For the Benedictines, gardening was an equaliser and nobody within the monastery was too grand or too learned to work in the garden for part of the day. This was a culture of care and reverence in which the gardener’s tools were to be treated with the same level of respect as the vessels of the altar. It was a way of life in which the body, mind

Would a return to art’s ancient, primal function of elucidating religion signal its death? Or is our culture beginning to see the wisdom of a narrative that includes reconciliation, restoration and redemption?