Mechanical failures

Orion was striding across the southern sky just before 6am this morning, out hunting with his little dog Procyon.

Later in the morning, Anthony, Gabriel and I assembled the new exercise bike, to check all parts were present and correct... which they weren't. One plastic part had had a hole punched in the wrong place, so a replacement will be sent. Worcester is only 4-5 miles from Mucknell, and it's pretty flat, so I'll probably be on a proper bike occasionally. An exercise bike could be symbolic of the Benedictine vow of stability (assuming we've tightened the bolts sufficiently), or to my mind the whichever circle of Purgatory!

Then in the afternoon, we took the new strimmers to Mucknell, to start clearing the grass and thistle and dock around the new trees. After two minutes, the fancy green cord on the wheely one broke, and we'd brought no spares - duh! After 20 minutes, the cord on the hand-held got twisted inside and a grommet came out. So all in all, not very successful. There are places in Devon where one can buy and learn how to use scythes, and Roger Deakin described his scythe lovingly in 'Notes from Walnut Tree Farm'. I can't help thinking a scythe would be a better option, for the planet too.

And finally, the man came to look at the boiler in the coach house, and find out why it was tripping the electrics; the electrician said the problem was 'in that area'. Except that he couldn't find anything wrong with the boiler or controls. The heating is back on and everything seems to be working OK now, and the power outage will have to remain a mystery.

Rain and clouds

A morning of rain, dripping from the eaves, which made me wonder what the climate will be like at Mucknell. The Met Office's website has averages over 1971-2000 for Stratford-Upon-Avon, which isn't far away. Here's a graph of temperatures and rainfall. (So my first uploaded image is a weather-related graph... there's a thing!)

No data for standard deviations or extremes, so no indication of how much variation can be expected. Comparing with the averages for Teignmouth, and assuming Stratford is representative of Mucknell and Teignmouth of Exeter... Mucknell will be colder in the winter and warmer in the summer, with more frosts, less sunshine and less rain. Pretty much as you'd expect for an inland site further north, but a shame about the sunshine.

Today is the feast of St Michael and All Angels, when the devil was thrown out of heaven and, tradition has it, landed in a blackberry bush. He cursed it for its prickles, and so blackberries should not be picked after 29 September. Alternatively, it's after the equinox and less likely to be sunny, so the berries will not be as sweet and in some years will already be over. This year they were late, so they may well be OK for a few days yet, if the sun ever shines again.

At the Eucharist, we had clouds of Philip and Ian's incense rising before the altar.

Sleep!

I slept really badly last night, partly because of Something scrabbling along the wall of my room. I feared the eight-legged option, but found out today it might well have been a mouse within the wall. I will assume it is the mouse from now on!

Cuddly nature

Yesterday, a group of us went for a walk along the railway.  As we came back across harvested fields, we disturbed yellowhammers and skylarks from their nests amongst the stubble. One yellowhammer alighted on a fence post, and observed us for a time, before flying away to join others of its flock. The skylarks also congregate at this time of year, preparing to migrate a little further south. I remember seeing them on Dartmoor in February. In one field there was an impressive array of reedmace, which has been misnamed bulrush since Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema painted 'The Finding of Moses' in 1904 - reedmace looks much more imposing.

My interest in nature tends to be in a more cuddly subset. Broad Marston is lavishly populated with spiders, and over a certain size, I have almost a phobia. The rain drops coalescing on the webs on the spiral stairs outside the front of the coach house were most beautiful, and spiders of course have their useful place in the web of nature. For example, I heard recently that they are among the first creatures to reclaim land covered with volcanic ash and lava. But Benedictine monks armed with yoghurt pots can come in handy sometimes!

Energy security

We have a power cut in the Coach House, which means no lighting (obviously) or central heating (because the boiler is controlled by electricity), or computers and internet. It highlights how much we take electricity and heating for granted, and how cut off I feel when I am unexpectedly disconnected. (Expected I can cope with.) So I am writing this on the laptop, hoping that tonight will not be too cold, and that the electrician will fix things tomorrow.

How resilient will we be at Mucknell to problems with energy supply? The biomass boiler is also controlled by electricity, so will be taken out in a power cut. The solar water heating system will be fine, as long as it is daylight (and it may incorporate an electric pump). However, electricity from the photo-voltaics won't be available, as it was not cost-effective to install an inverter to convert it from DC to AC supply for domestic use. So during a power cut, there will be no electricity available (and it probably can't be exported from the PVs either). Which makes me wonder... it might not be cost-effective to install a inverter, but might it not be justified on resilience grounds? A wood stove is being installed in the refectory, which at least will give a warm reasonably large common space, and the whole building is well-insulated, so will hopefully retain its heat well. But what about the supply of wood? The site is not large enough to supply all that will be needed, and the new trees won't be supplying for a few years. The community is joining a local co-operative, which will supply wood chips and will eventually take the cut wood.

Energy security (in the face of peak oil and climate change) is one of the problems that the Transition movement is trying to address, working at the local level to increase local resilience.  We can't rely on big government to do it for us. Ed Miliband, when Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, seemed to have grasped most of the issues and to be moving in the right direction. Chris Huhne is making some noises about renewables, but has also compromised the Lib Dem policy on no nuclear, which is disappointing.

Materialism

Christianity is a religion of consumption and materialism, discuss. I'm reading Bishop James Jones' short book on "Jesus and the Earth" at the moment. He is saying that God is as interested in the material as in the spiritual. Christianity has at its heart the incarnation of God in material form, and the consumption of bread and wine, body and blood, in the Eucharist.

If we had had the Office of Readings today (we had a lie-in), the Old Testament reading would have been from 1 Kings 19. Readings of this passage usually focus on the "still small voice", or in the NRSV translation the "sound of sheer silence". Having just read Jones on the subject of earthquakes in Matthew's gospel, my attention was caught by the preceding verses - there was a mighty wind that split mountains, but God was not in the wind; there was an earthquake, but God was not in the earthquake; there was a fire, but God was not in the fire. What does it mean for God to be in a physical process? Or not in it? If God were not in these processes, how were they triggered? Perhaps it was the earth reacting to God's drawing near. What would the understanding of the author have been? What does it mean for our understanding of creation and God's immanence? At present, mine is probably some form of panentheism, but I think this bears more reflection.

Social justice within the contemplative life

I found myself a map of the area and managed to go for a walk without getting too lost. The first part of the walk was in a wood of silver birch planted in ram-rod straight lines. I find it a bit depressing when forestry imposes uniformity and straight lines on nature, for ease of management or no. I can feel the trees bursting to escape their confines. I had some challenges later on, where a path that looked on the map like a well-defined track turned out to be a newly-harrowed and fenced field. Was this legal? It was in any case in the way of my route back home, so I walked across and hopped over the fence.

On Friday afternoons the community do corporate lectio divina, sharing our insights about Sunday's gospel reading. Today we had the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, and their respective destinations in heaven and hell. For me the passage spoke of how the developed world is doing nothing (pretty much) for the developing world, as I was bearing in mind Rowan Williams' and Christian Aid's urging for progress on the Millennium Development Goals. Even though we had just had a bread and cheese lunch, there are many in the world who would have been grateful for just that. I didn't get any further in practical terms, but one of the others also shared thoughts about working for social justice within the contemplative life. What is the value of prayer? It can't be measured, and perhaps there is some value in that in this world of metrics and performance tables. A worthwhile discussion, which I hope will be ongoing.

Fruits of the season

Much of the Broad Marston Manor land has been sold off for building, but there are still a couple of fields out the back, with hedgerows. Hedgerows of course mean blackberries, and also elderberries and damsons. Stretching for damsons in the midst of brambles proved to be a hazardous experience; as ever, I was a magnet for prickles.

I'm not sure how we got onto the subject of the date of the feast of the Birth of John the Baptist, as we sat outside the back of the house drinking small beer. My understanding is that it is deliberately set at the other end of the year from Christmas. Jesus's birth was the light coming into the world, so Christmas was set just after midwinter, as the days start to get longer. John is given 24 June, just after midsummer, as the days start to get shorter, to symbolise his saying: "He [Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease" (John 3:30; NRSV). So the seasons appear in the liturgy in sometimes small, unnoticed ways.

Philip, Thomas and Ian went into Evesham to buy a video camera, so the training in using the renewable technology at Mucknell can be recorded, and referred to in our hours of need!

Conversations

Photos from yesterday's site visit are now on the computer, mostly showing work in progress and snagging. They can't disguise, though, that the new building will be something special. The kitchen garden is almost ready, and waiting for cultivation and fecundity.

In the afternoon, there was a 'community conversation'. These are on topics that are important to the community and need more time and thought and discussion. One of the Benedictine vows is to conversatio morum, which is usually translated as 'conversion of life'. But to me it looks more like 'conversation', and so these conversations, which may or may not lead to conversions in the way things are done, are one means of fulfilling the vows. We alongsiders are included, which is helpful to understand the thinking of the community, and our input is valued, which in my experience is unusual! It is also a good opportunity to observe everyone :-)

Wednesday nights are early nights.

Timings

Some fifteen years after first reciting the office of Terce at CSMV Wantage, I have realised why this office of the Holy Spirit is scheduled at about 9am. To quote St Peter on the day of Pentecost: "these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning" (Acts 2.15; NRSV). Terce means the third hour, that is, 9am. Likewise, Sext is recited at about the sixth hour (at Wantage), when darkness came over Jesus upon the cross, and None at about the ninth hour (at Burford/Broad Marston/Mucknell), when Jesus died. Both therefore remember the crucifixion and typically use the more sombre psalms.

Each member of the community has more than one job, for example acting as prior, sacristan, incense manufacturer, web-brother, pastor for alongsiders, and lunch cook for the week. It is like visiting a small Scottish island, where an islander might be a part-time (we hope!) fire-fighter and run the postal service as well as fishing for their livelihood. It makes for a tightly-knit web of relationships and dependencies. No-one can be a self-sufficient individual on a Scottish island or in a Benedictine community.

In the evening, Stuart's report from his site visit to Mucknell wasn't good news. The date in the contract was 4 October, but the snow early in the year delayed the work, compounded with problems with some sub-contracts. So the hope was that the move would be during the week of 18 October, but it looks as though it will now be the week of 25 October. I felt down, and I'm going to be at Broad Marston for little more than a month; the community has lived with this for two years!

Meetings

Today was the 40th anniversary of Abbot Stuart's ordination to the priesthood. Wendy had given me a bottle of champagne for my arrival, and the Veuve Clicquot was happy to pour herself out in his honour also. He started his ministry in Armley in Leeds, not far from the stomping ground of my mother's family in Morley.

This afternoon started with a meeting about security at Mucknell: locks, keypads, thumb turns, suited keys, etc etc.  The architect said the Canada geese have left the site.  I got the impression that this was good news - they can be pests.

We then discussed possible forms the visit of the Bishop of Worcester on All Saints Day (ABofC due to visit in late 2011).  It was also decided that the Oratory would be dedicated to Our Lady and St Benedict, and the bell named Wulfstan, after the former Bishop of Worcester and missionary saint.

First Sunday

First day of the new rhythm as an Alongsider, up for the Office of Readings at 6am, and rewarded by a pale pink dawn through the chapel windows.

Also my first Sunday. While at Broad Marston, the community has been going to the local parish churches on Sundays. Today was the farewell to the vicar, who is retiring to Cirencester. The church at Long Marston was absolutely packed, with barely even standing room. (Where were most of these people on a previous Sundays?) On the way into church, we remarked on the wind and the gazebos 'sheltering' food and drink for after the service. On the way out, we saw that one had blown over, but thankfully the food was safe.

Before supper, we drank the mulled wine my neighbours had kindly given me. The wine was from the vineyard at Kenton on the Exe Estuary - Devon's climate can produce even red wine, one of the 'benefits' of climate change..

Moving in

Another sunny day, heading up the M5 to Broad Marston and a warm welcome. Benedict tells his monks to wash the feet of guests. Nowadays, arriving Alongsiders have their hands washed in a short ritual.

Later, Gabriel showed off the latest photos of progress on Mucknell. The Oratory will be amazing. But of particular interest to me are the renewable technologies, and the plant room and boiler house look formidable! The woodchip boiler is large and shiny, and next to it are various bright red tanks and lots of pipework. Before we move in, we'll get a tour of the plant and training in its operation.  I'm looking forward to it!

Moving out

The removals were done and dusted by half-past ten, so I called the agents and arranged to meet them at half-past one, and went blackberrying down the hill.  Still plenty coming, and quite a few sloes, haws and hips.  Someone told me that rather than wait for the first frost, you could pick the sloes early and freeze them...cunning!  The elderberries were sparse, as many of the elder trees were chopped back last winter.  The squirrels had already got most of the hazels.  Ludwell Valley Park is a good place, a slice of countryside in the middle of the Exeter suburbs.  I hope they keep it.

In the afternoon, I headed down to Otterton Mill with David and Sue, for a last stroll down the Otter.  There were some good-sized trout in the shade, where we could see the river through the swathes of himalayan balsam, and a buzzard briefly circled from the trees on the opposite bank, but sadly no kingfishers.  Wendy joined us for cream tea, not-quite-Devon-style with jam then cream then wasp.  Then she and I pottered down to the sea at Budleigh Salterton Lime Kilns.  I can't get much further from the sea in the UK than Worcestershire, so it was nice to say goodbye.  It was a flat calm, with no waves, the visibility was perfect, and the horizon razor sharp.  I followed the Budleigh tradition, and managed to throw a stone onto a ledge the low cliffs over the Otter, which means I'll return some day.  I hope not before too long.