| A New Monasticism |
| ‘When the forms of an old
culture are dying, the new culture is created by a few people who are not
afraid to be insecure.’ Rudolph Bahro |
| As a Community we have been - and are - united
in the quest for ‘a new monasticism’:
a Northumbrian spirituality. Not as an escapist, nostalgic quest for a golden
era that didn’t exist, or to replicate the past, but informed by the
Celtic monastic tradition which is our heritage. We are ‘looking with
them to Him who inspires us both’ in order to find a way to engage
with the paradox and complexities of real life as it is. |
| New monasticism, as in any expression of Monasticism, stands
in the wisdom tradition - which is not an accumulation of knowledge for
its own sake, but a constant application to life actually lived. ‘A
wise person does not gather and dispense insights, but rather has the heart
to live those insights.’ |
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| Strongly influenced by the way of life expressed
in the Monastic Communities at Roslin in Scotland and at Clonfert in Ireland;
God’s call on the Northumbria Community is not to any form of institutionalism
but to embrace, explore and express the heart of monastic spirituality in
the everyday ordinariness of our lives, as a different way of living in
and relating to, today’s world. |
| We do this by drawing
from the well of faith and love for the Lord expressed in that period of
our history, and applying it to our contemporary situation. We believe that
we are experiencing as a Community, (along with many others) a 'holy restlessness’
and a ‘divine concern' regarding the nature of faith, which has only
begun to make sense of the nonsense within us and around us through an embracing
of monastic values and disciplines. |
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| Monastic spirituality implies a single-hearted
(solitary) seeking of God. This may or may not be carried out in the company
of others, (the monastic tradition has embraced both alone and together),
but the focus is clearly on returning to God, and making use of a daily
rhythm of prayer (Office) and a Way for living (Rule), that enable us to
‘marry’ the inner journey, the landscape of the heart - a call
to repentance, to self denial, and a call to recognise and to resist evil
– with the outer journey, the landscape of the land, which has given
us a platform to 'find a different way'
of being Church. Then to offer the fruit of our life with all who come our
way and cross our path in the everydayness of our roles, responsibilities
and relationships, asking with them ‘Who
is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord’s
song in a strange land?’ |
| This is our spirituality, how we live, ‘A
combination of praying and living.’ It is for us the embracing and
expressing of the gospel through the lenses of our Rule of life, Availability
and Vulnerability which reflects the ‘new type of monasticism’ of
Bonhoeffer and the ‘almost monastic in
nature’ of Stringfellow, enabling us to be participants in ‘enacting
a fearful hope for society.’ |
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