Pendle Hill and Work

I’d like to continue our description of Pendle Hill, and life at Pendle Hill, by writing a little more about the work here, and perhaps something of our role.  We spent the first week settling in; the second training up for the work we need to do; and now we are trying to get a shape of the week we shall we working, and the shape of our day within that week.

Life here is modelled on a religious community – a bell is rung to announce the morning and the evening meal; meeting for Worship is held every day after breakfast, and the day closes with Epilogue, a short period of quiet reflection to compose oneself for the night, the day is punctuated by the three meals eaten in convivial company.   Physical work is similarly integrated into daily life, as it would be in a centre of retreat, a monastery.

Over the week-end Gwyneth undertook  a weekend retreat called Lives of Service, in which participants came to undertake gardening and related projects, which were interspersed with periods of reflection, and readings from the great teachers on the nature of work and service.  This is probably one of the most satisfying things she has ever done, and given her enormous confidence in the task she undertakes with great skill – working with her hands.  It is immensely satisfying to know that she was part of the group which planted a tree in Pendle Hill.  Who knows, perhaps one day our grandchildren (should they arrive) may come and see the tree she planted!

At the end of the day, there was a beautiful reading in Epilogue, in which we were invited to hold out our hands and contemplate them as Marianne read:

Blessed be the work of your hands,

Oh Holy one

Blessed be these hands that have touched life.

Blessed be these hands that have nurtured creativity

Blessed be these hands that have held pain.

Blessed be these hands that have embraced with passion.

Blessed be these hands that have tended gardens.

Blessed be these hands which have closed in anger

Blesssed be these hands that have planted new seeds

Blessed be these hands that have harvested ripe fields.

Blessed be these hands that have cleaned, washed, mopped, scrubbed.

Blessed be these hands that have become knotty with age.

Blessed be these hands that are wrinkled and scarred from doing justice.

Blessed be these hands which have reached out and received.

Blessed be these hands that hold the promise of thre future.

Blessed be the words of your hands,

Oh Holy One

Diann Neu

This was a specific work based retreat week-end.Our role here  is quite complex, and perhaps I will write about that on another occasion.  

But we have specific tasks to do: acting as front of house staff  to guests and sojourners is one aspect; 

sharing ordinary kitchen duties  - washing dishes, scouring pans, cleaning tables - with other community members is another.

  Gwyneth has always undertaken the normal duties of running a household with good grace and competence. I realise I have resented clearing up after the children as little kids, typical thoughtless adolescents, and sometimes careless young adults.  But this last week we have spent training for our roles, and I have found laying out breakfast for the community to be truly inspiring work.  It involves rising at 6.00, to start laying breakfast at 6.30.  By then, the cooks are often at work, making the cooked food that will comprise part of the meal.  My role is to make the coffee, lay out the cereal, renew the milk and butter etc. so that those resident on campus can have a relaxed and enjoyable meal to start their day before Meeting for Worship.  Working so early in the morning, in the stillness and the quiet, with time to concentrate on remembering where everything is stored, and with time to compensate for my own clumsiness when I inevitably drop something, and knowing that many will benefit from my labours is profoundly satisfying.

I am  reminded of an e-mail discussion I had with my Friend Michael in which I wrote:

You describe me as Mary to your Martha.  I live with someone who is a wonderful Martha; perfectly capable in what she turns her  hand to, running our household smoothly, efficiently and lovingly.  I have lots of time for Marthas.  I believe they get a bad press, especially by those who would wish to stress the primacy of the secluded life, and therefore needed to make the words of Jesus seem to justify the life of contemplation.

I led a retreat last year for Holyhead meeting. In it I said that the problem with Martha was not that she was a doer, rather than a contemplative, but that she was unhappy in what she was doing.  We can imagine her fussing around Jesus, preparing her finest food in her best crockery, banging pots and lids and spoons in her annoyance that she is doing all the work – when actually we can imagine Jesus would have been happy with bread, a few olives, a little wine, and her full attention. She could have sat down with Jesus and her sister; but rather than following her true desire,  she feels obliged to do what custom and tradition have taught her must be done for guests, but does it unwillingly, with poor grace and bad temper. The true meaning of the story is, I would suggest, for us to serve the Lord in whatever we are doing.  We should not wish to be somewhere else, but enter into our own situation fully and completely; live fully as  we are, in the skin we have been given.  Each one of us is utterly unique; each one of is made of stardust; each one of us has our place in creation, that only we can fulfil.

I sent Michael a poem by George Herbert that many of us are familiar from school-day hymn singing.   If we can see past the archaic language and concepts, this poem is helping us to recognise that we can find God in our work:

¶   The Elixir.

TEach me, my God and King,         In all things thee to see, And what I do in any thing,         To do it as for thee:          Not rudely, as a beast,         To runne into an action; But still to make thee prepossest,         And give it his perfection.         A man that looks on glasse,         On it may stay his eye; Or if he pleaseth, through it passe,         And then the heav’n espie.         All may of thee partake:         Nothing can be so mean, Which with his tincture (for thy sake)         Will not grow bright and clean.         A servant with this clause         Makes drudgerie divine: Who sweeps a room, as for thy laws,         Makes that and th’ action fine.         This is the famous stone         That turneth all to gold: For that which God doth touch and own         Cannot for lesse be told.