It took me a long time to take my first step as an Oblate – which is where I am today. I first came across the Rule when I pulled the book by chance from my scholarly, clergyman father’s bookshelf when I was 17, 70 years ago. I read the Prologue and was captivated by it. ‘Listen carefully my Son’ No one had asked me to listen in that gentle way and I knew that I had found something really important. Son/daughter no difference in this context. I then dipped into the Rule, thought how interesting, I would like to discuss it with my father, replaced the book and promptly forgot about it. I certainly had never heard of Benedictine monks.

Life was busy and gradually I fell away from attending the dull Churches that came my way. I was searching for something and did not find it. I tried all sorts: Quakers, High church, Low church but nothing clicked. Even the Bible seemed boring – and I previously had been really interested in it – especially the strange mixture called the Old Testament which seemed so important if one was to understand the New Testament (I can hear my father here). I then by seeming chance slipped into a Philosophy School which was exciting to find as it introduced me to many and varied teachings. I felt that here I could discover more about God and the meaning of life. Especially memorable were the writings of Huang Po –a Zen Buddhist Master, The Tao Te Ching, the Cloud of Unknowing, Indian spirituality, the Bhagavad Gita and the Sanskrit language, which I loved and then studied. It seemed as though all the spiritual teachings of the great masters were our rightful inheritance if only we opened our hearts and listened. Through the Philosophy School in 1960 my husband and I were introduced to meditation. Christianity was a long way from my mind but never quite from my heart.

It was in the 1970s in Ealing that I met a Benedictine monk, Dom Vincent Cooper, at a tea party and it re-connected my vague memory of the Rule and soon we were introduced to Dom John Main who was about to start meditation groups in Ealing. I joined one of his groups while still attending groups at the Philosophy School. It was while we were visiting one of my cousins in Canada, my father was Canadian, that we spent time in Montreal at the Priory with John Main. John Main asked if I would like to become an Oblate but I had never heard of Oblates so enquired as to what it entailed. Yes I could meditate every day which I did in any case, yes I could try to read the Rule every day and yes I could but try to pray the Divine Office every day so yes I would like to become an Oblate.

When Dom John died and the Priory was no more I felt a great hole in my life, there was no WCCM in those days, and I asked Fr Bernard if I could join the Ealing Oblates. John Main had often mentioned the Conferences of Cassian so that was my next great read from where I discovered the Philokalia and the sayings of the early monks and nuns of the deserts. My appreciation of our great Christian tradition grew even greater while at the same time I felt I was a complete nonentity as an Oblate. The more I meditated and absorbed the words of the wise, the more visible was the gap between my practice as a Christian and the light those words were illuminating. But for me the essential message of the Rule is about how to live a day with body, mind and spirit in balance: Private prayer/meditation, communal prayer (The Divine Office which is communal even when we are praying it alone), study, work, food, leisure and sleep. There is a measure in these. If we get out of kilter in life then one of this list has become too self-important. Well it has been, and is still being. a long twisting sort of journey but I would not have it any other way. I have not ‘found’ anything, there has been no ‘great moment’, but there is an awareness that my guardian angel has been so gentle with my wilfulness, so kindly with my rebelliousness, always there to lead (sometimes to poke) me in the way I should go. Even at my age there is still a long way to go and for that I am content and profoundly grateful. May today I hear His voice and harden not my heart. May peace and peace and peace be everywhere. St Benedict pray for us.

Isabelle Glover

Oblate of Ealing Abbey