What’s an Abbey? A Place for Creativity!
I want us to know the scripture, like as well as the Baptists. Of course we will be like the weirdest participants at the Bible Olympics (if there was one) because I’m asking you to know a scripture that’s not really in our canon.
Mary 10:3-10
Peter responded and spoke concerning these same things. He questioned them about the Savior, “Did he really speak with a woman without our knowing about it? Are we to turn around and all listen to her? Did he choose her over us?”
Levi said to Peter, “Peter, you are always ready to give way to your perpetual inclination to anger. And even now you are doing exactly that by questioning the woman as though you’re her adversary. But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you, then to reject her? Surely the Savior’s knowledge of her is trustworthy.
That’s right if you were thinking I don’t remember Mary being after Matthew you are right it’s not. And this scripture from the Gospel of Mary, towards the end of the text gives us a hint, I think, at why we don’t know the Gospel of Mary or didn’t know it for so long.
Earlier in the Gospel of Mary, Peter asks Mary to teach the followers of Jesus. They are in the wake of the Resurrection and after a moment of intense worry, Mary rises to the occasion; calming everyone like a mama hen. Then Peter invites her to teach, a surprise move really but that’s how our faith works. This surprising move seems to acknowledge her depth of wisdom. But by the end of her teaching; Peter’s brother Andrew starts fussing about Mary’s authority and then Simon Peter piles on, “Did he really speak with a woman without our knowing about it? Are we to turn around and all listen to her? Did he choose her over us?”
Surprise Peter, not that big of a man after all, (growth is hard). Mary grieves this and Levi responds to the group, reminding everyone and Peter of how he is always a hot-head (which you can find in every gospel) and the story ends with everyone choosing to work for God’s sake.
But this story isn’t the story we get in our Bible. Early Christianity is really many different early Christian-ities. Some communities have a leader like Lydia (Acts 16) and read the gospels including Mary. Other communities say women can’t speak in church or remind slaves to obey their masters. These many different communities do share one thing in common, they are not legal in the Roman empire. That is until Constantine marches into battle under a Christian banner, wins the battle and then believes Jesus helped him in his conquest to kill and harm. This is probably because he did not have a WWJD bracelet.
But this victory for Constantine (318 CE) makes being Christian not only less dangerous but also more desirable. They go from the bottom to the top and with that, all these different Christianities have to be centralized by Rome. You can’t be the emperor's religion and not speak with one clear voice. This is where we get Creeds and Councils. For the next several hundred years (325-787 CE) folks from around the Mediterranean will be invited to councils to debate and decide and make a creed and make a cannon. Some folks are invited and some are not. Some folks win the votes and others become heretics. Some books get included and some books get banned. As the church narrative centralizes around Peter and Rome, the excluded books become hunted books.
But some faithful folks in these desert abbeys pull the precious papyrus from the library shelf. I imagine them praying and working, wrapping the scrolls with love, placing them in the great urn and burying them deep in the safest places they could find, hoping the threat would pass. These abbeys never put the books back on their shelves but they saved them from the burning. And that’s the work of past abbeys so our Abbey can read the Gospel of Mary today.
Further away from the Councils and Creed Makers, Irish abbeys were creating and illustrating more books in their scriptoriums. Today you can visit the Book of Kells and imagine every abbey with its own beautiful handmade books. Of course, the Irish abbeys of Kildare and Kells don’t have a lot of papyrus around so they create books on velum. This is an elaborate process that transforms calf skin into paper and the inks are made of the seeds, stones, berries, flowers and minerals of the Irish landscape. The Kells Museum highlights a quote from 1184 by Gerald of Wales:
“Among all the miracles of Kildare nothing seems to me more miraculous than the wonderful book of which they say was written at the dictation of an angel. The book contains four gospels according to St. Jerome with almost as many drawings as pages and all of their marvelous colors.”
Gerald concludes, “it’s the work of angels.” The Irish church is organized under Abbots rather than Bishops and these books are created early enough to know the church father who translated and supervised the creation of these copies, Jerome (d. 420 CE).
They use the Latin Alphabet but they leave out the letters J, V, and K. I don’t know if they missed that day on Sesame Street or if they were like, ‘you know those sounds don't really work for our Gaelic tongues’ so they took authority and left them out. No matter the reason, I love that they are doing their own thing. The illustrations are vibrantly celtic with intricate patterns inspired by nature but also containing creatures from the wider world. Caesar called Ireland “Land of Winter” and I suspect the Mediterranean creatures of the Bible would have shared his sentiments and yet these Irish texts are illustrated with snakes and lions and peacocks from far beyond the Irish shore. The monks make mistakes and turn them into art, the text is perfectly imperfect; filled misspellings, words written twice and occasional odes to the cat.
These perfectly imperfect books are the pride and joy of the community. The space is built and dedicated to this creative and spiritual art at no small cost to the whole community. Every Abbey has a scriptorium, which means when they were building spaces out of wood and stone they thought creative space was important enough to build too. It also means that in all the jobs they did like milking cows and tending fires and baking bread they thought creative work and creative gifts were essential work too. And most telling, when the Vikings begin to rain terror on the Irish abbeys and they run to the Round Tower for safety they take their books with them.
They don’t always save the books, the jeweled cover was stolen from Kells. The Book of Kildare goes missing entirely but they do try. An abbey works to protect the creative spirit and work and so we carry that legacy on today in our Urban Abbey. We are creating our own books, our own works, our own writings, our own stickers, our own lyrics and our own poems. And we are putting them out there, perfectly imperfect through small printings because the institutional publishers wonder “if we have to use the word Patriarchy.”
We are carrying on the work of the Abbey in our sweet little bookshop with all the books that make the book banning Moms of Liberty so upset and not only are we selling them, we are reading them and blessing them and having small groups about them and we are showing up to advocate against censorship in our school libraries. We are showing up to remind folks that book banners are never on the right side of history and to celebrate the marginalized voices that the most frequently banned books center.
I had the privilege of listening to Matt de la Pena, author of Mexican WhiteBoy share the story of his own book being banned. He had wanted it to happen, perhaps a badge of honor and then the reality of it happening expanded the story even more. The state of Arizona had developed a curriculum for young Latnix folks around books like his and this effort improved their reading scores and engagement. It was working.
Until the book was banned. And a teacher had the painful task of taking the books back after just handing them out. A student emailed Matt, inviting him. Then the school librarian emailed him, the student was really determined and thankfully so was she. She found a way to get permission for a ‘local author’ to come speak with students. And when a national news outlet wanted to tag along, she found a way to make that happen too…’a little news crew wants to come with the local author.’ What a great opportunity for the students.
In the end Matt was able to use his speaker fee to put his book back in the hand of every student at the school. It was messy and wild and full of strange twists and turns but the outcome was books in the hands of readers who could see themselves in text and grow. We need creative work and words, we need to practice and read and sing and dance and imagine and dream. It’s the work of the Abbey past and present and future. The creative exploration of faith is sacred and worthy of investment and practice, worthy of care and training and worthy of protection. May we have the courage to write and sing, dream and draw, create and dance.
May it be so. Amen.