The more I manage to engage the individuals in short conversation, the more I see the diversity within the community and the remarkable levels of qualification. Several of the monks have doctorates and professional qualifications in a variety of subjects from Theology to Medieval Intellectual History (!) to Business Management to Chemistry. Several monks have a role in the College and two are professors. One monk is the superintendent of schools for the Diocese of Manchester, another a qualified nurse for the community. About a dozen of them are graduates from the college, and all three novices are alumni. Since stepping down from the presidency of the College, Jonathan has been on sabbatical, living in New York with a small Dominican community in Greenwich Village. An English Dominican Alan White is there. Alan and I were students together in Oxford and he joined the Dominicans straight after graduation.
Today has gone well. I think they are feeling easier about my style of presentation. The last thing I want to do is to patronise monks. In so many ways they are spiritually ahead of anything I might have to say to them, but at least I can say the obvious in a different way, given my different experience of priesthood.
This afternoon, between the conference and evening prayer, I took a walk into Manchester. How districts can change in such a short distance. From the College I walked for about half a mile through a green and well established suburbia. There were some lovely houses, many of them were very large, all surrounded by trees and gardens, almost all of them wood clad. Suddenly, down the hill, within a matter of yards, the neighbourhood was quite different: small houses, crammed together, untidy looking. A little further on I came to south Main Street, a collection of car service dealers and sandwich shops. It all seemed run down. The "downtown" is much smarter but eerily quiet. There are plenty of offices but almost no shops (they are all in the shopping malls on the edge of town, with their vast car parks). I hope to see the famous mills before I go. They were the largest industrial mill complex in the world, apparently. Now all the fabric work has gone elsewhere but the mills, at least some of them, have survived as museum pieces.
I am struck by the number of middle-aged men with long hair. A throw back to the eighties? And there are a lot of bikers, with Harley Davidson credentials. This seems to speak of a rural America.
A shop called "Opus" catches my eye. The full name is "Other People's Unique Stuff" which is a large second hand store.
One the way back to the monastery there are several signs for the "Arson Seminar" which is being hosted by the College. Apparently it is a major event each year, with Police and Fire Chiefs and FBI all sharing their expertise. The walk today gave me another indication of the sheer size of this campus. End to end of the "developed" area of faculty buildings and dormitories is a good 15- to 20-minute walk. But the whole college is home to only 2,000 students. All the buildings are comfortably landscaped. The students, of course, moan that they have such a long walk from dorm to faculty, and many take their cars from one car park to another rather than walk: to get to lectures, or to the gym!
All too soon, I am left with only one more full day of the retreat. A bit of St Paul, I think. This is doing me as much good as anyone else, I am sure. There is so much quiet time to rehearse and re-shape what I want to say. It is a clear reminder of the crazy rush of the city life that we have accepted as the norm. END OF DAY FOUR.
