Mass at North Stoke Originally uploaded by seadipper I have just finished a week’s retreat. I stayed in a guesthouse run by a community of nuns. It was very comfortable and good value. My room had a view over a lake. The nuns meet in the church to sing the office four times a day, which they do beautifully, in the vernacular, which unlike the English translations, are true to the Latin. The median age of the sisters is, I would guess, on the wrong side of fifty, which is not disastrous but nevertheless worrying if the continued existence of the community is to be assured. The interesting thing is that this community survived the upheavals of the 1970s, despite, or possibly because it adapted to the changes that followed on from Vatican II. The question that comes to my mind is whether there is a need for further changes in the near future. Most, if not all, of the community members seem to have come from another country, which is not in itself significant, but it must be a disappointm...
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