the tools of David law life and with our own physical self as well and I read phrase where he said that I could handle the daily things in the kitchen in the garden in the pantry with us much reverence and respect as if they were the Eucharistic vessels of the altar that was the moment when he broke down would abide to me be between matter and spirit between material and spiritual and so that really was for me the starting point but then because he realizes that we are holistic people and here it is this recognition that we have three elements body and mind and spirit that we have to honor our physical selves we have to honor our mind our god-given mind and not least our god-given imagination at the heart of it all is the life of prayer and holidays are held in balance and how if you were to find room for each of them you have to impose on your day some sort of rhythm and some sort of structure and again it was an image that the buildings gave me three things were happening now I was asking how can reading the roar of sub Benedict how can experiencing this text which shows how monastic life was lived around the Year 500 how can that flow into the images that this place is giving me one place above all chert my imagination and that is the cloisters the open on cluttered space with the carved walkway running around it and the audacity of keeping open uncluttered space when you have a hugely busy monastic community probably a hundred one hundred and fifty they're earning their living there looking after and husbandry they are working in the library they're making manuscripts above all they are welcoming visitors and they are keeping office day the work of God as the central essential foundation of it or and yet there is that open space that is an open on Cottard space there is a space which is again if you make the connection between that image of the monastic complex and our air selves is the open on a crowded space that we all try try against the odds to hold the center of our own lives the image goes further because it was always a spring of water a fountain a center of it or the spring of life the woman of Samaria the word the refreshing word because it's all about keeping an open and on cluttered space in order that we should listen to God have time silence space be aware of the presence of God listening to him in our lives all the way around the monks would be endlessly moving from eating and sleeping Benedict so down-to-earth that he tells us that we should have enough sleep that we should have good food that we should have a little wine that the food should be carefully served we are to enjoy the good things of life then thus they would be perhaps doing whatever their manual labor was but the whole thing again if you think of the image is anchored in the church all the flow of activity comes in and out of the foundation of it or prayer so I began to see that Benedict was giving me all sorts of practical help he was shaping my attitude he was helping my approach and so what about the vows in my very evangelical childhood the vows had seemed like restrictions like chains like always saying no but that was because I thought they were poverty chastity and obedience to my shame and so the values of my childhood were being saying no well chastity that's very difficult if you're a married woman no to poverty not possessing anything no to saying no all the time Benedict's files are utterly different they are wonderful and they serve you so well they have deepened my ability to follow Christ against the odds if you like sometimes hanging on to my loyalty to a church by my finger but finding that here I quote somebody who says the monastic life has always regarded the life of the church so here forgetting the institutional church and how it sometimes gets itself turned up in politics and fundraising and things we want to forget here are three Benedict you vows or promises shaping if you like the disposition of the heart Benedict doesn't tell me what to do he helps me to make decisions and these three and he begins with stability it's the cornerstone in monastic rules before but stability it's a wonderful wonderful concept again living in Canterbury helped because it wouldn't happen no we did but they gave the enthusiastic Dean's wife because she seemed to like the cathedral building so much the key oh I could wander in but day or night and I have to say that the Crypt the undercroft a tonight with those strong pillars built at the time when some handsome was an archbishop in latter half century there's strong pillars they made a statement about stability being strong being steadfast being still without that firmness if you like it's a steadfastness of perseverance of the songs or if you like in a modern term hanging in there any other structure built above wouldn't really be possible but then the next four promises converse axiom Orem and we had chained that into and being open to the new or if you like living open to change benedict news about paradox and I'm so grateful for there veredict is helping us to hold two things together so yes you stay still but you don't become static or dead like lots or if you move forward you are open to change God following God is going to be a risky business the Christ who had nowhere to lay his head and so you are being opened to the new you're on a journey you're discovering more about yourself but the truth of that resurrected SAR for self in Christ this is not self-indulgence though it's very good psychology but the third is obedience obedience which sounds threatening but when you take it back to the Latin or Parthians to listen to listen intently say that all the time or trying to listen to the Word of God in whatever way it reaches you say that your point of reference is God's will and the question that you asked yourself if you're living with obedience yes is it God's will and not mine so these were utterly amazing and in the rare case to life that most of us live they saw me through the years but four glorious years of family life with young children but then in a subsequent years and with the ending of a marriage after four years then you have to rethink your life and those of you who heard the sermon will know that it was a sermon about loneliness and about um being alone and you don't always choose to be alone when you're at my age and now I read the vows at a more profound level still steadfastness is about living with reality a it's about not dreaming not having the fantasy which says if only it had been different in the past or it will be different in the future you have to live with the reality of the present moment these present circumstances and rare Williams whom I knew and he was a bishop down the road once put it so simply God cannot work with unreality God can only work with reality to live with stability prevents you escaping from the circumstances of the present day the president of moment but then changed you have to move forward you have to be open you have to be ready for whatever threshold you are going to cross chosen or not Cheston you keep moving forward and then always praying listening god is it your will is a piece of self-indulgence is it a piece of self-deception or am I really rarely trying to hear your voice and do your will now listen is the very very first word of the rule listen listen carefully listen carefully my son because Benedict is soaked in Scripture Benedict knows the word Benedict has lived and breathed and prayed the scripture he quotes endlessly from Scripture and if you look at the rule the lots of it's in italic tore scripture quotations but even more powerful are the resonances the allusions only last weekend when I was at weekend on Henry Warren I live on the Welsh waters of riches of the welsh water country and not least its poetic tradition henry vaughan last weekend Thomas Byrne coming up George Hobart waiting there in the wings but Henry Bourne weekend there was a lecture on how in the 17th century it wasn't borrowing because everybody belonged to a common word in which if he uses allusions in his poetry if he alludes to other writers they would pick it up and I hadn't thought I might confess it to you that illusion comes from Lou Derry to play what delight that is sir benedict all the time is playing with the scriptures and he hopes that you will realize when he says my son he means he's thinking of the words I'm a baptism this is my son the beloved listen carefully and each of us is the beloved the loved one each of us is the prodigal the prodigal who has lost their way squandered their good fortune and certainly coming to himself and again it's as if the confusion of the fog of his talking to himself dispersed in obedience he hears the voice of God and he sees what a state he's in and then metanoia he changes and this is really the second vow isn't it he returns and he returns to the loving father and there are all sorts of ways one could describe the rule but I think of it in one of its most powerful aspects as being Home Coming I've been to flurry sunburned noir so noir weather still a Benedictine community I think it's of course should have a Benedictine pilgrimage I think it should all go off a pet store um anyway if you go to through Larry fuell gear down into the Crypt where Benedict come to miss and if you do like I did early in the morning my lighted candle a prayer written in French which means when we did stumblingly and slowly and what he says is Benedict you know the human condition you know we're lost you know that we've lost the key of our hearts you know Benedict above all we want to come home we want to come home to our own true selves we want that sense of deep belonging but above all we want the relationship with a loving father Benedict is profoundly scriptural Bernadette doesn't want us to be monastic followers for us officer Benedict he wants to bring us to Christ the prologue to the room which is a wonderful wonderful piece of writing it's so urgent listen carefully my son I've got something that you must all here and I only discovered recently reading a comment found in a very boring foot date a fascinating clue it was a baptism or based on a Baptist Mohammadi that's mean say it was for people preparing for baptism their baptism of course it's addressed to all of us who are Christians the plies to all of us and he is all the time putting us to Christ to the risen Christ he had spent time in Rome studying as a student and he never ever despised the intellect it tells at the end of the rule were to read and he gives us different sources were to read critically Internet's we are to respect them but he knows that the whole truth doesn't lie there that there is something else and that is heart and knowledge and that is wisdom well sail he spends we don't know two or three years in the chaotzu PRK this is a wonderful wonderful prayer this time of silence and solitude and prayer holding himself still before the gaze of God even if you don't remember anything else that I say just think of that phrase holding himself still before of again of God where are the gays of God coming into his uncut 'red undefended heart and that means that this is a wonderful moment and it's a significant it's Easter day Benedict's been on his own God doesn't know he's a local peasant and the knows less food down in front of the mark k ever they in case you're worried about him eating but he didn't see anyone else until a neighboring priest comes and greets benedictus benedictus Easter day a Benedict says looks up and says Easter it is brother because you are here let's take that and see that Benedict looks at this man and says Easter the day of the risen Christ I see Easter in you I see the true self the risen self in Christ the Christ self this is what Benedict is helping us all to live into and to see in other people too little phrase that everyone come be received as Christ means that you don't see superficially giving people labels and compartmentalizing people but he will be on that in the truth of the resurrect itself in Christ and say Benedict were never going to reach the end of the journey but there will come change in it it says and this is very concerning I find that the way will remain guitar from hard game but there will be change the change will come in hearts because he will gives us the picture of the heart expanding growing larger the heart but is filled with the love the loving father for each one of us is going to mean that if we allow it our hearts will expand with all the delights of love and so if in any way we are to become followers of Christ Benedict is just asking us one very very simple and basic question at the end of each day have I each day become a more loving person with that question thank you very much Chester indeed for that if I can just kick off with a an initial question and give you a little bit of time to start formulating your own here we are in very busy part of of London and from about seven o'clock onwards this place becomes jingle monday-to-friday like an ant colony no rushing around holding Starbucks coffee in one hand and a phone and the other and it's a frenzy of of frenzied people Furies are in the air and it carries on until very late at night so you have that sort of life going on at the moment you also have a lot of people living at home under a lot of pressure single parents not much money putting the children in front of the television and and I'm just asking myself really practically how do we begin to unclutter the mind and find an uncluttered space where we can begin to find the key to the heart as you to use that wonderful phrase because it seems to me that so much is working against it whether you've got money whether you haven't got money at the moment if it's relentless yes I think you begin by recognizing the need because most people even rent of time to draw breath to recognize that there is a need to have a point of stillness inside of oneself and perhaps you might convince them that if you do impose structure and boundaries there's a connection between that energy so that instead of being so scattered and dissipated and it's a frightening for me because I live in the middle of nowhere and I do find London very very frightening and people knocking you over because they dead seal because there are they're engaged in it and people coming up on the train not looking at a crowd because they're glued to some wretched screen can you begin by saying that to impose some sort of structure on life and to be try to be totally present because in fact it works if you are totally present to what you're doing you will do it much better that's why Thomas Merton that American monk who followed the rule of Saint Benedict would be quite brutal to his novices he was teaching the young man but if they come up and it's a work period he would say go away this isn't the time to ask me questions this is a time when I am working say moti whatever you call it yes I also remember Thomas Merton when he took his vows and he went into his cell for the first time and closed the door behind him he said and so I entered the four walls of my freedom this idea that in order for him to have space that to be discipline and boundary I love I love that the four walls of my freedom anyway enough know that's a very good image it is the images that stick with us isn't it mm-hmm questions from the floor for Ezra please yeah here but that image is so good because you come in having perhaps page or energy and you think I'm not getting my money's worth there is nothing here and that forces one to think that emptiness or void or good after space actually is worth its weight in gold and that is very counter cultural isn't it I'm very happy to do that because so often they are put in a juxtaposition and if you talk about Celtic monasticism and it was essentially a monastic movement in Ireland and in Wales in the early days then they have in common the respect for matter for the daily rhythm of life and for putting prayer at the heart of it or if you like it symbolized by the Irish high crosses which have there's great sorry the great towers with windows at the top going in all directions which mean that they people know that the monastic community is praying because a bell is rung a hand bell and it goes out from there in all four directions the bell the benedictine on the celtic have much much more in common than I think people would allow and saves it's very interesting when in the 19th century we get the oral tradition of the prayers and songs and hymns and blessings you can't separate them of let's say in the Outer Hebrides or in Ireland which have been collected and translated we find that the underlying attitude there is totally monastic and that is work is prayer and prayer his work monks would pray from vigils the first office of the day vigil be alive be alert be attentive watch for the rising the Sun watch for the coming of Christ that is how your day starts it ends with comprar and you make the day complete a hybrid young woman begins to buy from lighting the fire and she does it she's laid the pits down to dampen the plain but not too pretty doubt at night and she gets up but for her house owners awake and she gently there's Pete she does it rhythmically praying to the Father and the Son and the Spirit as she does and then she prays that a flame comes that it's a flame of light and brings wolves and napture then above all it's a flame of true love and so it's love for herself and her family and her kin and her enemies in the whole world so her day starts with prayer and then these Celtic people and I'm quite sure they learn how to pray from the monastic tradition at the end of the day you feel so safe having at your baptism being baptized in the name of the Trinity who will walk with you in companionship or in the days of your life you're say shoreless company that you say I will lie down tonight and I will the arm of Christ the victorious will be on my shoulder I will lay down tonight with the father on the Sun on the spirit I will lay down tonight as if my bed were my grave when the time of death comes to be no different this is very monastic both the Celtic and the Benedictine in terms of attitude or approach and I must say see Benedict wrote regular he didn't write rules and regulations he is trying to shape the attitude he's trying and I love the phrase the disposition of the heart and say the disposition of the heart of a woman in the Hebrides is all towards praying matter and through work and being aware of presence of God and that is ultimately what puradox I think gives us all indeed the Benedictines they have all sorts of degrees sometimes and this is more and more and the actual number of Benedictine communities may be shrinking but they are still a focus for more and more laypeople finding that this is a point of reference that they really need in their lives and so there are all sorts of different as it were degrees you can become an oblate which may mean a couple of years of studying and then you are admitted formally to the community and then you can go to the community a number of times a year you have a sort of commitment to that place then you might be an associate and that is a looser form of connection you might become there are so many there's something that we now call the friends or self Benedict is based in Washington but John it's in England as well and that means that a newsletter keeps you in touch with monastic values and then you can perhaps join a Benedictine week were a group of twenty or thirty people will live the modified monastic life they will pray together that's a framework of the day study in the mornings work with our hands in the afternoon do something visual there is every conceivable form of Association and it's drawing enormous Lee I think because if I can get back to what I said in passing I think a lot of people recognized that the monastic life does keep the priorities of prayer and love and hospitality openness and commitment through those extraordinary files and I think of that Thomas Merton killed the young men who are coming to him to train to me amongst that this is doesn't ask this is the fullness of our humanity and this is what I get from Benedict in fact had more and more being thinking about how because I had to do some work on the book of kells and early stuff it's just thinking what we've lost there's such exuberant energy around the Christian faith and practice in early ideas and I think you know um that we we have lost it and read the prologue aloud it's just full energy and urgency and I think the monastic life attracts lay people because just because is about the fullness of life and not its diminution um I'm mark could you just read at top speed just the UM the verbs that Benedict uses because see this is full of them commitment isn't there listen arise open inclined gird run fight climb seek pray read serve shun prays desire fulfill persevere arrive this is a man who has the audacity to change of phrasing sukjong's boss which says walk no run says Benedict and that sums it up for me so finding a community somewhere near you or find one of these associations or fellowships and you will find I think it's good news o if you are now going to ask me am I an operative anywhere no I'm not I'll tell you why because of the cars you see better it is writing the 500 it's before there's something earlier there's something foundational in that era of Christendom as I think there's also foundational in our own selves it's before the split of East and West just before the tour sentry splits off the mind and the heart with the coming of the universe business before the Reformation is for all the labels and so I love the Anglican sisters at West morning I love the rim of Catholic brothers and sisters are back I'm actually I take generous sailors but have got an honorary degree from st. John's College bill for yuka medical work and say I'm a sort of daughterís at John's College bill which is the largest Roman Catholic Benedictine community and I receive Communion in nearly all of these places and so I didn't want to label myself in any sort of way and that's another another reason why the monastic life is so good it's behind or or beyond I think it's about the kingdom I think it's pointing us towards the kingdom I think it's rooted in the kingdom I love the image of the Benedick often uses for Christian communities as schools a school where you learn to relate deeper to God to one another and to yourself because we can talk often about the church in terms that we've already graduated and I rather like the idea that actually were still at school when we're in our Christian communities there's time for one more question I think yes well I think I think we have everything to learn from one another and I think that there are a lot of dialogues going on between Christian monks and Hindu and Buddhist monks there was a great meeting of the Dalai Lama with Thomas Merton and they said well you know were both monks we have so so much in common and there was so much that they agreed on and so that is a great deal what you've said about living is really the respect and reverence isn't it the handling of my hands the just recognizing well exactly of respect and reverence and what Thomas Merton said to the Dalai Lama and I think this would be true equally of issue religion the Dalai Lama said and just define what you know your commitment is and he said and it picks up what you've just said it's about ongoing never-ending complete transformation from the old to the new and again I think that we touch something that Asian would know about we can learn we have so much to learn from one another and increasingly we are the Christian the Christian punctuation mark is the comma not the full-stop I'm afraid we're going to have to draw to a close because all the times arrived but I don't think anybody leaving this Cathedral today is going to be looking at any clouds because they're all going to be on their iPhones and are googling their Benedict's spirituality in a way but i beginning a word about Esther's books nearly yes thirty years ago for me that they acted somewhat as a magnet they drew me a magnet to the mystery of God and if you're like me you've been sitting here very conscious of your own clutter feeling I'm more than cluttered actually I'm sort of blocked and once again she's acted as a magnet recalling me to take that rather seriously and to try and find that key the lost key to the heart and the way that you've spoken about your own life about reading buildings there's wonderful sort of symmetries of wonder which are our cathedrals and also I was very struck by all your idea that you know a vision of furnishes a building but also I think what you've taught us here again through Benedict is a vision furnishes of life as well and for that on behalf of us all here I want to thank you very deeply you

Channel: St Paul's Cathedral

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Keywords: St Paul's Cathedral, St Benedict, Benedictine, St Paul's Forum, Esther de Waal, Mark Oakley, Chancellor, St Paul's, London, Education, Lecture, Christianity, Religion, God, Gospel, Jesus, Christ

Id: tDnY9oQ3Esg

Length: 54min 6sec (3246 seconds)

Published: Sun May 19 2013