A Letter to Pepys Island

The Remoteness of Sacred Things

To the Companions of the Margery Kempe's Chivalric Prayer Fellowship,

My dear fellows,

There are many reasons why modern men distrust remote places. They prefer immediacy, convenience, efficiency, and dreadful little applications that permit one to order soup whilst ignoring one's own soul. Consequently, the existence of our Fellowship upon the distant shores of Pepys Island appears to many persons absurd, impractical, and perhaps faintly unwell.

I confess this is precisely what attracts me to it.

A religious society ought never to feel entirely accessible. One should arrive at it slightly wind-beaten, uncertain, and carrying too many books. Christianity itself began, after all, in deserts, on mountains, in caves, and upon storm-tossed seas. The modern instinct is forever to drag sacred things nearer; to flatten them into comfort, until even prayer resembles customer service.

Pepys Island resists this beautifully.

One does not simply "drop by" the Fellowship. One attempts it. One prepares. One writes letters weeks in advance. One misses ferries. One suffers weather. Once, during the Michaelmas Convocation of 2015, Canon Blenkinsop accidentally arrived in Montevideo and remained there for three days under the impression that he was still in Wales. Such things lend dignity to an institution.

And yet the remoteness is not merely geographical. It is spiritual. The Fellowship exists, in its own modest way, at a slight remove from the noise of the age. We are united less by proximity than by rhythm: the same psalms whispered in different nations, the same prayers offered at the same evening hour beneath entirely different skies.

There is something profoundly consoling in imagining a Companion in Nova Scotia praying Compline whilst another lights a candle in Buenos Aires, and some exhausted retired schoolmaster in Sussex mutters the Litany beside a dying fire and an overfed cat.

This, I think, is closer to Christendom than conferences ever were.

I must also confess another reason for my enduring affection toward the Fellowship, though it is one which scandalises energetic people who enjoy committees. The Fellowship has always possessed an unusual tolerance for theological speculation conducted in good faith and good manners.

We are not a sect. Still less are we a tribunal. The Fellowship imposes remarkably few intellectual uniforms upon its members. One Companion may privately ponder the sleep of the soul between death and resurrection; another may spend thirty years composing melancholy letters on Judas Iscariot, and emerge at the end of it perilously close to acquitting the poor man altogether.; a third may disappear entirely into researches about Joseph of Arimathea, ancient Britain, the Grail legends, or whether certain saints reached Heaven by means considerably more physical than modern theology finds fashionable.

Others speculate upon the strange chronology of Scripture, obscure traditions concerning Mary Magdalene, the mysteries of the Resurrection body, the antiquity of angels, the nature of immortality, or the more bewildering corners of patristic interpretation. A few possess views so magnificently eccentric that one suspects excessive candle smoke may be involved.

Yet the remarkable thing is this: the Fellowship does not immediately howl, denounce, anathematise, or begin composing public statements. It listens. It argues. It raises an eyebrow. It consults Scripture, the Fathers, poetry, and occasionally railway timetables. But it remembers that conversation itself is not apostasy.

This spirit of restraint first endeared the Fellowship to me.

Modern religious life often resembles a permanent state of nervous panic, in which every speculative thought must either become a dogma or a scandal within forty-eight hours. Pepys Island remains one of the few places I have encountered where difficult questions may still be discussed slowly, carefully, and without theatrical outrage.

Naturally, the Fellowship retains the historic creeds and the central devotions of the Christian Faith. One cannot simply arrive announcing oneself the reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar whilst demanding liturgical dance. Standards must exist. But within those bounds survives a rare and civilised liberty of inquiry.

Indeed, our custom of anonymity assists this greatly. Many of our Companions do not publicly speak of their membership at all. The Rule encourages discretion, humility, and a certain cheerful invisibility. In an age obsessed with performance, there is something noble about a society which prefers to whisper rather than advertise.

The world insists constantly upon visibility, urgency, outrage, and self-display. Our Fellowship proposes instead obscurity, patience, courtesy, prayer, and the preservation of beautiful things which the age has deemed unnecessary. It is not an efficient model. Neither, for that matter, is a monastery.

As Warden Emeritus, I remain convinced that distance itself may sometimes be medicinal. A soul cannot hear bells properly when standing too close to the machinery of the world.

And so I encourage all Companions: continue faithfully in the Rule of the Bell. Keep the Offices. Write letters. Pray for one another. Defend gentleness wherever you find it endangered. And should Providence ever permit your arrival upon Pepys Island itself, you shall find the chapel cold, the tea weak, the roof unreliable, and the fellowship exceedingly warm.

Yours in prayer and stubborn hope,

Timothy Monday

Warden Emeritus

Margery Kempe's  Chivalric Prayer Fellowship