8 October, The Divine Strangeness III: Calm Power.

When Jesus reached the territory of the Gadarenes, two demoniacs came towards him out of the tombs—they were so dangerously violent that nobody could use that path. Suddenly they shouted, “What do you want with us, Son of God? Have you come to torture us before the time?” Now some distance away there was a large herd of pigs feeding, and the devils pleaded with Jesus, “If you drive us out, send us into the herd of pigs.” And he said to them, “Go, then,” and they came out and made for the pigs; and at that the whole herd charged down the cliff into the lake and perished in the water. The herdsmen ran off and made for the city, where they told the whole story, including what had happened to the demoniacs. Suddenly the whole city set out to meet Jesus; and as soon as they saw him they implored him to leave their neighbourhood (Mt 8:28-34).

We are looking at Mt 8:23-34. We’ve been reflecting for the past two days on some of the unexpected things that happen in this story. I’m trying to gain new understanding of it because something essential about the episode has always eluded me. And I’m not sure what that is. Today I’d like to continue this reflection.

________________________

Two demoniacs, of whom the entire town is afraid, have just had their shouted opening gambit met with the power of Jesus’ silence. They obviously can’t take his silence and immediately begin to plead with Jesus: “Send us into the pigs.” They don’t use any other ploys. They are reduced to begging. And Jesus acquiesces immediately and his words are few: “Go then,” he says. And very quickly it’s over for the demoniacs.

As I ponder this story, it gradually comes home to me that Jesus does not actually punish the demoniacs. Nor does he overwhelm them with an overt display of power or intrude upon their freedom in any way. The demons are the ones who punish themselves, freely choosing the form their punishment will take, freely choosing their own fate. Jesus’ words simply confirm what they themselves have elected to do. “Go, then.” And they go into the pigs. Few passages of holy scripture bring out more powerfully the respect our God has for the freedom of our souls, our minds, our wills, our lives, our choices. He does not punish them, he honours their freedom and gives them what they freely ask for.

Nothing about Jesus’ words or behaviour toward the demons suggests that what he does is difficult for him to accomplish. By the brevity of his words and by the calmness of his manner he shows his power over everything that has life. But I can’t help but notice a certain discrepancy of proportion. Only two demoniacs are involved here, but they require the whole herd of pigs to absorb their evil. As they charge off the cliff and drown in the water below, I suspect that the pigs screamed and snorted savagely and acted like the possessed creatures they became. But Jesus’ power is greater.

Again, I would not have wanted to be there. To my mind, this business with the pigs is the strangest part of the story. I cannot understand why the demoniacs wanted to be sent into the pigs. Is it that they were so frightened of what Jesus might do to them in punishment for their evil life that they think that becoming suicidal pigs would be preferable? It is hard to make sense of this. But then, it occurs to me that they are evil, and evil will always be strange and senseless if examined closely. Perhaps it seemed senseless to Jesus, also.

I draw near to Jesus now in prayer. I want to use my freedom for his glory and truth and ask him to help me.

Tomorrow we will continue our reflection.

(I think Sister Johanna sent this photo a few years ago. Will T.

21 September: At Once, II.

At Once Part II

Here is the second part of Sister Johanna Caton’s latest reflection, thank you Sister!

After Jesus had come down from the mountain large crowds followed him. Suddenly a man with a virulent skin-disease came up and bowed low in front of him, saying, “Lord, if you are willing, you can cleanse me.” Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him saying, “I am willing. Be cleansed.” And his skin disease was cleansed at once (Mt. 8:1-3).

The story of the healing of the leper in Matthew 8:1-3 takes up only three lines of text, but there are many beautiful moments in those three lines. Scroll back to yesterday’s post if you weren’t here for it and then today’s will make better sense.

I realise afresh, and with a great sense of joy as I reread this passage, that the reason the leper goes right up to Jesus is simply that he felt safe with Jesus. The sick man was someone whom society rejects, but suddenly he sees Jesus and feels accepted; or, more than that, he is caught up, perhaps, in Jesus’ silent but enormously loving energy in a way he has never experienced before. Because Jesus’ love encompasses everything about us. Our leper doesn’t know that intellectually yet, but surely, he must have felt it.

And Jesus, for his part, ever an expert in reading body language, in reading the eyes – indeed, in reading the heart of those who come to him, knows how the leper feels about him, I believe. The leper has not said a word but he has responded deeply to who Jesus is by coming up to him and bowing low; the leper has expressed not only the faith he holds in his heart, but also the awareness he has of Jesus as a human being. He cannot yet understand the theology, of course, that Jesus is the Son of God, but he does see that Jesus possesses every spiritual gift and is truly a holy man of God.

Jesus hasn’t said anything yet either. He is waiting patiently for the man to speak. He finally does so—and he comes out with only a few words, but each one bears a full weight of meaning. He says, “Lord, if you are willing, you can cleanse me” – an astonishing sentence, beginning with: “Lord, if you are willing”. The expression of faith contained in those words stands in distinct counterpoint to the man’s utter destitution, his abject powerlessness. It would have been understandable for our leper to have shouted and cried and demanded Jesus’ pity and healing. Others do so in the gospels, and Jesus acknowledges them and heals them.*

But here there is something different happening. In saying, “Lord, if you are willing,” the leper is abandoning himself and all his desires for healing to the provident compassion of the Lord. There is not an ounce of entitlement here nor does he demand anything on his own terms. It’s the Lord’s ‘terms’ he is interested in. He is all trust. He’s saying,’ Lord, I know you have the power, but you are the Lord, and whatever you choose to do for me will be for the best.’

Again, I step back to reflect on my own way of petitioning the Lord. It’s so easy to act in a demanding way with the Lord, even though I may give lip service to docility in the face of divine providence. Deep down (and the Lord always sees what’s going on deep down) I feel that he really ought to do what I ask, and I’m disappointed (deep down) when he fails to do my will. But this man says, implicitly, “It doesn’t have to be as I wish. I will trust in you even if I walk away unhealed.”

Let’s break off here and ponder these things in our heart until tomorrow.

*See, for example, Mt. 20:29-34; Mk 10:46-52; Lk 18:35-43.

20 September: At Once, I.

Sister Johanna Caton writes: I was reading and praying over a short passage in the Gospel of Matthew recently. Very short—only three lines—yet they sparked many thoughts in my head. Here is the passage (from the New Jerusalem Bible):

After Jesus had come down from the mountain large crowds followed him. Suddenly a man with a virulent skin-disease came up and bowed low in front of him, saying, “Lord, if you are willing, you can cleanse me.” Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him saying, “I am willing. Be cleansed.” And his skin disease was cleansed at once (Mt. 8:1-3).

The last two words gave me a mental jolt: …at once. The man with the skin-disease was healed at once.

‘Oh,’ I thought, nursing a small feeling of envy, ‘why does Jesus cure so many people immediately in the stories told of him in the gospels?’ And then I asked myself a more painful question: why doesn’t he seem to do that now when people pray to him?

When I have a question about something in the gospel that seems unanswerable, I find that the best thing to do is to stay with the question and keep reflecting on the gospel passage, line by line, word by word. The Word of God is alive and active, as St Paul says. Through reading and rereading, I find that the answers are already there, in the text, and I become ready to hear them—even if they are not quite the answers I originally wanted.

So, as I went back to the beginning of this text, I thought first about the man with the skin-disease. This was surely leprosy, and it’s described here as ‘virulent’, which suggests to me that the disease was in its advanced stage. The man had probably suffered from the disease for a long time, was doubtless disfigured, with parts of his body having been eaten away and other parts covered with open sores. He probably had a bad odour. Because lepers weren’t allowed to associate with the general population due to fear of contagion, he’d have been living in a leper colony. On the psychological level, he would have been dealing with feelings of isolation, loneliness, of being unlovable; he’d have felt rejected and deeply depressed; he would be agonizingly conscious of his physical deformities and undoubtedly would have felt tremendous shame about his appearance. His situation would have been desperate in the extreme.

Then the text says that he ‘comes up to’ Jesus. This in itself would have required considerable courage on the sick man’s part because of the taboo against associating with healthy people. But, he decided to risk it and try to come close enough to talk to Jesus, one-to-one.

First, he bows low. I stop for a moment to think about his bow. What would that gesture have looked like? Given the man’s disabled condition, it would hardly have been the bow of a graceful courtier, yet he managed a bow of sorts because he knew that Jesus deserved to be given profound respect. How he knew this, we aren’t told. Had he seen him work healings before, or heard him preach? We don’t know. But it is noteworthy that he bowed, nonetheless. We see in other passages of scripture that Jesus isn’t always given the respect that is his due, particularly by the religious authorities—even though they had seen Jesus’ miracles and heard his preaching; they’d have seen evidence of Jesus’ greatness and had reason to show Jesus every sign of respect. But, we know that respect for Jesus didn’t follow automatically upon his miraculous healings and his preaching. When respect is shown to Jesus, it is a sign of unusual faith and humility on the part of the one who gives it. Our leper in this story showed by his bow, and probably by his entire demeanour, that he had this faith and humility.

I begin to reflect that the deep respect and humility shown by the sick man is an essential predisposition for making a prayer of petition to Jesus. I begin to question whether I am always the possessor so much humility. Don’t I sometimes approach Jesus in prayer with at least a tiny attitude of entitlement, deep down?

I shall leave that question hanging for the rest of the day and reflect quietly upon what the leper is teaching me. Tomorrow the reflection will continue.

6 September: Everything Has Been Entrusted To Me By My Father

Welcome back to Sister Johanna Caton who invites us to revisit with her a short, familiar saying of Jesus, and to be encouraged and comforted.

Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father (Mt. 11: 27). Although this is one of Jesus’ most well-known sayings, and I have read it many, many times, for some reason, I had never before felt its impact. But recently, in my lectio divina, these words came alive for me and demanded my full attention in an entirely new way. I wondered how I ever could have read them without being bowled over by their astonishing claim. The words are game-changers—especially one word: “everything”. This time I couldn’t stop marvelling over it

Everything. At first I thought: This is such a BIG statement. Who in his right mind would say such a thing? But then other implications quickly began to occur to me and soon the reflection I will share with you here began to take shape.

Right away, as I repeated these few words over and over, I began to feel immersed in peace. I realised that if I trust Jesus (and I do), there cannot possibly be a more sublimely comforting claim than this. Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father. I began to look inward, then, and to reflect in my heart about the different blessings contained in these words.

I recalled first just Who Jesus is. I realised afresh that he is emphatically not like anyone else. In particular, he’s not like the kinds of people we probably all know who need to inflate their own ego by pretending to have power that they do not have, or like those who make promises that they never had any intention of keeping—the people who talk big but deliver nothing. Such people are deserving of pity and need prayer, granted. But at the same time, most of us have learned to be very wary when listening to certain kinds of claims from certain kinds of people.

But when Jesus speaks we have an entirely different situation, and a diametrically different personality before us. Namely, he is not someone whose claims are false, whose promises are empty. When Jesus speaks, we are listening to that particular human being who is the Son of God. But he never attempts to invent a persona that seems invincible. In fact, his repeated prophecies of his passion and death warned anyone who was listening that he was not powerful in any ordinary sense. Yet Jesus’ power, although different and mysterious, was real, and he very rightly made big statements, like the one we’re looking at today—indeed, he is inwardly compelled by his own truth to make big statements—because he is big—he is God the Son.

The gospels show us that Jesus never utters anything but the Truth. So, unlike the appropriate scepticism we need to exercise when other people are making unreliable claims, with Jesus we don’t have to be sceptics or defend ourselves against the least degree unreliability—we never have to take any of his claims with a grain of salt. We can trust that every word he speaks is the truth and we can give him the fullest allegiance of our heart and mind, our body and soul.

When Jesus says, then, that “Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father,” we can believe every word. Again, can there be anything more sublimely comforting? This means that every fear, anxiety, uncertainty, perplexity, every apparent contradiction, sorrow, dismay, every wound, every injustice, everything is held by Jesus in his life-giving hands. We are hurt by the ubiquity of sin, by layers of dishonesty in public life and government, by

structures of human interaction that reinforce egoism and pride, by human folly at the highest human levels, by world-scale disasters. These things will and must happen in a world where sinful human beings abuse their God-given freedom and free will. We are rightly wary as we make our way through this world—and we would be foolish to be anything else. But in parallel to this freedom and free-will we have the assurance that nothing, in fact is too big—or too horrid—for Jesus to hold. Nor, for that matter, is anything so tiny or insignificant that it may slip through his fingers. All the millions and millions of things that are way beyond our control, that seem unredeemable and destructive in the most complete sense, have been entrusted to Jesus by his Father.

This does not mean, I recognise, that we will know immediately how everything will turn out—these are the dispositions of God and, it is not possible for us to know them.

Nor does it mean that we can expect some magic-wand-experience to occur in which—poof!—all the hurt and ugliness of life vanishes to be replaced by a world full of nothing but pretty flowers.Then what can we expect? We can expect that, because everything has been entrusted to Jesus by his Father, Jesus will safeguard everything in a manner best suited to our eternal salvation. There are no contradictions here. In Jesus’ hands there are only convergences. All things will resolve within the mystery of God’s Kingdom through the powerful work of Jesus on our behalf. Everything has been entrusted to Jesus by his Father.

23 July, Pilgrimages & Journeys XI, Being present: Benedict and Scholastica.

Mildred, Domneva and Eadburga, Benedictine saints of Minster Abbey.

The story of Benedict and Scholastica’s final conversation at Monte Cassino deserves to be told again. They were siblings who lived quite close to each other in separate monasteries, bu they did meet up once a year at a house between their homes, each one accompanied by companions from their community.

This story reminds us how important it can be to meet face to face, and how there are occasions to set aside rules and let the Spirit blow where she will.

On this occasion Scholastica asked to stay longer with her brother in conversation and prayer. Benedict refused, and continued to refuse even when the bell rang that signalled the end of the visit. Scholastica was aware that there were things that had to be said between them and she knew there would not be another of these visits. So she prayed for divine intervention, and God sent a thunderstorm. He approved of her stepping aside from the rule. Soon after this Scholastica died, there would be no more such meetings.

Bishop Erik Vardy reflects:

We whose pockets are filled with gadgets that beep, purr, flash, and stir are constantly pulled away from where we are. Scholastica reminds us of the importance of being present, of giving priority to encounters.

It was Scholastica’s ‘greater love’, we are told, that made her prayer well-pleasing. Am I someone who loves? Do I even know what love is? Or is the word to me an abstraction?

22 July, Pilgrimages and Journeys X: With Utmost Speed.

On hearing the signal for the hour of the Divine Office, the monk will set aside whatever he has in hand and go with utmost speed, yet with gravity and without giving occasion for frivolity. Indeed, nothing is to be preferred to the work of God.

Rule of St Benedict 43:1-3.

Dom Thomas Quartier OSB

In the monastery the clock runs differently. What seems a break or interruption outside the monastery is the centre inside the monastery. It is the Copernican Revolution every day.

That which seems senseless, which is more a kind of recreational thing, sitting and singing, becomes the main task, and this upsidedown of what we are used to in normal life according to the rule of effectiveness, brings a great freedom and an openness to concentrate on your inner self and your brethren around you.

We do not keep our temporal structure of the day to be more effective in what we already do; that is a side effect. The core is what seems to be most senseless. And that is also true for the space. Benedict has a separate chapter on the oratory, the place of prayer.

16 July: Pilgrimage & Journeys VI: Jesus disappears, I

The boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem without his parents knowing it (see Luke 2: 41-52).*

Sister Johanna has sent two posts about a pilgrimage that seemed to be going disastrously wrong. Enjoy today’s post and look out for tomorrow’s!

Part I.

The story of Jesus as a twelve-year-old astonishing the rabbis in the Temple of Jerusalem with his profound remarks has a number of elements, not all of which are easy to understand. For me, the most difficult aspect of this vignette has always been Jesus’ apparent failure to tell Mary and Joseph that he would be staying longer in Jerusalem in order to talk to the rabbis when the others in their pilgrim-group had decided to leave.

The events seem to be related from the perspective of Jesus’ parents and it is very easy to identify with them. At first they assume that Jesus is travelling with some of the others in their large group. But twenty-four hours pass and: no Jesus. They are soon frantic with worry and they hurry back to Jerusalem to look for him.

What is going on here? I always feel perplexed when I read this passage from St Luke’s gospel. I ask myself if this is an example of Jesus being a highly precocious boy, pushing the boundaries of his freedom and independence, after the manner of every adolescent since Adam and Eve had children. But I’ve never really liked that interpretation of the story and I always feel that to settle the difficulty in such a way is to miss something vital about what is signified here. But what? This time, when I ponder the incident described by Luke, I stay with my perplexity, asking the Holy Spirit for clarity and insight.

Then I decide to try to see this story from the other side—Jesus’ side. After a few moments, I find myself focusing on the question Jesus asks his parents when they finally find him after their three-day search. They reproach him first (Lk. 2:48), and Jesus’ reply begins to provide me with a clue to what was going on in his young mind. He says, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” I realise for the first time that the answers to my questions hang on these words.

Did you not know? In these words, Jesus tells us that he expected Mary and Joseph to be aware of how his mind worked. I think it is safe to assume that even as a twelve-year-old, Jesus is fair. He would not have had these expectations with regard to Joseph and Mary without good reason. I begin to explore this idea, and to think of the distinctive character of Jesus’ whole young life. Jesus’ mind and heart. after all, were marked with a unique capacity for understanding divine things; his very destiny was God-centred in a prodigious way. Jesus’ awareness of God and of the teachings of Judaism would have been far more profound than that of other children his age—as the rabbis’ amazement testifies.

Moreover, the annual pilgrimage to the Jerusalem Temple—that privileged place of encounter with the God of Israel, the place where heaven and earth met— was the high point of Jewish life, and this would have been particularly so for Jesus. Jesus’ remark here, “Did you not know…”, suggests a lot about Jesus’ day to day behaviour and personality; it suggests that he was constantly thinking of God his Father—indeed, was always talking about Him, was always relating his experiences back to his heavenly Father in a way that would have been not only obvious to Mary and Joseph but part of their daily interaction as a family. This would have been the way his young mind worked, the way his twelve-year-old personality functioned.

This was the particular picture of Jesus that formed during my lectio reflection this time. And it made me see Jesus’ actions and expectations differently. I realise that Jesus would have had strong grounds for assuming that his parents were so aware of his religious development and identity, so familiar with the subjects that usually formed his thoughts, that, surely, as soon as they noticed his absence, it should have been obvious to them that Jesus must still be—could only still be—in the Temple, or “in his Father’s house”, to use Jesus’ words.

Let’s stop here for today and allow these thoughts to settle in our mind and heart through prayer. Perhaps the Holy Spirit will give us greater understanding. Tomorrow we will continue the reflection.

Sister Johanna Caton.

*All scripture quotations and references for this reflection are taken from The New Jerusalem Bible.

Image: Roman city gateway, Lincoln, England.

_______

23 June: The Monastery as a question mark.

The eve of St John’s seems a good time to share this reflection. He posed fundamental questions to his hearers beside the Jordan. A Benedictine today and a Cistercian bishop tomorrow, both pose questions to the reader. This is part of ”Peace is still our calling” an interview* with Sister Mary Lou Kownacki, who died recently, by Linda Romey, OSB.

Q. You quoted Henri Nouwen as describing “monasticism as a resistance movement.” What should monastics be resisting today? What should the world expect of monasticism now—if monasticism were to remain true to itself?

I think in [her previous book] Peace Is Our Calling I quoted someone as saying that a monastery should stand as aquestion mark to society. And I would add, that the monastery should always stand as a question mark to the institutional church. It’s very Jesus-like. Jesus resisted both temple and king by acting
differently than the status quo—welcoming outcasts, identifying with the poor, treating women
as equals, refusing an “eye for an eye,” empowering the disenfranchised, speaking truth to power,
rejecting the expectation to lead a violent insurrection against the occupying forces. So he was
a threat to both and had to die. The monastery does likewise because we believe that Jesus saw
with the eyes of God and so we imitate. We believe in the sharing of goods, not accumulation for
personal gain; the welcoming of all people, inclusiveness, not division; nonviolence, not war and
cruelty; the building of community, not social privilege and status; a life devoted to prayer, beauty,
leisure and “good” work, not the accumulation of money and power; a stewardship of the earth
not acts of destruction—all these are counter-cultural and acts of resistance. Perhaps the most
counter-cultural of all is that the God we believe in is not one of prosperity and power and wealth
and patriarchy.

I go back to the original question of mindfulness: in the monastery we are being trained to “see with the eyes of God.” When that starts to happen, you become a resistance movement. I mean, your heart should be getting softer and softer, more compassionate, more courageous, ready to risk it all so that others—and the earth—may come to what God wills: all of creation’s wellbeing. Your very way of being speaks truth to power.

*The Mount Magazine, Winter 2021, Volume 34, No. 2.
eriebenedictines.org

Concert of Hope -27 November.

View this email in your browser

The Sisters of Minster Abbey are holding a Concert of Hope, an evening of celebration with local choirs and musicians.  You are very warmly welcome to join us at St Mary the Virgin Church, Minster on 27th November at 7pm. Entrance is free and there will be a retiring collection for the work of “Canterbury for Ukraine”, an Incorporated Association of volunteers helping Ukrainian refugees to settle in Canterbury and East Kent. Canterbury for Ukraine have been vital in providing support to enable the Sisters to welcome a Ukrainian family to Minster. We now want to support them so that they can continue to offer assistance to those welcoming our brothers and sisters from Ukraine. We realise that not all of our friends are local enough to attend the concert on the night but some would like to make a donation. We have set up a Go Fund Me page to make this easy- just click below

DonatePlease pray for the success of this Concert of Hope! We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible on the night! Love and prayers Mother Nikola and the Sisters of Minster Abbey

Fr Tom Herbst’s funeral arrangements.

Saints Mildred, Domneva and Eadburga of Minster: tapestry in the Abbey Church.

Here are some details about Fr Tom’s death in Pilgrims’ Hospice, Margate and arrangements for his funeral, with thanks to Rob and Bernie Meredith. May Tom Rest In Peace.

Fr Tom passed away peacefully. We had the Minster Sisters and Fr John from the States around his bed with Monica, Sheila, Rob and Bernie. We all prayed and sang one of his favourite hymns – Amazing Grace – it was beautiful.

Thanks to all for the support. I know he greatly appreciated it.

On Monday 14th Fr Tom’s body will be at Minster and may be viewed between 11.00 and Midday. Please contact Rob Meredith if you will be making your way there: 07766 781211 

Fr Tom’s body will be brought into St Thomas’ Church, Canterbury at 18.00 on Friday 25 November. His funeral Mass will be at Midday, the regular parish Mass time, on Saturday 26 November followed by a private cremation. His ashes will be returned to the US.

A celebration of his life will be held on Saturday afternoon after the funeral at a venue to be confirmed. Please let Rob Meredith know if you intend to be at the celebration: 07766 781211 

Please feel free to donate to your favourite charity in Tom’s memory.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The picture of the good saints with their deer reminded me of a story re-told by Fr Tom in the Agnellus Mirror blog. Enjoy it!

The Galloping Dik-Dik

‘T’ and the Chihuahuas continued to listen raptly to bits and pieces of the story of the Lady Domneva and her dik-dik and, in doing so, were transported back to the vanished world of the wild and woolly seventh century.

It seemed that every monastic foundation required a kind of demesne, or endowment; enough land to ensure peace and quiet and also to raise some hard cash for bee’s wax candles, mason’s wages for the carving, and subsequent maintenance, of gargoyles and stone arabesques, lentils for the nun’s soup, ducks for their eggs and down to stuff the duvets in the guest quarters (the nuns themselves, having taken a vow of poverty, did not use duvets), some cattle for Feast days (as well as a sip of wine) and parchment, and, of course, lots and lots of sheep for lamb chops, mutton stew and wool to make their distinctive black habits (not to mention a large quantity of the rare and expensive beetle carapace used to make the dye). Well, let it simply be said that running a large monastic foundation could be expensive. Land was also needed for orchards of apples, pears, and apricots, wild flowers, and the oddly placed fisherman’s cot. In fact, back in the seventh century, as feudalism came into its first virile wind, well, land meant just about everything.

The Kentish king, encamped with his vast court on the site of the future monastery, was both vexed and perplexed. Since the king was new at founding monasteries, he wasn’t quite sure how much land might be required and the Lady Domneva was also of little help since she had only been a nun for a very short time. It was then that one of the scullery people, noticing the frisk of the Lady’s dik-dik on a particularly cold day, came up with an idea that delighted everyone.

‘Why not leave it up to God?’ the young maid said, rather enigmatically. And when all agreed that that must be a fine idea…another question immediately sprang forward – ‘but how?’ It was then that a wizened hermit emerged from a nearby wood and, approaching the diminutive dik-dik, began to stroke the lovely creature while spoon feeding it some black currant jam. In tones of deepest respect, he asked a beaming Lady Domneva if the tiny deer-like creature had a name. ‘Indeed, he does,’ she cooed, ‘Boanerges.’ And at the sound of his name the tiny dik-dik licked a spot of jam from his nose and rolled a triple somersault on the emerald lawn to everyone’s delight. ‘Surely,’ the hermit intoned, ‘God can speak through a Son of Thunder?’ And, so, it came to be.

+++

The little dik-dik ran and ran…and ran. Throughout the Isle of Thanet from dawn until dusk. The brisk, late-November chill served as both motivation…and inspiration…as the near-magical creature raced the howling east wind. By royal decree, everywhere it traversed would become the endowment of the monastery and, some say, that if it hadn’t been for the watery barrier of the mighty Wansum, well, the dik-dik might have galloped all the way to Scotland.

TJH