It has become an essential rite of passage for many young people and a chance to “find themselves” while trekking in the Andes or joining a Buddhist retreat.
But now the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Justin Welby, is making a surprise move into the gap year market by starting a new monastic community in Lambeth Palace for young people to experience a life of prayer and meditation.
In a major break with tradition, the Archbishop is inviting 16 young people to move into the 800-year-old palace by Thames, opposite the Houses of Parliament, for a year.
Read it all and you can find more information there.
Internships are one thing, but this sounds pretty wacky with ‘Abbot Justin.’ Will he and they all get tonsures?
What happened to all those wacky nuns from the Community of the Chemin de Fer – have they gone on the run?
They’re coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa.
To the funny farm, where life is beautiful all the time and I’ll be happy to see those nice young men in their clean white coats and they’re coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!!
To the happy home, with trees and flowers and chirping birds and basket cases who sit and smile and twiddle their thumbs and toes and they’re coming to take me away, ha-haa!!!
To Lambeth Palace, where life is beautiful all the time
I am minded to start the Community of the Venerable Bede. I invite young healthy and preferably not unattractive gap year students to join me in scribal work writing comments on internet blogs and in return for lodging in unheated attic rooms at my crumbling ecclesiastical hovel on the South Bank and a bowl of gruel a day, you will have the opportunity to pray with me when I am not collecting airmiles or promoting gay stuff in schools. You will also receive training in self-mortification – cleaning loos, running errands, listening to me trying out my speeches, and the opportunity to wear a seriously unflattering hair shirt and a very uncool baldy haircut – women too! Mornings will start with self-flaggelation, a quick run round the gardens and a cold communal bath in the Thames.
Apply to my correspondence secretary at Cranky Towers
Abbot and Grand Master Pageantmaster
RE: “you will have the opportunity to pray with me . . . ”
[i][snort][/i]
; > )