“O send forth your light and your truth; let these be my guide. Let them bring me to your holy mountain to the place where you dwell.” (Ps43)
“Everyone has to put down some part of their past sometime. Everyone makes a major life change at some time or other. Everyone has to be open to being formed again.
The only thing that can possibly deter the new formation is if we ourselves refuse to let go of what was. If we cling to the past, the future is closed to us.”
Joan Chittister, O.S.B.
2018 was a year of upheaval. I had devoted years of time, talent, treasure, “heart and soul” in forming a married and ministerial framework for the remainder of life. In three days, it all came apart. I had no cause or control.
The face of my world had changed revealing the life I had envisioned was an illusion. The one thing I did know was that the path ahead was going to be full of grief, deconstruction, and ongoing (re)formation.
What this upheaval did not change is the core essence of my being and spiritual motive: To seek God’s presence in all things. Discernment and obedience to God’s Spirit and Word for my life. The gift of Love and joy that I experience with my children, grandchildren, and close friends. My openness, honesty, creativity, hospitality, and heart of service.
The artwork in this blog focuses on the process of lithography (metal plate etching) and Benedictine spirituality based in monastic life and the Contemplative (Wisdom) traditions.
The images that follows are from one of the projects we had to do in our printmaking class. I have interwoven text exclusively from Joan Chittister, O.S.B. from her commentary on the Rule of Benedict (see book recommendations).
Benedict of Nursia
Benedict of Nursia was born in the year 480. As a student in Rome, he tired of the decadent culture around him and left it to live a simple life as a hermit in the countryside of Subiaco, about thirty miles away. It wasn’t long, however, before he was discovered both by the people of the area and disciples who where themselves looking for a more meaningful way of life.
Out of these associations sprang the monastic life that would eventually cover Europe. We do not know much more than that about the life of Benedict of Nursia but we know enough about the history of the times to know in what ways his Rule departed from it, gave the world fresh eyes and called people to live life with a new heart.
The Rule of Benedict
The Rule of Benedict is a spiritual guide, rare by virtue of its ancient origins, valued for its continuing meaningfulness in every century since. It is not historical literature, it is wisdom literature. It endures precisely because it is not the history of a particular people, it is not the codification of the ethical mores of a single culture, it is not the teachings of science, it is not, in fact, devoted to the presentation of any particular body of knowledge. Wisdom literature takes as its subject matter the meaning and manner of achieving the well-lived life. It deals with the spiritual, the ascetic, the Divine, and the nature of virtue. Its concerns lie in the meaning of holiness and the fundaments of happiness. Wisdom literature is common to every great tradition. It lifts the spiritual life from the legal to the mystical, from theology to spirituality, from a study of the nature of religion to the depths of the personal spiritual life.
The Rule of Benedict brings a new respect for the seasons of life, community, and stewardship of the world.
The Rule of Benedict requires the development of a kind of humility that makes none of us subject to the whims of the rest of us. To a world where people work for money, the Rule of Benedict requires that we work to continue the will of God for all people. The Rule of Benedict provides a sense of contemplation, the fruits of which enable us to see the world as God sees the world.
Prologue to the Rule
What is it then, that the Rule of Benedict says to the sixth century that gives it not only the right but the need to be heard by the twenty-first century as well? The Rule of Benedict is not concerned with a single time and place, a single view of church, a single set of devotions or a single ministry. The Rule of Benedict is concerned with life: what it’s about, what it demands, how to live it. And it has not failed a single generation.
The Prologue to the rule is its cornerstone and its gauntlet. Read this, the rule says, and if this is not what you’re about, do not read on. Below is the first paragraph of the Prologue.
Listen carefully, my child, to my instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart. This is advice from the one who loves you; welcome it and faithfully put it into practice. The labor of obedience will bring you back to God from whom you had drifted through the sloth of disobedience. This message of mine is for you, then, if you are ready to give up your own will, once and for all, and armed with the strong and noble weapons of obedience to do battle for Jesus, the Christ.
The first word from the Prologue of the Rule of Benedict is “Listen.” Pay attention to the instructions of this Rule and attend to the important things in life. Let nothing go by without being open to being nourished by the inner meaning of that event in life. There is an Oriental proverb that teaches, “Take from death before it takes from thee.” If we do not live life consciously, in other words, we may not be living at all. The Prologue is asking us to do the same.
One part of spirituality, then is learning to be aware of what is going on around us and allowing ourselves to feel its effects. If we live in an environment of corporate greed or personal violence, we can’t grow from it spiritually until we allow ourselves to recognize it.
The other part of spirituality, the Prologue makes quite clear, is learning to hear what God wants in any given situation and being quick to respond to that, to “welcome it and faithfully put it into practice.” To see the greed or sense the violence without asking what the Gospel expects in such a situation is not spirituality. It is a (false) piety at best.
Most important of all, perhaps, is the Prologue’s insistence that this Rule is not being written by a spiritual taskmaster who will bully us or beat us down in a counterfeit claim to growing us up but by someone who loves us and will, if we allow it, carry us along to fullness of life. It is an announcement of profound importance. No one grows by simply doing what someone else forces us to do. We begin to grow when we finally want to grow. All the rigid fathers and demanding mothers and disapproving teachers (and institutions) in the world cannot make up for our own decision to become what we can by doing what we must.
At the same time, Benedict is setting out the importance of not allowing ourselves to become our own guides, or own gods. Obedience, Benedict says, – the willingness to listen to the voice of God in life – is what will wrench us out of the limitations of our own landscape. We are being called to something outside of ourselves, something greater than ourselves, something beyond ourselves. We will need someone to show us the way: the Christ, a loving spiritual model, this Rule.
On a personal note: The spiritual life is not about putting God in our lives. God is already there. Each moment of our lives is an invitation to hear the Beloved and participate in this God-life already at work in us. To love ourselves as God loves us is a daily task. There is no shame that can be on us by others, or ourselves that we do not allow. I am willing to take God’s love for me as absolute and my “true” identity and promise in Christ. It is when we forget our God-given identity we get ourselves in trouble. When we do, our only response is to reaffirm our desire to (re)form once again. This is our daily task of conversion and journey back to the Beloved.
To seek God in all things, opens our vision to find God where we could not see God before, not as a cheap release from the problems of life, but as a deeper dependence and measure of life’s meaning for us.
Our Beloved is a “life-giver” and never a destroyer. This is a most simple benchmark of discerning God-will in our life. If we hold on during our darkest moments, with faith and hope, we will come to experience first-hand that life’s upheavals do not destroy us. As we make passage we will not only encounter a “new breath” of life after our human bodies expire but also in the present.
ps. I began this blog some 18 months ago for several reasons but primarily to remain open to the world community.
To those who follow this blog, you are always welcome to offer a personal comment. If you rather discuss anything with me directly, feel free to email:dcnguyk@gmail.com
