Robert Llewelyn: 'A man of a great man of prayer who in a quiet way simply transformed the landscape of countless people'.

A brief introduction to Robert Llewelyn by Denise Treissman, compiler of a new collection of previously unpublished writings by the former chaplain to the shrine of Julian of Norwich …

‘Robert Llewelyn was an exceptional priest … a great man of prayer who in a quiet way simply transformed the landscape of countless people.’ Rowan Williams

Robert Llewelyn was chaplain and a ‘praying presence’ in the cell of Mother Julian of Norwich from 1976 to 1990. He was known as a man of prayer, and was generous and enthusiastic about sharing his discoveries in prayer with others.

Before he died at the age of ninety-eight on February 6th, 2008 he had asked me to look after his affairs: it has been a joy to compile his unpublished work on prayer into this small book comprising of some of his talks, articles and leaflets, spanning five decades, but with an immediacy and universal appeal relevant to life today.

People came from around the world to see Robert, to enjoy his warm hospitality and love, to share silence with him, for spiritual direction, and to discuss their lives with him. Robert would always know the right book to give or lend, or would offer the appropriate leaflet to answer questions: he was encouraging and informative, always gentle, with a self-deprecating humour, and was known for his love of God, of people and of silence.

When Robert found a quote that helped him, he would type it out and print it and then stick it on his lounge door for everyone to see. Two memorable ones were: ‘Silence is God’s first language; everything else is a poor translation’ (Fr Thomas Keating OSCO) and, ‘When two or more people share a profound silence, they bestow healing on one another’ (Donald Nicholl).

Robert wrote many books on prayer, the first being Prayer and Contemplation, born out of his experience of living as a teacher, priest, Archdeacon and then Principal of Sherwood College in India, and later in 1972 living as part of the Anchorhold Community in Haywards Heath, headed by Father Slade; one of its former residents called this community ‘a laboratory of prayer’.

A former student of Robert’s at Sherwood College said, in the film Love was his Meaning, made after Robert’s death to celebrate his life and influence, ‘Robert taught us love. As his students, we were all of different religions but under him we were one religion and that was love.’ Also in that film, a friend who used to visit Robert for spiritual counsel said: ‘Robert made you feel as if you were the most important person in the whole world: you felt treasured, loved, mothered.’

Robert visited places in France connected with the spiritual reading he had done and was to write later in his autobiography, Memories and Reflections, of the positive influences on him of Taizé, the Curé d’Ars, St Francis de Sales and Jean-Pierre de Caussade. One of St Francis’s quotes he shares is: ‘in the end only the language of the heart can reach another heart, while mere words as they slip from your tongue don’t get past your listener’s ear.’

This small book offers some of Robert’s unpublished talks and writing on prayer and celebrates, as explained in a lovely way in Robert’s philosophy of life on pages 13 – 16, the importance of prayer for life.

The book is divided into four sections: What Is Prayer?; Advice on Prayer from Revelations of Divine Love by the fourteenth-century mystic Lady Julian of Norwich; Ways of Praying; and The Fruits of Prayer.

The question, ‘Why pray?’ is answered clearly by Robert’s words throughout the book in an encouraging way: as Lady Julian says, ‘for it [prayer] does good’. 

My Philosophy of Life by Robert Llewelyn

For my philosophy of life I must begin with a story. I picture a village in India which has all it needs to maintain a simple social life; everything that is, except that it has no water. There is a large tank which the rain kept filled in better days and a distance away there is a well whose water can be used only by transferring it bucket by bucket. Every time a villager puts aside some personal inclination to make that trek across the fields they are pouring into that village the water of life. As the bucket is brought homewards its bearer can have no idea what this pail of water will do. Will it ease the last moments of a dying child, or fertilize a tiny piece of land, or be there for the washing of clothes or the scrubbing of a floor? Who can say? But the water is brought, immersed in the common pool of healing, and that is enough.

We live in a global village and all that we do is inter-related. Each one of us has the choice whether or not to bring the water of life into our stricken world. St Paul bids us to pray without ceasing and this is something to which we may all aspire, seeing prayer as the perpetual inclination of the heart towards God rather than the movement of the lips, though it is the second which will be needed to establish the first. Every prayer which passes my lips or carries the desire of my heart is, as it were, a bucket filled with the water of life. I have no idea what that prayer will accomplish, nor do I ask. It is enough that I put aside my natural sloth and with such love and devotion as is given me offer what I can to be joined with the aspirations of people of good will in every place. It is revealed to Julian that we are to pray wholeheartedly even though we find no joy in it, ‘for it does good’. At the very least it does good to myself and that good cannot help affecting the next person I meet and so a chain reaction is set up. But it goes well beyond that. Somehow, somewhere, in answer to every prayer or praise uttered, or psalm recited or prayerful silence observed, with such sincerity as may be given us, good overcomes evil, light dispels darkness, truth supplants error and, if only in the minutest measure, the world is changed. So, too, for every stranger welcomed or loving deed performed.

On April 25th 2002 there died in Buenos Aires at the age of 102 a remarkable lady, Indian by name though European by birth. Indra Devi was still doing her yoga headstand in her late nineties. But more important was her philosophy of life. ‘You give love and light to everyone, those who love you, those who harm you, those whom you know, those whom you don’t know. It makes no difference. You just give light and love’. ‘At eventide’ says St John of the Cross, ‘they will examine you in love’, and he tells us that where there is no love we are to pour love in and we shall draw love out. No matter how far we fall behind the saints of every faith, the way is open for our sacrifice to be made in the knowledge that even a cup of water lovingly offered will not be despised. This I believe to be the only philosophy that can save us all.

From Five Gold Rings, edited by Anna Jeffery (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2003).

 

Why Pray? Unpublished writings by the former chaplain to the shrine of Julian of Norwich is available now in paperback, priced £6.99. Compiler and editor, Denise Treissman is Robert Llewelyn's Literary Executor.