The Call To Community

Internal Emigre

New Monasticism

Landscape Of The Heart

The House That John Built

The Place of Resurrection

At the heart of Northumbria Community
you will find Celtic Daily Prayer (office)
and A Way for Living (rule)
both reflect the influence of the
monastic tradition in the development
of community ethos.

For while the history and development
of both ffice and rule
can be traced and documented
to the founders of the Northumbria Community,
they also bear witness to a more
noble history found within the
monastic community.

In particular it was the Desert fathers and the
early Irish monastic communities to whom the pioneers
of community would turn to give coherence
to the life they had been called but whose meaning
they could only partly understand.

They would also find instruction and guidance
from contemporary members of the monastic community
within The Society of St. Francis and The Community of Transfiguration.

Both office (Celtic Daily Prayer) and all the constituent parts of the
rule (A Way for Living) came before the establishment of Northumbria Community and they point to a vocation that both intimately embraces
while at the same time fundamentally transcends the Northumbria Community.

It was this vocation,
an invitation to participate within the monastic community
that the founders and the earliest pioneers of community were first called.

This was both a source of joy and bewilderment;
Joy because within the monastic tradition they had found
meaning and coherence and a sense of belonging.
Bewilderment because such an invitation did not usually
include those who were married and with children, whose participation
had always been strictly limited.

New monasticism is the ongoing struggle
to comprehend the full extent of that invitation and the nature of the vocation.

The Northumbria Community was established to provide companionship
on that journey and propose. A way of living and daily prayer that had already proved beneficial to those who had gone before.

Failure to appreciate this
invitation and the struggle involved
to respond, will diminish participation
in the life of the community,
reduce the office and rule
to symbols of a vocation
and leave the community
in danger of being relegated
to the post modern
mosaic of alternative lifestyles
on sale to alleviate the stress of the new humanity
in a new age.

Staying close
to our beginning
standing firm
in our vocation
and continuing
to struggle with
our invitation
will help
strengthen the
gift of community.

Alone
together.

New monasticism will demand no less
of us in availability and vulnerability
as was expected of other members of the
monastic community.

New monasticism will require of us
full participation in a new era of human
self consciousness and self determination
with ‘who is it that you seek?’ and
‘how then shall we live?’
forever on our lips.

New monasticism will provide us with the opportunity

‘to enact a fearful
hope for human life
in the midst of society’
(Stringfellow)

Such a perspective will enable a greater comprehension
of the supporting archive material.

In the garden of the Nethersprings,
hidden beneath the trees,
is a small wooden hut.

There are no windows,
the furniture is simple, a table,
a chair and a candle.
Of the many visitors who come
to the Nethersprings,
many find their way to the Poustinia.

We call it Poustinia because
it means; The Little Desert
and it is a place of retreat and solitude .

For many people, this small garden hut
becomes the wardrobe as depicted in C. S. Lewis’s,
‘The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.’

It opens a door, to a world which is strange yet familiar,
exiting yet perilous, and like the Land of Narnia is forever
near us.

At the heart of any monastic vocation
is the call to both love and know God.
This becomes ‘the one thing necessary’
and our lives become defined by this quest.

To respond to this call we have to
cross The Landscape of the Heart and
the silence and solitude of the space
symbolized by the Hut, Poustinia,
Cell or Coracle is where the journey
begins.

It is the place where we must first
face the fear, loss and danger
that may be associated with our journey
and the seductive and distracting voices that
encourage or threaten us
to turn back or take another journey.

It is the place where we encounter
our duplicity, immorality and inconsistency
that reveals our divided heart and the thoughts
that comfort and cajole us.

It is also the place to receive
Faith, Hope, Love and the
Courage to enter the divine
darkness in which we can begin
to get a glimpse of an uncreated light
and reflect that uncreated light in
the darkness of the world in which we live:

The glory of God as revealed in His Son
Jesus Christ.

In August 1994, soon to be married Clare Underwood and Ant Grimley
made a journey to Nethersprings to share their new dance production Brendan.

Little did they know that they were
bringing a ‘word from the Lord’ that would deeply affect
their own lives and also that of the Northumbria Community.

Brendan told the story of Saint Brendan
and his band of monks who in the 6th century
set out from Ireland on an epic journey
into the atlantic and beyond ‘in search of paradise.’

Brendan although not the archetype captured the spirit of
‘peregrinatio,’ a deep and meaningful tradition within the
early Irish Church that often led monks to ‘journey for the love of God.’

A journey from which some would never return home, theirs would be
‘an exile for Christ’

It would be on a distant shore that many of these wandering Irish Saints
would be laid to rest. The time, arranged by the Lord, the place,
their ‘ place of resurrection’

Availability to make a journey for the love of God has always been
an essential feature of the mission of the Northumbria Community.

Andy, from the earliest days had set a precedent calling together
all kinds of folk to travel with him on ministry trips, to venues in the UK and the USA or hitchhiking to destinations himself.

Roy, from the moment he arrived at the Nethersprings took to the road
and apart from an extended retreat at the beginning of his ministry with the community has spent a great deal of time away from home and family
alone or with teams on mission.

John and Linda, together with Kevin and Ellen traveled extensively
throughout europe researching the house that John built and seeking
to understand the Celtic Arc, a vision of Christian renewal in Europe,
from Turkey to Ireland.

Yet each of these journeys carried within them that special promise
and hope of coming home of returning…

Brendan was a prophetic reminder that to be true to ourselves and our vocation then we must be prepared ‘to leave behind all that is familiar
established and secure and go off into the unknown’ Merton

To be translated into our own context the spirit of peregrinatio must be stripped of romantic notions and idealism.

The call to community was and is first and foremost a call to
progressively greater degrees of ‘availability and vulnerability’

An acknowledged willingness and readiness to make significant life changes that attune our lives more closely to our vocation which is embedded in the monastic tradition.

The call to community is not essentially membership of a social fraternity
whose establishment would endanger our ‘way of living.’

Community as we know it is the gift of God to those whose hearts are set on pilgrimage whose lives have been redefined and redirected by the question ‘Who is it that you seek?’

Community as we know it is sustained within the paradox that as we continue on our journey alone we will truly be together.

Here lies the struggle for the heart and soul
of the Northumbria Community.

It was a sunny afternoon in the enclosed garden at the Nethersprings
when Brendan was first performed

At the end, an appeal was made for those to whom God had spoken that day to stand andtake the first faltering steps of peregrinatio.

Of the few who stood that day, there were those who would soon find themselves strangers and aliens and in exile from their beloved community.

Clare and Ant stood that day and in doing so represented a new generation of community always eager to learn as much as possible
about the tradition in which they had been nurtured. Always ready to
respond to the call of the desert themselves.

In April 2001, the Lord called Clare to her final journey when He called her home.

Words cannot describe
the grief at our loss
wife, mother, daughter,
friend.

Clare found her
Place of Resurrection.

May her life
inspire a new generation
of community
to do the same.

We are fortunate to have the cooperation of the founders of the community who are our primary source and without whom this site could not have been published.

It is the founders that have contributed to an overall picture of how the community began and what was intended in the way of living they developed and expressed in the Rule and the Daily Office.

We have also collected a substantial amount of information that is relevant to our subject. Please be patient as we have so many items to upload to the site. It also makes a regular visit worth while. These sources speak for themselves and are a window from which to view the foundation of the community.