The summer begins

OHC finished its annual meetings, which we call Chapter, on Sunday. We had the better part of a week together. It always begins with the Finance Committee, which I chair. That committee collates complete financial reports from our four monasteries and from the OHC Corporation, and considers the proposed budgets for the coming fiscal year, which for us runs from July 1 to June 30. We consider the financial statements and budgets of the monks not in residence as well. There are four of them. And there are always other matters to consider. It is a lot of work, and the work doesn't really stop till Chapter is over. I was quite tired when we rolled it up on Sunday morning. Fortunately the following few days are light. We will re-emerge into full engagement on Thursday.

My summer looks pretty lightly booked for once. The House of the Redeemer does not have Board meetings in July and August. The next big event at the monastery will be the Long Retreat here, from July 28 to August 6. That is always silent, and we all look forward to being monks together in the strict sense. I will take some vacation time in August.

I have always had projects for the summer, and this year is no different. I am hoping that the lack of other major responsibilities will let me catch up on some major reading, and even perhaps some writing. At the moment I am reading Diarmaid MacCulloch's Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. It moves along at a pretty brisk trot, but for that reason reads well. I sense that it is selling well, and may well open up the history of Christianity to a wider audience than is customary for that subject. I have acquired a number of specialist studies in the history of monasticism, in Anglo-Saxon studies, and in late antiquity and as I read them, I will share them with you. They are not to everyone's taste, but some of them may deserve a modest push.

Perhaps in reaction to the stress of getting ready for Chapter, I have over the last few weeks read more murder mysteries than usual. When I was ill for three weeks or so this spring I read (in some cases re-read) as much P.D. James as we had around the place. It is interesting to read an author in bulk, as it were, especially if one has had some training in literature. She has patterns. After the third book, I knew that she always kills off a second important victim a little more than halfway through. The guessing about the identity of the next victim was almost as much fun as guessing the murderer.

Br. David Bryan had a DVD set of the television series of James' novels which he loaned to me, and I watched them as well. Roy Marsden is wonderful as Adam Dalgleish. But at a certain point a different director or team took the project up, shortened the adaptations, and generally messed with the formula, as is probably obligatory with new teams. At any rate, in one of the newer series Dalgleish's hair, which had been quite consistent to that point, changed. It was awful. I noticed that in the next one he was back to the original wig. There is some fodder for a meditation on the pointlessness of change for the sake of change there.