Malling Abbey in the Snow

After a weekend of trying pastoral encounters in which, eventually, I didn't acquit myself well at all, it was a relief to know that I was setting off for a couple of days at Malling Abbey. It didn't start that well: after pulling off the main road into West Malling High Street that is the first harbinger of the separate world you're entering, and finding my way to the guest room I would be using (it's all much easier now there's a code on the outer door so that you can get in without having to alert the attention of anyone inside), no sooner had I put down my bags than the church office called to say the alarms had gone off at the Rectory. I had to drive all the way back home again. Of course there was nothing identifiable wrong - no break-in, no fallen object that might have set the alarm off. 'It shouldn't have done that,' mused the engineer over the phone. No, it shouldn't. I returned to Kent and said the Office in my room having arrived too late to hear the Sisters sing Vespers. The reading was from the First Letter of St Peter and strangely apposite to the events of the previous few days, so I thought I would frame my reflections around verses from that text. There were several that made sense. 

The general otherworldliness of the Abbey was intensified by the snow that fell yesterday and overnight. I think it snowed during my second stay at Malling, a long while ago now, but that was little more than a dusting. This was quite a heavy blanket, accompanied, this morning, with beautiful lucid sunshine.