An end to our enforced monasticism

Empty diaries suddenly fill from freedom day on June 21 and we are all fluttering around like Bridgerton matrons. There will be an orgiastic mingling of many, many households when England play the Czech Republic on June 22.

Some of us were wrongfooted, expecting restrictions to lift a little earlier. I have been working with a distinguished committee and a Scottish university on a science summit in May, entitled “The New Enlightenment”. I had respectfully noted that some of our most eminent scientists were of a vaccinated age — some could, indeed, take credit for developing vaccines. The setting was glorious. It was to have been McDavos. By the time the prime minister and the Scottish government had revealed their restrictions it was looking more likely to be a roadside picnic.

By Wednesday, we had got out our new save the dates, with a photograph of Braemar Castle and the art work letters of Martin Creed EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT.

You could say that my bet on the timeline of the virus was an act of hubris. Boris Johnson, of all people, has taken to reminding us to be humble before nature. I do not know if this is a deliberate nod to the lesson of monasticism, but we all have our interpretations of rules, or the Rule, as the Benedictines would have it.

The greatest lesson of monasticism is humility, which gets me off the hook if friends and colleagues ask about my new book The Interior Silence, based on visiting 10 monasteries round the world. There is, indeed, wisdom in the monasteries, but it would be absurd to suggest that it had rubbed off on me just by witnessing it.

I reply, truthfully, that I have a great deal more to learn. What I have acquired is an appreciation of silence. There is too much talking. It was the late columnist Frank Johnson in conversation with his friend and fellow columnist Alan Watkins who first used the term the “chattering classes”.

It is fitting that a book on monastic lessons should be published without fanfare

This was before social media increased the volume of opinion. Frank, Alan and the late Alexander Chancellor, a former editor of the Spectator, could talk and drink into the evening, as we all did in the latter years of last century. But their conversations tended towards conceits of political history. “What would have happened if Rab Butler had become prime minister?’’ and so on. There was no polemical battery in discussion.

Indeed, I remember Alan’s refusal, at a Cambridge dining club formed for the purpose of conversation, to express any opinion except on the quality of the butter. Undergraduates leaned forward excitedly waiting for him to pronounce on parliament, but he suddenly decided that politics was not a fit discussion for dinner. One of the undergraduates at the dining club, Kwasi Kwarteng, took matters into his own hands and went on to become an MP.

It is fitting that a book on monastic lessons should be published without fanfare — the bookshops are all closed — and right that any celebration is held in self-isolation. The lessons of monasticism, apart from humility, are patience, fortitude and compassion, which are all needed in a pandemic. (My favourite saying remains that of Nancy Mitford’s nanny, to her charges: “Nobody is looking at you.”)

Perhaps the pandemic has made us more sympathetic to the principle of monasticism

My aim is to study. Monks believed in perpetual education, copying out the books that existed with exquisite calligraphy. There is so much to find out and even the masters are never finished. I was talking to Paul Nurse, the head of the Francis Crick Institute, about a lecture he was planning for the postponed science summit. He asked me if it sounded as if it was on the right lines. “I am just an amateur,” he added. Sir Paul is a Nobel Prize-winning scientist. His refusal to rest on his laurels is truly monastic; although, post-Enlightenment, he may prefer a different word for it.

Perhaps the pandemic has made us more sympathetic to the principle of monasticism, which is consideration of others, despite physical separation. Withdrawal from society takes self-discipline. Living in a self-contained community or household demands reserves of civility and kindness.

I noticed that some newspapers accused the Archbishop of Canterbury of skiving when he announced that he would be going on spiritual retreat later this year. Friends of mine have confused restorative monasticism with mindfulness. Especially since the monasteries that I visited were in beautiful places.

The difference is that mindfulness is about nurturing yourself and monasticism is a loss of self. A few of my media friends say they have been unable to read during lockdown. Constant video calls have made them jittery; they are looking at and listening to themselves all day. The monastic remedy is concentrated thought — or prayer — labour, austerity, silence.

There is a monastic version of Martin Creed’s Everything Will Be Alright. It is Julian of Norwich: All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.

Sarah Sands is chair of Bright Blue and a board director at Hawthorn Advisors. Her book ‘The Interior Silence: 10 Lessons from Monastic Life’ is published by Short Books on March 11

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