In May 2005 a new BBC TV series made its broadcast appearance on the BBC TWO network in the U.K.  Filmed at Worth Benedictine Abbey near Crawley in West Sussex, it fit the wildly successful template of American reality television of the time involving “5 modern lay men with little or no experience of Christian monastic life sharing in the life of the monks for 40 days and nights.”
 
Worth’s superior at the time was Abbot Christopher Jamison, the current Abbot President of the English Benedictine Congregation which includes Portsmouth Abbey, St. Louis Abbey and St. Anselm’s Abbey in Washington, D.C.  Abbot Christopher went on to write two books based on his experience with the 5 men and with the modern-day production company setting up shop, as it were, in the normally private confines of Worth’s monastic enclosure.  The first to be published was Finding Sanctuary: Monastic Steps for Everyday Life (2006), followed by Finding Happiness: Monastic Steps for a Fulfilling Life (2009).
 
For a time afterwards, one could not avoid stumbling over display kiosks touting the 2 books outside WH Smith and other bookselling shops in airports throughout the U.K., thus propelling Abbot Christopher into that rarefied atmosphere of a minor celebrity.
 
If anyone with a keenly discerning eye suspected they might have spotted this abbot/author/television celebrity on the Portsmouth campus during the final days of the Christmas season, they would be correct. Last spring Abbot Christopher conducted a quadrennial Visitation of Portsmouth Abbey which involved, among many other things, meeting individually with the monks of both Portsmouth and St. Louis.  As is often the case, it takes an outside observer or visitor to spot areas in a corporate body which might be in need of fine-tuning and improving. 
 
After a Visitation report is prepared and delivered which delineates various recommendations, follow-up meetings are required months later, and this was the purpose of Abbot Christopher’s most recent visit.  While in residence, he was the principal celebrant of the Conventual Mass on January 11, the Saturday after Epiphany.  The Gospel reading was John 3:22-30 which ends with the brilliantly succinct and oft-quoted declaration of only six simple words: “He must increase; I must decrease.”
 
It sounds so simple, but in pondering what he must do in order for Jesus Christ to increase in his life personally as Lord and Savior, Abbot Christopher focused primarily on the other side of the equation.
“Grievance,” he said, is the main sticking point which needs eradication and removal.  Grievance must be decreased in one’s life.  A grievance can be a feeling of injustice, complaint, mistreatment, or of an unfair allegation.  It was a timely message to hear at the close of the Christmas season after months and months of disturbing news stories and images of social, economical and political unrest, not only here at home, but worldwide, on continent after continent, each one the home of many of our international students and other friends.
 
We wish Abbot Christopher safe travels this month, especially to Peru, and eagerly look forward to his next visit to New England.