It's many years since as a Baptist I discovered the Rule of Benedict, that remarkably restrained document of spiritual and monastic formation which exerted formative influence on all subsequent Christian monasticism in the West. Some years later I discovered the writing of Sister Joan Chittister, (photo below) in my view one of the most honest and careful interpreter's of Benedictine spirituality, and an effective apologist for Benedictine values as antidote to the consumptive consumerism which is in the heavily polluted air we now breathe.
WISDOM
To the wise life is not a series of events to be controlled. Life is a way of walking through the universe whole and holy.
LEADERSHIP.
God does not want people in positions simply to get the job done. He wants people in positions who embody why we bother to do the job at all. God wants holy listeners who care about the effect of what they do o everyone else. Imagine a world ruled by holy listeners.
EGOTISM
“When we refuse to give place to others, when we consume all the space of our worlds with our own sounds and our own truths and our own wisdom and our own ideas, there is no room for anyone else’s ideas. When a person debates contentiously with anyone, let alone with the teachers and the guides of their life, the ego becomes a majority of one and there is no one left from whom to learn.
ARROGANCE
When we make ourselves God, no one in the world is safe in our presence.
TIMIDITY
We cxling to our own ways like snails to sea walls, inching along through life, hiding within ourselves, unconscious even of the nourishing power of the sea that i seeking to sweep us into wider worlds.
THE ORDINARY
God does not come on hoofbeats of mercury through streets of gold. God is in the dregs of our lives. That's why it takes humility to find God where God is not expected to be.
COMMUNITY
If we do not serve one another we are, at best, a collection of people who live alone together.
HOSPITALITY
The message to each stranger is clear. Come right in and disturb our perfect lives. You are the Christ for us today.
All quotations are from The Rule of Benedict. Insights for the Ages. STrangely it is more easily available from Amazon.com rather than the UK site. I don't usually advertise Amazon, but no point in recommending a book that's hard to get in this country!
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