I’ve been rather busy, what with the Christian Union mission week and various other exciting stuff, so I’ve not had chance to post to my blog much recently. But I’ve got round to editing what some of what I wrote in an email to someone about my L’abri trip for general reading on my blog, which is what follows…
I’d been visiting London for the weekend for a reunion of the Contagious Taskforce team, staying with Matt and Pippa, the Taskforce leaders, in West Hampstead. On Sunday, I went over to Chessington to see Elly, who’d invited me to come for dinner, and get chance to see some other Contagious attendees who come from there. I had a really great weekend – it was great to see everyone.
On Monday morning, I travelled on from Matt and Pippa’s to L’Abri. I caught the train from Waterloo to Liss, which is around an hour’s journey, and from there made the half-hour or so walk to the Manor House in the cold grey drizzle of the English winter.
L’abri is in an old grand building, the Manor House, which is around 100 years old. It’s really nice, but very cold and chilly. I arrived just in time for lunch, but it was a silent lunch because there’s normally so much talk and discussion, which was a bit of an odd moment to get there!
But I soon began to get to know people, and got my hands on some good books which I began to study, including “The Christian Imagination”, which is a really good collection of material on literature, reading, writing and the imagination by all sorts of people, including T S Eliot, C S Lewis, Madeline L’Engle and so on.
There was an introductory lecture (more of a discussion) by Andrew Fellows introducing L’Abri since the term had just started. In the evening, I went to a nearby pub with some of the other students to celebrate Steven’s 22nd birthday, which was a good chance to get to know people. He’s American and had been studying literature but had got frustrated with his studies.
On Tuesday, I did more study in the morning. One of the warmest rooms is the Study Room, which has all of the many hundreds of tapes of talks and lectures and seminars on loads of different subjects. The catalogue is on the L’Abri website (http://www.englishlabri.org), where you can order them, though there are some that they can’t sell for copyright reasons. There’s also the library, which has lots of Christian books on all sorts of subjects, so I felt right at home! Tuesday was a normal lunch, which means having lunch in the home of one of the workers, and where anyone can raise a question they’d like to discuss.
Visiting L’Abri isn’t like going to a hotel or some kind of retreat centre. You go to be part of the community for the time you’re there, which means that you spend some time helping with the work needing to be done – preparing food, cleaning, and so on and so forth. I spent Tuesday afternoon helping to clean the kitchen and dining room, but because I was only there for a short stay, I didn’t do as much as you’d normally do if you were there for a longer period of time.
On Tuesday evenings at L’abri there are film screenings, chosen by the L’abri workers. We watched and discussed “The Road to Perdition”, and then discussed the film and some of the themes it raised, which I enjoyed.
On Wednesday, I woke up only to find it had snowed! The children of some of the L’abri staff were already out throwing snowballs and making snowmen, and I was soon out there too. I took a few pictures, as well as having a small snowball fight with some people. More of a snowball skirmish. It was really beautiful, though it melted fairly quickly. I spent the day studying, and met up with Jim Paul, one of the workers, for a good chat about what I was studying and stuff.
In the evening there was a talk by Edith Reistema (may have misspelled that!) on “What do we need to have hope?”, which was very interesting, and linked in with some other things I’ve been thinking about.
Thursday is the day off at L’abri. People often come to visit just for the weekend so they have the day off during the week. On the day off, the students can stay around to study or relax at the Manor House if they want, or go off for the day to London or elsewhere. There wasn’t anything on in the evening, so some of us went to the Spread Eagle pub again to mark mine and Lawrence’s last evening.
Unfortunately all good things have to come to an end, and on Friday morning I packed up my stuff, ready to catch the train at 2pm from Liss. I ordered a bunch of tapes that I hadn’t had time to listen to, and said my goodbyes. I felt sad to be leaving – there were no great spiritual or intellectual breakthroughs, but there was friendship and hospitality; learning and stimulation; work, rest, and a unique experience of community. It was at first almost overwhelming and uncomfortable, but ultimately pleasurable and satisfying.
Everyone has their stories at L’Abri: people at different stages in life, there for different reasons. Lawrence, a Methodist minister wanting to know how to respond to liberalism in his church and denomination. Chris, unsure whether or not the Bible can be trusted in all that it speaks on. Nathan, disillusioned with education and wanting to be a Maths teacher to change things. People looking for answers, people wanting to learn, people trying to discern where to go next in their lives. I’m glad to have been part of that community for a short time, and I’d like to go back sometime.
Hopefully I’ll get round to uploading some photos soon…