God in Strange Places

I keep meeting God in some very strange places. As I noted in a recent post He was recently on the front cover of that very secular political weekly, the "New Statesman". And on a BBC documentary on the plight of the Church of England. And in the spectacular blockbuster "Knowing", which proved yet again that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If it did not explicitly mention God, it shamelessly cribbed many of His famous special effects, such as the Ascension and Fire from Heaven.

Now He appeared on page 33 of "The Times" colour magazine on 9th May. A new religious order, The Community of Our Lady of Walsingham (www.walsinghamcommunity.org), provided material for a 5 page article with several photographs. The article started by describing the latest recruit who presently flies all over Europe as an air hostess and is due to enter the convent in September 2009. In fact the number of pages is more than this order's current number of members - who are Sister Camilla, the order's founder and webmistress, and Sister Gabriella.

Thus the air hostess will increase membership by 50% when she joins. Just about all parish prayer groups are larger than this miniature order. Why on earth would a major paper take any notice of it? Well, there is the rarity value of its plans to become a mixed-sex religious community - the first in England since the Reformation. There is certainly space for extra recruits. Several men are interested in the development of the Order and may make the plunge soon, once accommodation arrangements are sorted out.

It sounded like a rare piece of good news for religious life in Britain, where convents have been closing the length and breadth of the land. As I drive to work along Bath Road in Reading, I pass the Monastery. This is a very upmarket apartment development which was a Carmelite convent up to 1998. Then the aging and dwindling community dispersed to other Carmels and the site was sold for secular housing. Three miles to the north, the convent in Southview Avenue, which housed the nuns who taught me as a small child, was similarly sold a few years ago.

The new order is based in Brentwood, about 40 miles north-east of London. It was founded only in 2004. Looking at the reasons quoted for its foundation, I couldn't avoid the feeling that it owed as much to the consumer mentality as to traditional religious inspiration. Page 70 of the same magazine reviewed a new Japanese restaurant in central London. Of course, London has restaurants for just about every cuisine on earth. If you didn't like that restaurant, there are plenty of other Japanese eateries to feed you. And if you don't like Japanese food at all, you can choose from hundreds of other food styles from Portugal to the Phillipines. Pages 40 to 53 described several styles of the latest men's and women's clothing - the tiniest sample of what you can find in London's shops large and small.

Page 58 onwards contained the storyboards for the new commercial for Chanel No 5 perfume, the sequel to Chanel's 2004 commercial starring Nicole Kidman, which was reportedly the most expensive commercial ever made. This new commercial is being made by the director of "Amelie" (plus 250 technicians), stars Audrey Tautou, and will probably cost more than most European feature films. According to the article, the director "made the most of its (Chanel's) agreement not to be tightfisted about the production costs". You might think this is a seriously insane agreement to make with any creative filmmaker, but then someone once told me that perfume has a higher profit margin than any commodity except heroin.

This glossy and gloriously materialistic magazine seemed like a totally incongruous setting for an article on the religious life. But the founder explained that "I wanted the poverty of the Franciscans, the zeal of truth of the Dominicans and the liturgy of the Benedictines". I couldn't help feeling that this implicitly insulted all three existing orders on 2 out of 3 counts. I am most familiar with the Benedictines, because of my visits to Douai Abbey which is a Benedictine foundation. Certainly their liturgy is first-rate. But are they lacking in the Truth and Poverty departments??

It seemed faintly bizarre to fashion a religious order which fitted you exactly, much as I visited the tailor in Hong Kong to get a suit of the exact material, style and size to fit me precisely. Even the writer of the article wondered if it would be better to support an existing order than create yet another brand. And surely if you found an order precisely to your specification it must reduce the chances of finding like-minded members, just as my tailored suit would fit very few other people.

Sister Camilla also explained that she wanted a community which would be both "of the world" and yet rooted in time for silence and prayer. Er....don't numerous existing orders do just that, underpinning their work as teachers/nurses/whatever with a serious prayer life?

It is not the smallest religious order I have come across. On my trip to Medjugorge in 1996 I met a very well educated English "nun" who claimed to be the only one of her order, with a distinctive blue habit. Admittedly Medjugorge tends to attract people who are madder than a sackful of cut snakes, to quote a great Australian phrase. She wasn't the craziest person I met that week. There was the nurse from Glasgow who described the visions she saw when she stared at the sun. But this one-sister order ran the nurse a close second, especially when she described a stained glass window in the Medjugorge church which contained a nun with a habit exactly like hers. No, it definitely looked nothing like yours, Sister.

I can only wish the new foundation well and hope fervently that the mixed sex aspect does not result in a horrible car crash somewhere down the road, with the resulting publicity all over the pages of newspapers even less Godly than "The Times".