VISITORS marvel at my hollyhocks. A sumptuous cerise, they sway against the ancient wall. An old gardening book is crammed with hollyhock advice. But I let them get on with it - life. Their buds must have suggested the crockets on spires. They have shabby feet and dizzy tops.

A young Polish neighbour has the grass in hand, and the long walk has stripes. Imagine! Tiny oval Victoria plums nod above it. The white cat searches for shade. Summer rain in the night. It seems to fall for hours, but in the morning nothing is more than damp.

To Bury St Edmunds, to preach on "The lay voice". The cathedral burns in the sun. It is full to the brim, and the eucharistic candles waver in an interior freshness. It is just past St Benedict's Day. The true Benedictine asked for little more on earth than to sing in God's house, and to carry the song forward in heaven. The Rule stayed firm and strict, despite the cultural contradictions of history.

Similar to St Francis, Benedict drew the crowds, when all he wanted to do was to exist according to a rule for himself. He was a young man who shrank from anything approaching religious flamboyance. I expect his clever sister Scholastica could have been a bit crushing.

I told the summery cathedral how the Suffolk monks who followed the Benedictine pattern sat in a ring each morning to hear the Gospel read, chapter by chapter, their habits spattered with the blues, reds, greens, and yellows of the windows, while they reaped, as it were, the spiritual harvest of order.

Anglicanism is wonderfully orderly. I sometimes think of poor young John Henry Newman in St Peter's, after he had "gone over", as they said, as he contrasted its ramshackle processions with those at Oxford. Bury Cathedral on a baking morning would have pleased him. It seemed also full of love and prayer.

It began life as the pilgrims' church - medieval monks were not at all keen to have their place of worship used by holy tramps, and since those at Bury were immensely rich, they were able to build a special church for them. Dedicated to St James, it could hardly have been more beautiful. It waited a few centuries for a tower. All in good time.

Benedict's Rule was not elaborately set to music: it was plainly sung. We lifted the roof. Benedictines share silence. They try not to keep it to themselves. This is an art. Pop festivals share row. But this morning, at Bury St Edmunds, we are to share the lay calling. There is a priesthood of the laity, as well as that of the ordained, and this service at Bury describes it. Neither Benedict nor Francis was ordained.

This coming Sunday, I will read the prayers of Robert Louis Stevenson at matins and evensong, at Wormingford and Little Horkesley. I discovered them in a muddly bookshop years ago, and have come to treasure them. Stevenson wrote them for his "household" on Samoa, a group of some 40 people.

He summoned them morning and evening by blowing a conch shell, and then, in his fine Edinburgh voice, he would read prayers that only Edinburgh could understand. The Samoans put fresh flowers in their hair, and entered into them in ways that were not to be examined.

"Lord, behold our family here assembled. We thank thee for this place in which we dwell, for the love which unites us, the peace accorded us this day. . ."