Some words don’t age well. While they may once have been acceptable, even foundational, they are now laden with associations that require us to approach them apologetically. We utter certain words with defensive explanations because of the negative connections that people associate with them. Mention the core Benedictine value of humility and be ready to provide a spirited justification to show that humility doesn’t celebrate groveling or cringing behavior and that it is a most remote cousin to humiliation. In a culture of multi-tasking across nano-seconds, patience is a bit suspect and waiting a thing to be avoided.
Though we study The Rule of St. Benedict, rule is a tricky term for modern non-monastic people. The old monastic rule is one thing, but it gets trickier when we consider a working rule for our own lives. In a discussion with the Benedictine spiritual community at the Washington National Cathedral, a participant said she hadn’t made much progress creating a rule of life, partly because she associates rules with things she shouldn’t do.
A more promising way to start might be to think of the activities, places and practices that make us feel more possible, more at home, more knit into our own place in the web of creation. A rule of life should be built around such elements. A rule can provide advance permission to do what we most want and need to do. If we are to become more human and whole when we spend a silent evening with the dog or reading a great book, we should give that activity a respected place in our rule of life. This may sound self-indulgent, but if an activity helps us find our place in a loving universe, we should not trivialize by calling it an escape from the real challenges of living. Benedictine balance will ensure that we won’t spend all day sitting in our favorite arm chair!
What of the unhealthy and unhelpful things we wish we didn’t spend so much time on? Rather than rule them away with prohibitions, we might diminish their place in our lives by more fully embracing the things that are life-giving. Smokers have greater success quitting when they increase the role of exercise in their lives. Working only on not doing something is much more arduous.
St. Benedict teaches that a balance of prayer, work, study, recreation and hospitality are the best practices for most people, but his Rule is filled with exceptions and nuances that recognize our unique individuality. Hospitality for a raging extrovert might mean setting out a groaning buffet table for friends once every ten days. For someone more introverted, hospitality could mean engaging in a brief but genuine encounter with the grocery clerk or a homeless man. The other practices have similar levels of variation. Recreation includes the jogging trail and the sofa, though it needs to be free of striving or scoring; as empty of purpose as our work life is full of purpose. I play tennis regularly, with effort and score-keeping, but I almost immediately forget who won and don’t much care, otherwise it would a form of unpaid work not recreation.
The elements of Benedict’s Rule are enhanced by their interconnections. A Study in the Harvard Business Review shows that when work teams took predictable time off during every work week (and this had to be forced on many in the study), they worked more effectively within teams, communicated better, and planned and streamlined their work. A time of honest toil enhances the rest or recreation that follows it. The interconnections between prayer and study each deepen the other. The great contemplatives like Thomas Merton attended scheduled times of corporate worship, but it is unclear exactly when their prayer began or ended. In living under a rule for a long time, it may be that the rule’s elements gradually merge with one another.
If nothing else, writing a rule of life can be a way of learning more about what lifts our ordinary lives out of rote action, humorless drudgery or pointless accumulation. A rule can direct us to where the music is playing in the lives we’re already living.
In peace
– Tim Carrington
Tim Carrington is the Chairman of the Board of The Friends of St.
Benedict, 5150 Macomb Street NW, Washington, DC 20016, and the above article
will appear in the Fall issue of Regula, the Friends newsletter, coming out in November.
More information is at www.benedictfriend.org.
