Wisdom Distilled from the Daily

by Joan Chittister

  Benedictine spirituality structures life with peace in mind as well. In the Benedictine life, there is to be something of everything and not too much of anything. Life, according to the Benedictine tradition, is to have order and balance and quiet to it. Life is not expected to be perfect; life is simply expected to be dealt with reverently.

  People who slam doors know nothing about Benedictine peace. Worse, the very act of slamming doors adds to the tensions of life. People who always talk at the top of their voices have nowhere to go under stress except into even wilder anxiety or into black and silent bitterness. People for whom life is a trail of clothes and books and half-done projects and disordered days drive peace into oblivion.

  Peace comes from living a measured life. Peace comes from attending to every part of my world in a sacramental way. My relationships are not what I do when I have time left over from work. My family is not something I pay quiet attention to only when all the other parts of my life—the wash, the cleaning, the yard, the parties, the neighbors, the clubs, the career, and the hobbies—are all finished. Reading is not something I do when life calms down. Prayer is not something I do when I feel like it. They are all channels of hope and growth for me. They must all be given their due. And, Benedictine spirituality implies, they must all be given only their due.

  The Rule is very clear about what it takes to live in peace. Peace comes from not needing to control everything and not needing to have everything and not needing to surpass everyone and not needing to know everything and not needing to have everyone else be like me. Peace comes from seeking God in the present and seeing the world as a whole. To treat any single fragment of life as if it were all of life is to turn a single vision of good into a consuming and fanatic disruption of the actual rhythm of life.

  Benedictine spirituality with its emphasis on prayer and work and listening and the other, on order and silence and balance, on humility and patience and contemplative consciousness is an invitation to personal peace. It says that life is an excursion into consciousness and quality and calm. It says that only life lived with passion for all its parts can possibly lead us to a sense of harmony.

  Peace, our world says, comes from being able to escape stress or reject responsiblity or assure our superiority. Peace, the Rule says, comes from not allowing any part of us to consume the rest of us. When fear of failure haunts us, peace is not possible. When fear of the other erodes our ability to trust, peace is not possible. When life is always lived at high speed, peace is not possible. When what we have means more to us than what we are, peace is not possible. When ambition eats at our hearts and our schedules and our goals and our sense of self, peace is not possible. When consumption is more important to us than contemplation, peace is not possible. When people are more of a bother than a revelation to us, then peace is not possible. When idleness is more our vision of the good life than creative productivity, then peace is not possible. When profit means more to us than quality of life, then peace is not possible. When these things fray our nerves and waste our days and disturb our nights, then our souls have dried and frozen.

  The Rule of Benedict has another whole way of living life in mind. Take time for everything, the Rule says. Don’t miss the goodness in anything. Remember that life has many dimensions, explore them all. Remember that life does not end here. This life is not our only goal. Life is not something to be hoarded; it is something to be savored and something to be shared. The Rule shows us that peace comes when we end the war within ourselves.

  But war within ourselves is always a prelude to war outside ourselves. All war starts within our own hearts. When our egos are inflated or our desires insatiable, we go to war with the other for the sad joy of maintaining our one-dimensional worlds.

  In the face of all of this, the Rule of Benedict offers a model of peace that depends on being gentle with ourselves, gentle with the other, and gentle with the earth. It is a vision of nonviolence that Benedictine spirituality gives a world for which violence is the air it breathes, the songs it sings, the heroes it worships, the business it does.

  Imagine a world where small children are not jerked down supermarket aisles in the name of discipline.

  Imagine a world where it’s possible to watch television for one whole night, on any station, and not be subjected to shootouts and beatings and muggings in the name of entertainment.

  Imagine a world where young people are able to find good jobs without having to be part of a war machine designed to destroy the earth in the name of defense.

  Imagine a world where other races and nations and peoples are not demonized to justify our militarism.

  Imagine a world where differences are resolved by force of character rather than by force of arms.

  Imagine a world where the peace of Christ with its prophetic honesty and reckless compassion and nonviolent resistance to evil is the rule of the country

  But more important perhaps, for now, simply imagine a home where the members of the family do not shout at one another or steal one another’s possessions or restrict one another’s movements or slap one another into subjection or bully one another into compliance or intimidate one another into domestic slavery That would be a Benedictine home.

  Imagine a home where children were taught that those things were wrong, even in the name of patriotism. That would be a Benedictine home.

  Imagine a home where being a little girl did not make a child a less promising being or give her any less to hope for. That would be a Benedictine home.

  Imagine a home where being a little boy did not mean having to prove himself with his fists or his muscles or his willingness to give and take pain. That would be a Benedictine home.

  Imagine a home where both its women and its men could cry. That would be a Benedictine home.

  Imagine a home that taught its children to evaluate the laws and actions of the country according to the laws of God: thou shalt not lie; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not covet; thou shalt not make false gods. That would be a Benedictine home.

  Equality and reverence and personal differences and the building of community and listening to the Word of God would all be paramount in a place like this. And that would be very Benedictine.

  Imagine a home where all these Benedictine values began to ooze out into the neighborhood and nation around it, and nonviolent resistance became a way of life. Imagine a nation where we would help one another to struggle for truth and justice but never, never with murder in our hearts or blood on our hands.

  Imagine how difficult it would be then to make war or practice segregation or refuse starving refugees. Governments would be forced to come right out and honestly slaughter the unarmed innocent rather than be able to justify their crimes in the name of having to defend themselves against mad and malicious revolutionaries. No one was sure, for instance, that the militant Malcolm X was right in his armed war against a white, racist state, but everyone knew, even in pre-civil rights U.S.A., that to send attack dogs against college boys and preachers at a lunch counter in Atlanta or guns and bombs against girls in a church choir was a sin. Everyone knew that there was something wrong about using fire hoses on peaceful protesters, but everyone knew, too, that for a tired black lady to sit down on a bus at the end of her work day, segregation laws or no segregation laws, was certainly right. Nonviolence is a strong defense. Nonviolence is not passive; nonviolence is simply nondestructive.

  The Benedictine worldview says be gentle with yourself, be gentle with the other, be gentle with the earth. Give to others whatever they need (RB 34). Care for the stranger with the best you have (RB 61). Listen to one another (RB 3). Be kind of speech to one another (RB 31). Take care of the guest and the sick and the children and the traveler and everyone in the community whoever they are, rich or poor, young or old, titled or not (RB 30, 38, 53, 55, 59, 63). Handle everything with reverence (RB 32). And work for the good of all (RB 48).

  It was to Benedictine monasteries that refugees stre
amed in the Middle Ages. It was Benedictines who sought to make warfare a moral matter in the Middle Ages. It was Benedictines who demonstrated that all classes of society—cleric and lay, young and old, slave and free, Romans and foreigners—could live together as sisters and brothers in Christ.

  Benedictine spirituality intends a nonviolent world where the least favored, the most needy, the totally defenseless are protected and heard and provided for with justice. In the Prophetic Book of Baruch, God names the Chosen “the Peace of Justice.” Benedictine spirituality brings this model of peace-through-justice to every place it builds and breaths.

  Peace is not monastic romanticism. Peace is a monastic mission. Benedictine peace flows from the scriptural vision of the mandate to co-create the Kingdom, to “till and nurture and tend the Garden” (Gen 2:15) that has been left to us. “The heavens are yours,” Psalm 18 reads in the monastic Office, “but the earth you have given to us.” Indeed.

  And how shall we achieve this peace in our hearts, our homes, and our nation? The symbols of the Paschal mystery—the marks of the cross and the palm fronds and nails—on the monastic ring give the answer. We cannot expect life to be without struggle, perhaps. We cannot expect life to be perfect. But we can expect to see life come from death. We can expect to see morning after night. We can expect that acceptance of the struggle will give rise to the victory over self. We can expect that commitment to struggle against the forces of chaos within us and around us will bring the energy that love always brings. We can expect that dying for the other will bring us to new life within ourselves. We can expect the enemy to see the face of God where there is no violent response.

  And to support this mystery there is a growing body of data. Historians point to the effectiveness of nonviolent resistance against the Germans in France and the English in India and the segregationists in the United States. Psychologists are beginning to warn us that anger unrestrained in the interests of “expressing our emotions” simply generates more anger. Communication theorists point out again and again that people most commonly respond in the key in which they’ve been addressed. And social psychologists document clearly the effect of violence on the emotional, social, and intellectual development of abused children and battered wives and beaten dogs.

  Violence is getting us nowhere. Benedictine spirituality calls us beyond all of that by demanding personal dignity and mutual respect and listening. Order and quiet and regularity and Scripture and work, all done in the interest of the coming of the Kingdom in our hearts and in our world, keep us from becoming frenetic, from becoming narcissistic, from becoming demanding, from becoming our own gods. Peace comes when we realize our place in the universe and refuse to inflate it.

  But do not be misled. Peace is not passivity. It takes great effort and continual commitment and the humdrum of years of dailiness to make the world come down right, to come down loving and equal in the home and the world. It means that every day we have to learn to curb our own urge for power and to resist the propaganda designed to make enemies of strangers.

  Peace is a by-product of humility. And humility is always honest; it is just never arrogant, never pushy, never destructive. No, humility convicts simply by its accusing presence and courageous evaluations of what is patently wrong but never open to discussion: the arms race, slavery, wife beating, the national debt, human poverty in a nation of plenty.

  The peace you see in the life of Christ clamors for justice so that others, like us, may take their own right places in the universe as well. Benedictine peace calls us to value that other. Benedictine peace is founded on justice: give to the poor; be open to the stranger; care for the weak; respect one another; be gentle with one another; work for the community; guard the earth. The Rule requires it.

  Then comes the serenity of the one who can be run through with the sword without batting an eye. Then comes the fullness of the mystery of the ring.

  15

  The Monastic Vision: Gift for a Needy World

  [N]ow that we have asked God who will dwell in the holy tent, we have heard the instruction for dwelling in it, but only if we fulfill the obligations of those who live there. We must, then, prepare our hearts and bodies for the battle of holy obedience to his instructions. What is not possible to us by nature, let us ask the Holy One to supply by the help of grace. If we wish to reach eternal life, then—while there is still time, while we are in this body and have time to accomplish all these things by the light of life—we must run and do now what will profit us forever.

  RB PROLOGUE.:39–44

  The chapel in our monastery is one entire wing of the house. It has a soaring cathedral ceiling that rises majestically from a sloping floor. The east and west walls that frame the space are stained-glass from the ceiling almost to the baseboards. The altar stands starkly in the center of the sanctuary. Live plants grow profusely at its edges as if nourished from this spring of living water.

  It’s a beautiful chapel and a fairly traditional one, except for one thing. The chapel doors are glass. All glass. People have been known to walk into them, in fact, unaware of their presence. From the altar, then, the foyer is a clear view. From the foyer, the altar makes a magnetic center. Each is to the other a necessity. To be at the altar is to be drawn away from it. To be in the foyer is to be drawn toward it. I have a notion that that is about all there is to say about Benedictine spirituality.

  There’s an ancient story that explains the gift of Benedictine life to the modern world.

  Once upon a time, the story begins, some seekers from the city asked the local monastic a question:

  “How does one seek union with God?”

  And the Wise One said, “The harder you seek, the more distance you create between God and you.”

  “So what does one do about the distance?” the seekers asked.

  And the elder said simply, “Just understand that it isn’t there.”

  “Does that mean that God and I are one?” the disciples said.

  And the monastic said, “Not one. Not two.”

  “But how is that possible?” the seekers insisted.

  And the monastic answered, “Just like the sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and the song. Not one. But not two.”

  When Benedict of Nursia wrote his ancient Rule in the sixth century, he did not write a manual of spiritual exercises or a codex of canon laws. The Rule was not an excursion into the occult or the mystical or even the grimly ascetic. The Rule of Benedict was a document designed simply to make people conscious of the God-life in which they are already immersed. The Rule of Benedict set out to make the normal and the natural the stepping stones of the Holy. The Rule of Benedict was written by a lay prophet in the church who understood humanity and lived it without apology

  Benedictine spirituality, then, rests on elements that have meaning in our own time: prayer, lectio (reflective reading of Scripture), community, balance, humility, mindfulness, obedient listening, and stewardship of the earth. Never before in history have those elements been needed more.

  Benedict teaches us to this day that prayer is more than the recitation of prayers of petition. Prayer is the putting on of the mind of Christ so that we learn to see the world as God sees it. Benedictine prayer is not designed to change God or to coax God to save me from my selfish self. No, prayer in the Rule of Benedict is designed to change me, to open me to the in-breaking of the Spirit in life today, to stretch me beyond my own agendas to take on the compassionate heart of Christ. Prayer in Benedictine spirituality is not an exercise or a discipline. Prayer is the act of recognizing that life is infused with the Divine and that, whatever I am, I am capable of being more. Prayer, in Benedictine spirituality, is not only for consolation and courage, it is for challenge as well.

  Lectio, or the reflective reading of Scripture that Benedict mandates for the serious Christian, is meant to make me see that the Scriptures were written for me, to me, that my own life is an Exodus story, a salvation story, a crucifix
ion story, a resurrection story and that, as the cycles of my life change, I become a different character in each of the scenarios. I have known what it is to be Nathan and not use my influence to save the poor who depend on me. I have known what it is to be Samuel, to be called and called and called and not recognize the Voice. I have known what it is to be Mary and to be rejected for doing what the will of God demands of me now.

  In lectio, I come to new understandings of my own life. Sometimes, like Nicodemus, I have preferred to approach Jesus at night rather than to speak his beatitudes in the full light of the office or the party or the club. But, in lectio, too, I discover that Nicodemus finally is able to break with social expectations, spend himself to claim Jesus’ body, care for it, and pay the cost of doing that. Lectio, in other words, gives us depth of understanding and energy and promise.