Yesterday we had to go to Malvern and as we drove past Stanbrook and saw the ivy growing over the enclosure wall, Digitalnun went very quiet for a few moments, thinking sombre thoughts of dissolution and decay and recalling a purple passage or two from Dom David Knowles. Places become precious by association, doubly so when they are also beautiful and have an inspiring history. The thought of that lovely abbey church gathering dust in the silence and stillness of a summer afternoon was painful. Yes, of course, the community goes on, so does the prayer and the praise, but there is that indescribable thing called "atmosphere" which cannot be recreated without a similar striving.

The photo of the choir was snapped by Digitalnun one evening just before Compline. It could have been taken at any time in the past century and a half and to us who knew it gives a vivid sense of what it was like to step into choir before an Office. What it cannot convey is the wonderful acoustic, the result of sound being bounced from the sounding boards above the choir stalls on to the tiles beneath, nor the smell, a mixture of beeswax and incense and, in summer, myriad scents drifting in from the gardens. Still less can it convey to outsiders the real life of the church, the unceasing round of prayer, public and private, from dawn till dusk, day in, day out, which is the mark of Benedictine community. The church at Stanbrook was the crowning-point of Fr Laurence Shepherd's dream of a resurgent Benedictine monasticism for women and he wore himself out in his efforts to raise the money and see the building completed. I rather hope that we have a similar vision here at Hendred and are similarly earnest in our efforts to realise what a Benedictine monastery may and should be in the twenty-first century. If so, the pain of that passing moment may be an inspiration for the future.