Chapter 67
The Rule of St. Benedict August 25
Our Father Benedict acknowledges and seeks to deal here with a spiritual reality that I have experienced often in my life and work in churches. Each person brings with her to church an invisible crowd of other people and past experiences that affect the spiritual climate of the gathering. Sometimes the presence of this unseen crowd is overwhelming. Sometimes it's easy to ignore.
In a Benedictine community, ignoring it is not an option, so St. Benedict wisely makes the unseen dynamics explicit by establishing a protocol whereby the spiritual climate of the community can be cleansed. When we commit ourselves to a vowed life in a religious community, we place ourselves at the mercy of each other's inner well-being. In a significant way, we release our right to carry our baggage alone and claim that its dark contents are nobody's business. We own the fact that we were never successful in the first place at keeping the contents from spilling out onto the people around us. With the illusion of independence removed and replaced with mutual commitment and compassion, we are able to unpack our bags in safety and begin the hard work of bringing what has sat in long darkness into the Light.
Br. Chad 2012
isters and Brothers...
ReplyDeleteI was so independent in every way at one point in my life, that even in the worst of times, asking for help would never have occurred to me. The situation would just have been something that I would have had to figure out and then make a plan to set a solution into play.
Through the times of great illness in my life, I was in a situation, wherein I could not have not only not survived alone through it, I could not even gotten to a doctor to begin the process of healing...or... cure.
I have learned through the experiences of both Liver and Kidney disease...that, my Soul and Spirit also have illness that I alone cannot begin to heal..or..cure. This is why I follow a spiritual path. This is why I change up the spiritual path occasionally. I cannot grow spiritually in isolation.
There are times when I choose to be in seclusion for an entire day. I choose the quiet time so as to remember the voice of the silence that lives deep within me. In my nature lies the continual urge to have to always be doing something or to feel guilty if I am not fully engaged in doing something.
It often feels like a great voice shouting within me, "move, move, move." I am blessed now, having begun to learn how to release the shouting within and along with it the guilt of not being busy enough doing...things. Inside our order I am finding the quiet within the singing the prayer of the Psalms...(I have never before found them so filled with life and beauty). I am also once again finding a reason to trust God through the loving help of my Brothers and Sisters, and a safe haven in which to trust them and in which to participate in the healing...or...cure of the spirit or soul of another person.
I am Blessed,
Peace and Possibilities,
Brother Rawleigh