WHEN I told friend that I used to be going to affix a Christian community, his response was, “What? You, joining a community?” He might just as well have said, “But you’re an introvert, more comfortable in your personal company than with others — a little bit of a loner.” What he didn’t know was that I used to be following a dream.
My wife, Sue, and I had made a commitment to joining the community at Scargill House, a Church of England retreat and holiday centre within the Yorkshire Dales. We had been there as guests on a few occasions, and people visits had left me with an exhilarating taste. I wanted more.
Had you asked me “More of what?” I’d have found it hard to elucidate. Yes, it was something in regards to the beautiful Yorkshire Dales, but more the lure of a way of belonging: of coming home to myself ultimately. Not that anything dramatic had happened during those visits: it was more like getting into a latest and exciting space where I could breathe as never before.
Despite those intimations of euphoria, we experienced several rocky moments on our journey to Scargill. We needed to sell our home and find one other close enough to Scargill for our day by day commute. When I faltered, Sue picked up the ball and ran with it. Eventually, together, we made it — although we sometimes asked ourselves what on earth we were doing.
Scargill had also had its ups and downs. A couple of years previously, it had closed down and been put up on the market. Thanks to some faithful and constant supporters, it was saved from extinction, resurrected, and opened its doors again (News, 27 March 2009); but there was no guarantee that it will survive. On certainly one of our first trips to Scargill, we met Adrian Plass, who, together with his wife, Bridget, was also committed to joining the community. When he asked us, “What are you doing here?” and we said, “We don’t really know,” he replied, “In that case, you’re on the identical page as us.”
IN THOSE early days, the community — who ran the entire operation for the guests — was a microcosm of what it still is today: a mixed bag of individuals, each with their very own stories, hopes, dreams, difficulties. The glue that held us together — mostly — was the Scargill Pathway of Life, created for that latest community: a set of guarantees that we took as brothers and sisters.
We promised to “try our best” to nurture our relationship with God and be open to him; to point out kindness and love to one another; to “keep the moaning inside and a smile on our faces” until we could truthfully and safely let all of it out; to welcome strangers as we might welcome Jesus himself; to enjoy giving and receiving a number of treats — and (phew!) to laugh together, often.
Looking back on those seven years that we spent in the neighborhood, some words from certainly one of the liturgies that we frequently utilized in chapel are fitting: “To fly on fragile wings, courageous, and just a little scared.” Living in community was invigorating, stretching, exhausting, nourishing, tiring, painful at times. I remember certainly one of the leaders saying that, when he went to bed after a difficult day, he would beat his pillow in frustration.
Relationships could grow to be fractured, old wounds resurface, self-pity strut centre-stage, and anger erupt, or simmer within the wings. Community was a pressure cooker that brought the dross to the surface. On the plus side, people found and developed unused gifts, grew and matured, and discovered latest wings. It was costly and rewarding. Finally, for anyone — community or guest — who might need it, Scargill aimed to be “a protected place to say dangerous things”.
I BELIEVE that those characteristics of the early days proceed today as Scargill lives on, the community all the time changing — sometimes in place, sometimes combating internal or external pressures. Community members proceed to return and go, some to slot in and contribute, giving and receiving; others disappointing, half-hearted for whatever reason, and maybe going away empty. Guests come and go, too: some very welcome, others a challenge — the delightful and the demanding.
Scargill will need to have got something right, since it survives while other centres have closed their doors. This quote from Dave Hopwood — who spent a few years at Scargill’s sister community, Lee Abbey, in Devon — sums it up in an extreme way: “When it involves community living and its demands, I feel of Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, who shared the Yellow House together as a ‘community’ for eight weeks. It was so tough they nearly killed one another; yet out of that point they produced 42 masterpieces!”
As for us, we’re still works in progress. We learned a latest song at Scargill: does the melody linger on, or has the music now died? Where is community now? For us, it’s in our church, and in a small group of friends who meet usually for what we call “Soup and Supper”: three couples, each couple bringing certainly one of the components for the supper. We don’t pray while we’re together (for which I’m personally thankful; I’ll leave you to guess why), but we commit ourselves to praying for each other between our meetings.
THEN there may be church, after all. We are fortunate in belonging to a church where we’ve found kindred and open hearts, warmth and welcome, deepening relationships. I even have heard that there are churches and communities which might be nothing like that. The community of 12 disciples was rough round the perimeters: a ragged bunch, sometimes pulling in several directions. With God’s help, they managed to carry it together — nearly.
We were well on in years after we joined the community. In contrast, a friend who joined the community in her early twenties (more flexible?) told me that she flourished without flagging, lapped up the experience, and was thrilled to be trusted with responsibility. Sadly, she found it too dangerous to hold that very same attitude into abnormal life.
For us, Scargill was a spot of becoming, for which we’ll all the time be thankful. We did our greatest to play our part, to affix within the music; and now, the challenge is to maintain the song alive.
Patrick Baker is a author, and former member of the Scargill Community.
What being in community did for us:
- Stretched and enriched us
- Broadened our outlook/churchmanship/horizons/vision of God
- Tested our temper/fitness/love/ability to eat whatever was set before us
- Revealed our weaknesses/foibles/need for our brothers and sisters
- Increased our understanding/girth
- Used our gifts — and our weaknesses
- Challenged our selfishness/tendency to cover/secrets
- Gave us a number of fun/lasting friendships
- Accepted us as we were (not how we wished to present ourselves)
- Helped us to grow to be more nearly the people God created us to be
What it didn’t do
- Squash us
- Take us too seriously
- Solve all our problems
- Make us perfect
