Those who have chosen to live in community frequently develop a "rule." This document outlines what it looks like to live in community with others and what each person commits to as he or she is deciding to join the community. St. Benedict's rule is fascinating. It says that a person wanting to join the community can be left on the steps for up to a week being given a little bit of food here and there. Imagine getting the idea you may want to join a Benedictine community, walking there with only a bag slung over your shoulder, and knocking on the massive door of the monastery. "Do you want to be a Benedictine?" the person says. You reply, "yes, of course, that is why I came." The person slams the door and says "you are not ready, but you can wait there until you are ready, if you wish." The next day, someone throws you a scrap of bread and a similar conversation happens. The Benedictines figured that only those who REALLY want to be Benedictines would suffer in body and spirit in this way.
Living in community takes humility. "Rules" and obedience in deference to others is not popular even among those who claim to walk in the way of Jesus. Perhaps even for some (I'm in this category) who REALLY want to live in community, who really want to be obedient, who really desire to stand in God's presence in the company of others, actually doing it means letting go. It means that body, mind and heart are disciplined.
My daily experience is that of being humbled. Will I walk in the way of Jesus and accept the humbling with Jesus?
"Let all of you then live together in oneness of mind and heart, mutually
honoring in yourselves the God whose temples you have become." from the Rule of St. Augustine found on http://www.midwestaugustinians.org/prayerrule.html. The Augustinian heritage quiz is fairly easy. My new found humility prevents me from telling you my score
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Perhaps, the biggest challenge for me in living in community is/was/shall be balancing my need for independence with my need for structure. Structure allowed for the best Godward formation to take place within me. Yet, I struggled with the need to go out into the world and experience it. Thus, I learned while living at Sanctuary of Hope (http://www.santruaryofhope.org) that I was not as ready for community as I once thought. I was still too eager to see the world and be a part of it. Yet, Christian community--especially the monsastic--still draws my interest.
In recent reading of monstics such as John Michael Talbot, St. John of the Cross, and others, I have discovered that there is a degree to which the passions of the world (in the terms of my own evangelical heritage the desires of the flesh), distract us all--devout and less-devout alike--and that learning to be formed by the Spirit is a rigorous task to say the least.
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