Obedience: Not What You May Think

To be obedient is often equated with being weak, incapable of making decisions, or having intelligence or creativity.  In our current politicized environment, being obedient to COVID mandates has become a political stance for some.  For many, obedience describes what we feel others owe us.  As Americans, many of us think of obedience as subservient behavior or an infringement on our rights.  St. Benedict’s vision of obedience is different. 

First, Benedict understood the Latin root for obedience means “to listen thoroughly or deeply. The Rule states,

For a lifetime, the monk’s first obligation is always “to listen.”  He will listen – and listen to God – in the reading of the Scriptures, in the liturgy, in the Rule, in the tradition, in his abbot, in his reading, in his quiet prayer, in hos fellow monks, and in his heart, (RB Prologue 1).

Obedience for St. Benedict, therefore, is not listening just with the mind as an intellectual exercise, but with the heart, which is the root of love/respect.  Benedict coins the phrase “listen with the ear of your heart.”

In the Rule Benedict describes obedience as both listening and responding.  “Those who practice obedience set aside their own concerns, plans, and tasks in order to quickly respond to the request.  The requested action would be completed without hesitation, almost at the same moment the request was made (RB 5.7-9) The true sense of obedience is listening to God, to another person, and to our lives and responding to what we hear because of love/respect.

Several weeks ago, I was invited to help my daughter in Atlanta with my newborn granddaughter and 4 yr. old grandson.  Tending to their needs brought me the deepest sense of gratitude because I was obedient to their needs and responded with pure love.

Being obedient to family can be much easier than being obedient within a community.  I think for me, this is because I have experience of being forced to be obedient to leaders and managers, who did not exemplify good integrity.  The Rule offers strict instruction on the role of those in leadership, whom others are pledged to obey.

  • Lead a life that would teach what was good and holy and not only by what he said but what he did – the old quip “Do as I say and not as I do” was not in Benedict’s vocabulary (RB 2.12);
  • Never teach or ask for anything that would be incompatible with Christ’s instruction (RB 2.4);
  • Avoid favoring one person over another (RB 2.16);
  • Hate the sins but love the brother (RB 64.11); let mercy triumph over judgment (RB 2.13 and RB 64.10);
  • Show foresight and consideration in the orders that he would give (RB 64.15) and strive to be loved rather than feared (RB 64.17);
  • Not be easily agitated or anxious, or demand too much of others or be a perfectionist or be filled with suspicion of others (RB 64:16);
  • Follow the footsteps of Jacob who said, “If I drive my flocks too hard, they will die in a single day” (Gen 33:13 and RB 64.18).

The Rule goes on to instruct that if anything important is to be done in the monastery, the entire community is called together to give advice to the abbot.  ALL are to be heard and special care should be taken to listen to the younger members of the community because God often reveals what is better to the youngest (RB 3.3).

Obedience is accountability in community and in relationships.  We put others before ourselves.  We strive to be honest and open. Obedience is laying aside my plans, my desires, my life, for God and for others.   In the Benedictine sense, obedience is not what we can expect from others.  Obedience is what we do ourselves for others.

Practicing Obedience

A way to begin is to practice loving God and our neighbor.  This sounds so quaint but respecting the dignity of every human being and keeping our eyes and hearts focused on God will help us create new muscle memory.  Discovering God’s will by letting go of our own desires and by not trying to control every minute of our days and every outcome of our lives is a solid start.  We, therefore, can view our daily tasks and responsibilities as God’s will for us and do them in love and respect for others.  The most holy responsibility we can offer is to respect one another and let this respect guide our words, our choices, and our responses.  This is obedience.

Obedience through our Relationship with our Creator

               Obedience is simply listening to God in our daily encounters and responding is a respectful and    selfless way. 

               Benedictine obedience is a two-step process:

  1. Open your eyes to movements and light of the Creator’s presence.  This light both guides and encourages.  The light is always there.  It is us who loose focus.  Open your eyes, ears, and heart to seek the answer to this question:  what is God asking me to do or be in this situation?
  • Let your knowledge of Christ or the divine presence guide you.  With a gentle heart, respect, seek peace amid conflict, practice forgiveness, and offer patience.  When you feel your hearts hardening against a person or situation, it is a warning to set aside your ego and let the Spirit be your guide.

 Remembering a Time of Obedience

Obedience is not just doing what we need to check a box; it is seeing what needs to be done and responding with a deep sense of gratitude to fulfill the need fully with love and gratitude in your hearts.  It is listening and responding to what our Creator is placing before us.

Reflect on a time when you experienced an unforeseen distraction or a spontaneous request to help someone that you responded to.

  • What did you experience?  How was it positive?  How was it negative?
  • What plans and needs did you have to set aside to respond?
  • In the experience you recalled, how did you listen and respond?

               Now repeat the process but reflect on a time when you are in a leadership position.

  • How did your leadership teach others what was good and holy?
  • Did your leadership style strive for respect or fear?
  • How did you keep from showing favoritism?  If you showed favoritism, how could responses be shifted in the future to avoid favoritism?
  • What did you request that aligns with Christ’s teachings?

Grumbling

Benedict cautions us against polluting our acts of obedience with grumbling, which destroys us as well as the communities of which we engage.  We grumble to ourselves and we grumble to others.  Either are damaging.

Grumbling is natural, so it may be hard at first to recognize or to accept how often we catch ourselves.  However, these are the most common signs:

  • Negative thoughts about a person or a situation
  • Obsessive thoughts about a person or a situation
  • Comparison between ourselves and others that are negative towards the other person
  • Feelings or actions rooted in envy or jealousy
  • Justifying our poor behaviors either to ourselves or aloud
  • Persistent negative feelings or outlooks on life
  • Talking or thinking negatively about others
  • Lack of a sense of humor

               What are other signs of grumbling?

  • Do you hear grumbling in your heart?
  • What kinds of situations bring forth grumbling for you?
  • Who do you grumble about and why?

Your invited to journal for your own edification and/or add comments to the blog feed of what worked or did not work for you when dealing with obedience.  Next Wednesday we will explore the topic of humility.

May you experience a holy Lent that offers you a place of solace and holiness.

Stability: The Power of Persistence

Do not grant newcomers to the monastic life an easy entry, but, as the Apostle says, ‘Test the spirits to see if they are from God.’ (1 John 4:11). Therefore, if someone comes and keeps knocking at the door, and if at the end of four or five days he has shown himself patient in bearing his harsh treatment and difficulty of entry, and has persisted in his request, then he should be allowed to enter and stay in the guest quarters for a few days.  (Rule 58:1-4)

Before we enter into a conversation of stability and perseverance, it is critical to understand that although the goal of stability is to stay put and work things out, stability does not mean we should remain in unhealthy or abusive relationships either personally, professionally, or communally.  Stability is not a force to keep us where we are not safe: physically, mentally, or spiritually.  Stability does not ask us to remain in a place or in a relationship where we cannot grow and flourish.  Although the primary stability for most  of us is in our Creator, we can trust that our Creator will guide us to make changes in our life and relationships necessary for our physical and emotional well-being.

Stability in St. Benedict’s Rule is the action of staying put, riding out the tough times in hopes of a stronger relationship with God and others.  It is persistently sticking with a situation, with people, and with God.  The inner meaning of stability according to The English Benedictine Basil Cardinal Hume is that we “Embrace life as we find it, knowing that this, and not any other, is our way to God.”

Our culture, however, encourages something vastly different:  Don’t get tied down.  Keep your options open.  Everything is disposable: people, relationships, vocations, careers, etc.  This is a very superficial and convenient way of living.  To live under these pretenses is to not have any skin in the game; it is a very self-centered approach to the challenges that can actually strengthen us and our relationship with our Creator and with others.  Living a disposable life robs us of the joys and experiences of remaining steadfast and stable.

Stability says yes to the Creator’s will for us in the places we have been placed and with the tasks that we have been given to do.  Stability also recognizes that there are times when God, the Creator places us in a particular situation not so much for what we can gain, but for what we can offer to others.  Esther de Waal writes that a life guided by stability has both an exteriority and an interiority.  The exterior action of remaining in a place, relationship, or situation is to establish “stability of heart,” (de Waal, Seeking God, 60).  Inner stability becomes more important as our lives and cultures become more mobile and transient.  Very few of us remain in the cities of our youth, or remain in the same home all our lives, or remain with the same company for our entire careers.  By staying rooted in our spirituality, in a force larger than ourselves, we can draw strength.

Henri Nouwen, a priest and writer, discovered that inner stability that rests in God brought him peace.

Whenever I am, at home or in a hotel, in a train, plane, or airport, I would not feel irritated, restless, and desirous not being somewhere else or doing something else.  I would know that here and now is what counts and is important because it is God himself who wants me at this time in this place. (The Genesee Diary, 76

Stability has an element of persevering with patience.  Persistence and perseverance, therefore, ask us to live in the present moment; to accept and respond to whomever and whatever God has placed before us.  Nouwen suggests that stability is wanting the situation we are in because we know that we can find God in it regardless of its difficulty or unpleasantness.

Stability calls us to work out our problems with the people who are in our lives, which offers us moments of growth.

  • Stability prevents us from running away from necessary development
  • Stability prevents us from bringing old problems with us into new relationships
  • Stability keeps us from being controlled by our moods and doubts
  • Stability encourages the practice of looking for the best in the other person
  • Stability may also bring a call for forgiveness and healing

Stability, therefore, brings about a staying power that enables us to persist and persevere. To do this in the midst of others allows us to take on an attitude of humility where we remain open and present to the person or situation in front of us, seeking not our way but what God is trying to teach us through this person or situation.  Stability becomes our teacher about others and ourselves. You see stability is not just about standing in front of another person, but also standing in my own center and not running from the real me.  Stability helps us accept who we are with all our graces, faults, and wounds.  Instead of listening to the thread of negativity streaming in our heads, we are reminded that God is present and we are wonderfully made in his image.  We do not need to look somewhere else where we think or have been taught that God might be.

Practicing Stability

Inner Stability

So many aspects of our lives are hurried or may feel fragmented. The key to being present is living right where we are and not in the past or the future.  Living in the past can cause regrets and depression; living in the future brings about anxiety and worry.

  • Tell yourself there is enough time to complete everything you NEED to do.  This helps to usher in a sense of calm and helps you focus on where you are.
  • Take time each day to focus on feeling your feet and the place in which you are standing.  Stop and look around focusing on items of specific colors (ie:  all things blue that are around you).
  • Accept that your Creator has placed you where you are needed.  Conscience acceptance helps connect us with the Divine and brings about inner stability.
  • Ponder this:  How might you come to know God more deeply through the various and diverse tasks you undertake each day?

 Stability and Faith

To gain the strength and balance to put in our daily lives and relationships, there may be times when we need to rest more firmly in our relationship with something bigger than ourselves. Wrestling with questions of your faith can offer clarity and therefore, stable ground on which to stand.

  • Does my commitment to God or my Creator change depending on the circumstances of my life?
  • Do I strive to follow Jesus’ teachings or am I more inclined to look for ways to escape?
  • Am I faithful in my practice of prayer, however, I choose to pray?

Stability and Perseverance

Perseverance is not being stubborn but it sure is a close cousin.  Perseverance allows us the courage and stamina to work through barriers that divide and destroy relationships.  I think it is far to say that most of us have experienced perseverance, where we have remained connected when we wanted to run either from a conflict or a relationship.  By recalling the details of experience, we can find new strength and assurance that we can persevere through the present situation.

  • What was the prior situation?
  • What did you do to find the courage and stamina to persevere?
  • What were some of the positives that emerged for you from this past experience?
  • How might those positives and the resources used in the past help you today?

Your invited to journal for your own edification and/or add comments to the blog feed of what worked or did not work for you when dealing with times of uncertainty.  Next Wednesday we will explore the topic of Obedience.

May you experience a holy Lent that offers you a place of solace and holiness.

Week 1: What is Benedict’s Rule?

A rule of life is a set of habits or disciplines that help us prioritize the things that we value in our lives.  As you might imagine, for many these habits are rather fluid and flexible as we navigate the different stages of life. Creating a weekly exercise regimen may not have been as much a priority in our teens as it may be as we approach our forties and fifties. 

A rule is something that is very personal.  It is created by you, to feed you with what is important to at this point in your life journey.  Rules may be similar, but they are hardly exactly like someone else’s.  There is no right or wrong way to design a rule of life and you may be like me, who is regularly tweaking it depending on where the Holy Spirit is guiding me.  Regardless of where you are in your spiritual journey, a rule of life helps you to:

  • Put Christ at the center,
  • Connect with people,
  • Listen and look for God in everything, and
  • Follow God’s will.

In Benedict’s words, a rule helps “open our eyes to the light that comes from God.”

Benedict of Nursia was born in 479 CE, about 70 years after the fall of Rome.  He entered a world of violence and turbulence.  The sixth century was not much better; it was an age of danger, mass injustice, dislocation of population, and therefore, the apparent collapse of almost all high culture.  It was into this chaos that Benedict invited people into the promise of an ordered, Christ-centered life.

Benedict was born into a family of wealth and prestige; he was sent to Rome to study, but quickly abandoned the life of a scholar by leaving Rome and living as a hermit for several years.  While in isolation, he was sought out by others because of his holiness and wisdom.  He founded the monastery of Subiaco, which still exists today, along with 11 other communities along the hillside.

After being threatened by a local priest, Benedict journeyed to Monte Cassino, Italy.  While here, Benedict tore down several pagan temples within the walls of an ancient fortress to form a new community of monks.  He remained here until his death on March 19, 547 CE.  Scholars believe it was in this Monte Cassino monastery that he wrote the Rule.  The monastery was later destroyed by the Lombards around the year 587, but the Rule is still the foundation for many religious communities and laity around the world.

Benedict wrote the Rule for the monks of his own monastery.  He had no thought of it being practiced by religious communities and laity alike some 1500 years later.  But why not?  Afterall, Benedict’s monasteries became beacons of light and places of learning amid horrific violence and degradation.

In the Rule, Benedict gives directions for the way Monks should live in community including the share of household duties, prayer and study schedules, how to live in community and proper sleeping arrangements, how to deal with personality and authority disputes, liturgy, spiritual direction, and hospitality. At the center of the Rule, however, is Christ, the cornerstone is Scripture, and the focus of the Rule is how to live in right relationship with God, self, and others.

For those of us who are Episcopalian or Anglican, our worship, tradition, and spirituality has been richly influenced by Benedictine practices and thoughts.

Benedict opens the Rule with these words in the Prologue:

Listen carefully, my son [and daughter], to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart (RB Prologue1).

As Episcopalians, we seek spiritual practices to actively block the distractive noises of the outside world, so that our focus can be sharpened towards the Divine presence in our lives.  Across the world today, Episcopalians will hear the invitation to a holy Lent, which contains this instruction,

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word (1979 Book of Common Prayer, p. 265).

This rigorous work of self-reflection and constant inner strengthening allows us to grow deeper in our relationship with the Divine in and around us. 

Your soul is a vessel of sacred graces: compassion, harmony, wisdom, love, endurance, humor, patience, healing, and vision.  The fierce work of inner cleansing and the building of stamina lead you (us) to discover these qualities in yourself (ourselves), not as theory but as fact (Entering the Castle, Carolyn Myss, p. 303).

Over the next five weeks we will explore the spiritual practices of stability, obedience, hospitality, holy labor, and finally, how to keep a holy Lent throughout the year. You are invited and encouraged to share comments, experiences, or insights as we journey together.

The Rule of St. Benedict for 2021

Although we are almost 1,500 years removed from the original writing of The Rule of Saint Benedict, I think we can continue to glean spiritual practices that help us enter into a deeper relationship with the Divine. Beginning on Ash Wednesday, we will explore some of the spiritual disciplines and how they may be practiced in our daily lives. The blog will be updated each Wednesday. My hope is that this blog series becomes interactive among its readers, so please share and comment as you wish.