Uploaded bySister Edith Bogue
Stability
The document discusses the concept of stability, emphasizing its importance in monastic life and community, as outlined in St. Benedict's rule. It contrasts stability with cultural instability, highlighting issues like affluenza and the quest for perfection, and proposes spiritual practices such as humility, prayer, and mutual support as means to achieve true stability. Ultimately, it stresses the need for patience and continuous self-giving in one's relationships and commitments.
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Stability
- 3. 1. The stateor quality of being stable, especially: a. Resistance to change, deterioration, or displacement. b. Constancy of character or purpose; steadfastness. c. Reliability; dependability. 2. The ability of an object, such as a ship or aircraft, to maintain equilibrium or resume its original, upright position after displacement, as by the sea or strong winds. 3. Roman Catholic Church A vow committing a Benedictine monk to one monastery for life. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton MifflinCompany.Updated in 2009.
- 4. Stability and Instability •Bad types of monastics • Gyrovague (no fixed abode) • Sarabaite (desires=rule) • Strong monastics: cenobites • Accept a Rule • Under an abbot / prioress • Live in a monastery
- 6. Merton observed thatSt Benedict "introduced this vow into his Rule precisely because he knew that the limitations of the monk, and the limitations of the community he lived in, formed a part of God's plan for the sanctification both of individuals and of communities." In making this vow, "the monk renounces the vain hope of wandering off to find a 'perfect monastery.' " Schlabach, Gerald. (1998). TheVow of Stability: A Premodern WayThrough a Hypermodern World
- 7. Time as Cycleof God'sYear
- 8. Stability in theRule • Ch 58.4,9, 17: Promise • Chapter 4: The "location" for using the Tools for Good Works. • Ch 60: Stability applies to priests as well • Ch 66: Porter's "maturity will prevent her from straying about. " • Ch 64: Abbot/Prioress is "not excitable"
- 9. Sources of Instability •Fear (Prologue 48) • "Craving of their appetites" (sarabaites) • "Slaves to own will & delights of the palate" so "ever on the move & never stable" (Ch 1: gyrovagues) • "Own fault" (Chapter 29) • Free will (Ch 58) • "Devil's suggestion" (Ch 58)
- 11. • Theology tellsus that God is unchanging • "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever." (Hebrews 13:8) • Yet passages of Scripture paint a picture of God thinking better of an initial plan. • What can passages like these tell us about God's stability?
- 12. Scripture Passages toConsider • Exodus 32:1-14 • Genesis 22:1-19 • Jonah Ch 1 - 4 • Genesis 8 • Psalm 77 • 1 Samuel 15 • Luke 22:39-43 • Luke 22:54-62
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- 15. LINEAR TIME, HISTORICALTIME Birth Child Youth Adult Death • We enter at conception • We live each moment • Circumstances form us (family, schools, jobs, events) • We exit at death • The secular perspective sees time as motion, progress, a single direction. • Culture defines the purpose or goal of time
- 16. Affluenza: The Cultureof More 1 6 affluenza, n. a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more. (de Graaf)
- 17. Culture of Perfection •Best quality • Best deal • Latest edition or style • "You deserve better" • "It's not fair" • Easily offended • Easily dissatisfied with service
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- 19. 19 Post-Modern Culture •Perhaps thereis no reality. •Relativism: we each exist in our own valid form of reality.
- 20. Self-Change • Diet • Exercise •Personality • Intelligence / Cognition • Relationships • Efficiency • Productivity • Creativity
- 22. This culture leadsto • Constant sense of dissatisfaction with life. • Constant anxiety that one should be better • Constant attempt to make the right choice • Constant sense that change is needed
- 23. How can wefind stability in such an upside-down culture? 2 3 The Whole World in a Crystal Ball by xollob58 at http://www.flickr.com/photos/xollob58/474392091/
- 27. Some people refer tothese blogs and books as "productivity porn." They have a common premise: change is crucial and we have to do it ourselves.
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- 33. Ponder for amoment:
- 35. The importance of"the team" • "Thank you" for doing what you promised. • Overlooking and accepting • Need each other for survival & success • "The team" can be just two people.
- 36. Community Building inRule • Readily confess faults and ask forgiveness. • Be ready to make peace and to forgive. • Order things so that "no one is distressed in the house of God."
- 37. Avoiding the Negatives •Be there for prayer, for the common table. • Do not grumble and complain. • Do not compare what you get with others.
- 38. Daily Practices • Striveto outdo each other in mutual love and service. • Honor the elders, love the juniors. • Give a kind word if you have to say no. • Never turn away from someone who needs your love.
- 39. Stability in theFaith Community • Liturgical Prayer • Worship • Regular time together • Sharing Joy
- 40. “The external practicesof monastic life are directly connected with our search for God. In and through these practices we express our spiritual values and ideals, and daily live out our commitment to God.” Cummings, Monastic Practices
- 41.
- 43. “Seeking workers ina multitude of people, the Lord calls out to us and asks, “Is there anyone here who yearns for life and desires to see good days?” “What, dear friends, is more delightful than this voice of the Lord calling to us? See how the Lord in his love shows us the way of life.” RB Prologue.14-15, 19-20 Nurturing the First Fervor
- 44. The Desert Abbas andAmmas Fidelity by removing from the source of distractions. Meditation on Scripture Habits of life Amma Mary of Egypt
- 45. Humility andThe Rule •Chapter 7 is the longest chapter in Benedict’s Rule. • Ch. 7 is the culmination of its spiritual foundations. • Humility counteracts the cultural force of "more" and "the best"
- 46. Silence • Restraint ofspeech helps us listen to God . • This allows others to maintain their prayer. • “The tongue is a small member and yet has great pretensions. Consider how small a fire can set a huge forest ablaze.” (James 3:5) • This also includes choosing what other sounds and presences to have (TV, radio) and when.
- 47. “Be imitators ofme” • The apostles and fervent Christians, became the models for others. • St. Paul, in the earliest text in the New Testament, tells the Thessalonians to imitate him. • The Epistles record the advice, the spiritual counsel, shared to help Christians on the journey
- 48. “Our life inits outward practices as well as its inward spirit becomes totally oriented towards seeking and finding God.” Cummings, Monastic Practices
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- 51. Lectio Divina • Monasticreading is a spiritual encounter • Nothing rejected as unfit automatically, if God be sought, BUT • Much is better avoided for guard of the heart • “Sustained lectio” with a single text over a period of months or years” Sr. Meg Funk Lectio Matters
- 52. A regular patternof lectio and prayer creates constant dialogue with God: Listening Waiting Hearing Speaking
- 53. • Gravitas isimportant to Benedict • An aspect of wisdom. • Compare with the speech we hear around us daily • loud • snappy repartee • sarcastic • What happens to our idea if we don’t speak?
- 54. Humble prayer • Theinner practice of humility, of neither expecting or rejecting good things. • The humility of mutual obedience, listening and attending to the needs of others. • Fostering hope not despair.
- 55. “Finally, whatever istrue, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” Philippians 4:8
- 56. Spiritual Practices &Contempltation
- 58. There is awicked zeal of bitterness which separates from God and leads to hell There is a good zeal which separates from evil and leads to God and eternal life. RB 72.1-2
- 59. Stability: BeingWhereYou Are, FixingYour Heart • Moment-by-momentgiving of self to the place and people with which one is engaged. • Views relationships as meaningful, rather than as a means to an end. • Bears the burdens and behaviors of others as sharing the suffering of the Body of Christ.
- 60. Learning to MoveThroughTime •Patient endurance • Spirituality of waiting • Remembering God's mercy and gifts • Prefer nothing to Chris
- 61. “Keep on doingthe things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, and the God of peace will greatly rejoice you.” Philippians 4:9
- 62.
- 64. “Is there anything morepainful than realizing you did not know the right questions to ask at the only time on earth you would have the opportunity to do so.” Alice Walker: The Way Forward is with a Broken Heart.
- 65. AlwaysWe Begin Again •We do make progress on this journey. • Yet each day offers both challenge and opportunity. • The journey of humility is filled with the suffering and the joy of the Paschal Mystery.
- 68. "Eye has notseen, nor ear heard, what God has prepared for those who love Him." (1 Cor. 2:9)
- 69. Take 5 minutesto ponder something you want to take away from this day.
Editor's Notes
- #6 Our houses differ now – ethnic background, emphasis in ministries, subtle differences in the personalities. Just as Vatican II sent us back to our monastic roots – to the Holy Rule and the wisdom of the desert – so our monastic life of the future will grow out of our histories – which we have begun to study and preserve so much more carefully. While I’ve painted a “future” with broad strokes, it will be different in each location. The varieties of monastic life that spring up will respond to those differences.
- #17 “More” is a national disease. We have it in the monastery. One sister said, “We used to have to turn in a list of everything we had in our room at the beginning of Lent, and we’d get it back with items crossed off. We don’t do it anymore because it would take some of us all of Lent to make the list. Lust for items – greed – is an afflictive thought older than Christianity, and its destructive force on the spiritual life, on all sorts of relationships, on families has been well documented. The inner dynamic of industrial society, though, is producing more with less. Early industrialization made it possible for more people – poorer people – to have food and items once reserved for the rich. When the standard of living had been raised, though, there was a choice: Work fewer hours to produce the same amount of stuff, and have more leisure Work the same amount of time to produce more stuff, and have more stuff We opted for the latter – there are dozens of analyses why. More types of stuff had to be invented. They had to be made obsolete so that we would buy other new stuff – fashion speeded up. The cycle of Affluenza began.
- #18 Early in the 20th century – 100 years ago – sociologists were already studying the ways in which the upper classes used consumption and fashion to mark their status; they gained identity by what they owned. As mass production made similar goods available to middle and lower classes, the upper classes have to constantly find new and expensive things to mark themselves out. And the cycle continues, leading to ….
- #24 It’s a bit daunting to talk about the future. There’s a big danger of projecting the world one would like to see, or one fears will happen, and calling it a prediction. The result may sound more intellectual, but it’s not too far different from using a crystal ball. Even when the image in a crystal ball is quite clear, it still may not match the reality that unfolds. In fact, even the methods of social science are far from perfect. The ideas I’ll present this morning are grounded in solid data, but scholars do disagree regularly about their interpretation. There are two kinds of forces that help us think about the future, and it’s important to separate them. The first looks at structures or forces that we can see in the present that will constrain the future. Just as we can understand the present in terms of things we did, or did not, do in the past, so some aspects of the future are already determined. (Money in the bank. Education. Hubble.) Some of these factors escape notice because they are so common place.
- #34 Time to ponder Time for comments
- #70 Our monastic communities have come through turbulent times. We have worked hard to weather them, to grow, to stay together. Many are weary. Who wants to hear that the future will be difficult in new ways That conflicts may continue That the blessings of modern technology also bring curses That there is more work to do Really, this is no different than St. Benedict’s time. Society was in an upheaval, with norms breaking down. The only prophecy he made about the future of monastic life was that Monte Cassino would be destroyed. He says his Rule is just a beginning. But he asks, in the preface, “Who longs for life?” It’s a question of direction, of choices among many options.