Meditatio Newsletter October 2015 1 Registered Charity No. 327173 - I N T E R N AT I O N A L E D I T I O N , Vol 39 No 3; October 2015 Meditation in the Monastic Tradition The Monastery Without Walls met the cloistered community for a week of study and practice at San Anselmo, Rome (6-8) Top: Morning meditative walk. Below: San Anselmo tower and Abbot Primate Notker Wolf Laurence 2 Freeman 9 News 11 Infocus The Rule of St Benedict’s Soil, Silence & Service May Ngo on the importance practical wisdom for healthy Project in the United of meditation on her This issue This relationships Kingdom life’s journey 2 Meditatio Newsletter October 2015 A letter from Laurence Freeman, OSB Dearest Friends, the Egyptian “Book of the Dead,” a then what do we do? We need ways I have never caused anyone to weep. collection of funerary texts, that was and means to translate the insight I have never spoken in a haughty voice. known from the second millennium into action, into an enduring attitude I have never caused anyone to be angry. before Christ, as the “Book of the Com- of love and compassion through all I have never closed my ears to words of ing or Going Forth by Day.” They cap- the phases of our life. This is where a justice and truth. ture not a proud self-righteousness rule of life, a practical daily wisdom, Where do you think these words but the truest sense of human judge- becomes essential. come from? A great mahatma of the ment and human meaning: This summer we held a seminar human race? From one of the world’s For I was hungry, and you gave with the San Anselmo Monastic In- great scriptures? Do you feel they are Me something to eat; I was stitute in Rome on “meditation in spoken in intolerable pride? Do they thirsty, and you gave Me some- the monastic tradition.” (The videos point to an ideal we would like to be- thing to drink; I was a stranger, of the speakers are now on our You- and you invited Me in; naked, lieve in but feel is impossible to attain? Tube channel.) The seminar was so and you clothed Me; I was sick, Whatever your immediate re- and you visited Me; I was in enriching and fruitful that we are now sponse to these questions, perhaps prison, and you came to Me. (Mt planning another week next summer the words do capture a great ideal 23:35-36) focusing on the “new forms of monas- of our relationship to others, more or These words are not meant to ticism.” The rule of life that shaped and more probably less, realized in human make us feel judged and condemned will shape this discussion, of course, experience. They evoke an under- by an impossible ideal – a Kafkaesque was the same one that shaped the standing of the right relationships be- nightmare where we are innocent but monastic rule of the western church. tween people that, if ignored, put us cruelly accused of some transgression The Rule of St Benedict is not an of- at risk of descending into inhumanity, that we cannot understand or feel ficial or officious rulebook. It tells us exploitation and cruelty. we are responsible for. They point to how things can be done, not must be As the migrants and their fami- a truth we should be both conscious done. It is filled with sophia but ex- lies from war-torn countries are now and practical about, a truth that, like presses itself with phronesis. It is best throwing themselves desperately at all truth, emerges from the human read as a Rule of Exceptions, because the mercy of their neighbours, these experience of effort and failure. They for almost every issue Benedict imag- words also express a kind of wisdom – challenge us, like all spiritual practice, ines, exceptions are made and the not abstract but entirely practical. The not to the feeling of personal success. need to bend the Rule without break- Greeks spoke about wisdom in two They prompt us to fidelity, to a faith- ing it is generously offered. aspects. There is the wisdom of pure ful return to the lifelong journey of The Rule, what Benedict calls a insight, sophia, which needs to be breaking out of the prison of our ego “little rule for beginners,” describes in embodied in the wisdom of practice, and its web of illusions, into the clear about 13,000 words a path to follow phronesis. In the same way St James light of the undying day of reality. through life-whether that life is lived speaks of charity: * in a monastery with walls or without Someone may say, “You have These words do not mean that walls. In our frenetic and disordered faith and I have works; show me there could ever not be tears or anger world today, many people seeking your faith without the works, in human relationships, but that we meaning, companionship and in- and I will show you my faith by ner balance have found in the Rule a my works.” You believe that God should never intentionally produce humane and humanising friend and is one. You do well; the demons them in others. If tears or anger are also believe, and shudder. But produced by our own interior process, guide. In many of the situations and are you willing to recognize… when, for example, experience makes challenges of life that the Rule imag- that faith without works is use- us painfully aware of our faults and ines, the wisdom of those Egyptian less? (Js 2:18-20) failures, our tears can be purifying and words and above all of those words of Faith is shown by active works, cathartic, a watershed to a new stage Jesus is found shining. Benedict imag- practical wisdom. The opening words of life. Our anger can restore us to a ines a moderate path through life, not above come from what we now call passionate commitment to truth. But moderate in the sense of lukewarm or Meditatio Newsletter October 2015 3 a compromise on essential values, but They should also aim to be as ecologi- goal, as in the Egyptian desert, is to moderate in the sense of the Buddha’s cally responsible and self-sustaining pray without ceasing and to allow the “middle way” or the “narrow path” that as possible. St Benedict would have prayer of the spirit to well up unself- Jesus says leads to life. wholeheartedly agreed with Lao Tsu consciously from the deep centre of It steers a course between rigid that there is no worse calamity than our heart, irrigating all the fields of institutionalism, which dehumanises the unrestrained increase of needs. our life. people, and an anarchy of chaos in In his management of time Bene- * which, differently but to no less de- dict shows how this narrow path of This formula of life St Benedict of- gree, our humanity is destroyed. Bene- love – tense but not stressful, atten- fered had an immense impact on dict knew that the narrow path that tive not distracting – can be realisti- western civilisation, on education, opens up into an infinite expansion cally followed. He outlines a contem- governance and culture, even as it of life, the ‘indescribable sweetness plative lifestyle, which does not mean developed amid the social chaos and moral confusion of the Dark Ages. Like all great and lasting influences it was not grandiose and proud but grounded and down to earth. An es- sential and, in its way, radical, element of this influence was Benedict’s insis- tence that each monk should be able to read and should read. Individually they should read the scriptures and collectively they would sing them: lectio divina, spiritual reading in one’s own solitude and time, and opus dei, common worship together. Benedict saw the powerful connection be- tween public worship and personal prayer, in particular the prayer of the heart. He says that nothing should be put before the times of common prayer. In our oblate community in London the of love,” as he calls it, needs attention. hours spent praying in a church build- activities of the house are suspended Because we are inescapably relational ing, but a harmonious balance of the during the times of liturgy and medi- at all levels and in all circumstances, different needs and expressions of tation that, in our community, we we need a high degree of attention – our complex humanity. Physical, in- combine. Benedict devotes twelve prayerfulness – to remain conscious tellectual and spiritual: these three chapters of the Rule to the Divine Of- and compassionate. dimensions cannot be separated but fice or opus dei, describing a precise Benedict knows that for commu- nor should they be confused. This ho- and detailed allocation of psalms, nity to work and be sustainable there listic spirituality is caught in the motto hymns and canticles. But having done must be leadership of a high order, “ora et labora,” pray and work, two so he allows the community to decide but that obedience must be both ver- activities inextricably linked. Work how it should be done according to tical and horizontal. We cannot escape is a form of prayer, a lab-oratory of a their circumstances. from the demands of our relational life centred in God, and prayer itself a I remembered this on my visit to nature merely by obeying the boss or form of work. Such a life is intended to Taize this summer.