The Cloister and the World

The world, as the holy Sisters of West Malling have always insisted, flows through the Abbey and through the prayers of its residents, permanent and temporary. Until this year’s Lenten visit, I hadn’t thought about how the presence of the stream watering its ancient grounds reflects this; it rises at St Leonard’s Well about two-thirds of a mile to the south, passes through, and out the famous cascade painted by Turner, before meandering around the Leybourne lakes, and reaching the Medway at Snodland (one of England’s most mellifluous placenames!). It enters from the worldly world, passes through the prayerful stillness of the Abbey, and emerges on the far side. It brings the world to the Abbey, and takes the Abbey and its prayers out into the world.

We stood in the customary circle at mass in the morning, but the World intrudes even here. We exchanged the Peace with our neighbours in the form of a courteous bow, and only the priest received the Chalice. This is a time of plague, and the Wuhan Distemper would wreak havoc at Malling if it got its microscopic foot in the door.

My spiritual book this year was not all that brilliant. I was surprised to see it on my shelves, and reckon I must have bought it years ago at Dr Bones’s suggestion. It says useful stuff in a pretty straightforward way. Still, its theme is precisely the connection between faith and action, and the tenderness of Jesus, which was apposite considering my own lack of tenderness was on my mind. The other book, though, was Robert Harvey’s Liberators: South America’s Savage Wars of Freedom, which I bought because it’s a period I know next to nothing about. I am only a quarter through, but that’s enough to convince me that I am grateful for not living in Venezuela, let alone the other Hispanic colonies, in the 1810s. By the time the narrative reaches the fall of the Second Venezuelan Republic, it’s a wonder there are any human beings left given the number of towns whose inhabitants have been slaughtered by one side or another, on top of disease, earthquake, and the ever-present backdrop of colonial exploitation imposed by brutal force. As ever, the social solvent of war throws up evil characters who outbid even the savagery of the age.

In the Abbey church, the plainchant bears the ancient words of the Psalms on its swooping, stately wings, an icon of eternity. These age-old poems insist that God hears the anguish of the world, even if they speak specifically of the suffering – and occasionally pride – of Israel. Israel stands for everyone, after all. His answer was the Cross, where mercy and justice meet; and it’s the cross we carry into the world, attempting as best we can to bear it.