As I thought about writing this, I reread the blogs on the LCSB website, carefully curated by Jerome. They are wise and perceptive. The writers urge us to find peace or communion in a world that is noisy and turbulent, often fraught with difficulty and hurt.
Symbols are what help me make sense of confusing thoughts, so I was particularly struck by what Mike Woodward wrote about the Benedictine PAX graphic ‘nestled’ in a crown of thorns. Peace is rooted in the midst of our tangled thorny lives - if we can only find it. We are caught in networks that bloom and spread around us; the worldwide web is a good name for our amazing global communications network and it can be a struggle to free ourselves from the constant bombardment of images, opinions and rhetoric coming at us from all sides.
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It’s easy to find peace and time to pray in a wood or a meadow, by the side of water, but how about in a main street beside some traffic lights and with heavy vehicles bearing down on us from all sides?
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A month ago, I was outside Euston Station in London. You could taste the pollution in the air, huge buses and lorries thundered past me as well as a steady stream of morning traffic. But outside the station there is a little green space. Next to me on the bench where I found somewhere to sit, was a woman and her dog equipped with water bowl and travelling bed.
We sat in companionable silence. And I couldn’t help noticing the flowerbeds around us. In this grimy little patch of shorn grass, with the inevitable few bits and pieces of litter, someone had planted some grasses and a few dusty geraniums. I appreciated their generosity and labour. Despite all the noise, I was able to gather my thoughts and collect my jangled self.
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The lady with her care for her little dog and her friendliness, the dusty plants, the idea of a space to be quiet, were all pointers to another way of being, and for me that meant towards God. At a meditation course I attended, the whole building shook from time to time as the Bakerloo line tube rumbled on its journey beneath us. Our instructor reminded us that the engineers and their amazing skills, as well as the drivers and the passengers, were all part of God’s plan and his work of creation and recreation.
Outside Euston Station, I remembered another image - which Mary Hirst described in her talk: St Benedict’s finger, pointing to God. Prayer is not always a mountaintop experience. Sometimes we need to make sure we notice the pointers as the tide of life clatters on beside us. And with hearts and minds lifted, even a little, above the busy streets and even fields of our world, perhaps we can find some peace and glimpse the face of God.
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Katie Livesey
2024
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