Saturday 23 November Day 45

A letter to the community 

The Good bits

The valley

Regular meditation 

Silence

Morning meetings 

Jean Christophe

Thomas and his maraîchage

The gatehouse and hunting lodge

The composting toilets

The garden (last year)

The local community 

Poitiers meditators

Caring for one another 

Singing

Food

The Abbaye - it’s history size beauty

Governance 

Community versus business

Bottom up versus top down

Hierarchy versus holacracy

Who belongs in the community? How open, porous, organic, fluid is it / can it be?

sustainability

A glamorous country house hotel or a lay monastic community

Catholic, Christian, ecumenical, spirituality not religion 

A new vision of what Christianity really is and really means

Humble open not the exclusive truth

Too many words 

Too much verbal prayer

who decides? The community, the deans, the leadership team, Laurence, the spirit

Terms & conditions, boundaries, working hours, time off

My vision when I came to Bonnevaux 

-—-—-—-—

I have just read Laurence‘s note about the weekend get together on the 23rd 24th November. it just seems extraordinary that this can be put together without ever sitting down with the actual community and the feeling that the actual community as opposed to what is described as the “core” community, has just been tacked on to the event, almost as an afterthought. (Why do I only get to hear about it from Laurence on the way to the station 10 days before it happens and after I had booked my trip to the Uk and Ibiza?) There is very little sense in the document that much importance is attached to the actual physical human beings who’ve been living here for all these months. if he refers to it at all it’s as a monastery which seems such a narrow vision, and a very Catholic one at that.

I can only comment from my narrow and limited perspective, that of someone who has come to Bonnevaux and lived here for nearly 2 years. One of the most frustrating aspects of this time has been the lack of attention and real discussion as a group ,as a community ,as a family, of what we are doing and what we are trying to achieve. So it will probably seem to you that what I say is unfair and possibly unkind. That is genuinely not my intention. I also had dreams when I came here, I still have them but there hasn’t really been the opportunity to test and compare those dreams with yours and others and now the gulf between your vision and mine seems almost unbridgeable.  I hope it isn’t and although I am sorry to miss the weekend I feel probably that the balance of attention is too skewed towards the larger business picture and doesn’t focus clearly enough on the nature of the community we are trying to grow here. That really does deserve its own weekend. Maybe the pre-Christmas retreat will give us that opportunity given that it is limited to the community and our immediate friends and family.

Unfortunately I have had the strong sense from the beginning that the project began from the wrong end: it did not begin as I think this monastery probably started with a small group of monks and an Abbot who may have spent several decades establishing a viable community before beginning to build churches and refectories and cloisters. Only when they were sure they had a solid foundation, a proper community, did they begin to work on the showier aspects of a monastery. Now you have undoubtedly created a magnificent building and will go on to create the Retreat Centre and the contemplative village in the same spirit. But you have also created a tremendous financial burden and responsibility which I feel will crush the fragile little human community at its heart before it has a chance to establish its roots and begin to grow.

I don’t care what you think of me. I don’t care what you think of what I am saying here, or indeed at any time. WHICH IS NOT THE SAME AS I DO NOT CARE FOR YOU, OR THIS PLACE. I may be getting this completely wrong, but some of you may get some of this; I hope so. But if I am completely out of line, and none of this makes any sense to any of you, I need to know that, and take my leave

There is a dominance hierarchy. Laurence clearly at the top with Giovanni and Catherine and Sebastian below him. Clearly I feel unhappy about that for two reasons. One the obvious in the least worthy but it Hass to be phased it has to be faced which is I want to be at the top the dominance hierarchy one of the in crowd that my opinion matters.  this is more important i don’t want to live in a community with the dominance hierarchy anymore than I wanted to work at the co-op with a dominant hierarchy hierarchy  I don’t believe community of less than 12 people less than 12 people need  a   hierarchy of any kind. 

Love

What do I really mean by true/ good love?

Human love

Empathetic congruent attentive caring transparent trusting honest kind 

Divine love 

Is there any difference? From the above?Eros vs Agape

Joe and Miriam 

Both very angry, tired, frightened, confused. Joe not as bright as Miriam. She’s alone with Nalu a lot. Joe’s job iffy. J angry with me as well - like Aden?

J talked about sukie’s madness, still, about me. Quite accusatory - that his and Miriam’s problems are our fault (no probs on Miriam’s side - spoilt little girl syndrome?) told j to let M manage all the money.

Nalu is lovely- beautiful and very bright. But he sleeps with them and they won’t put him down - they feel doing this would make him unhappy in later life. So M is up with him for hours trying to get him to sleep.

Both full of very definite mad ideas - the water, the air. J very loyal to MIt was lovely to spend 2 days with her and Nalu, quietly at home.
Waiting in the sunshine outside Barcelona T2. Flights’s at 13:55. Novotel booked for tonight.
Feel quite proud of myself. Very good to talk to Sandrine for so long last night, and that she thought the timing was perfect. Feel so much happier now I’ve vomited it all up.