Waiting for Benedict
"We are not waiting for a Godot, but for another--doubtless very different--St. Benedict." (MacIntyre, 245)
Some thoughts on the end of another year (2021-2022) of our Theta Young Adult Community.
It was a little surreal to sit in Eugene Peterson's rocking chair in his study at Selah House on Flathead Lake, Montana. I glanced over at the nearest books on the shelf and saw Alasdair MacIntyre's After Virtue. Rowan Williams quotes him in Holy Living, and I've been meaning to find that quote for some time.
"What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us." (MacIntyre)
Sustaining us. Local forms of community. Cultivating power. At the end of 2021-2022 cohort, the Theta Community members reflected on their year. "Our friends in other places don't have this." "My friends feel alone in their belief and in living the Christian life."
"And if the tradition of virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope." (MacIntyre)
When I hear the sometimes despairing generalizations about 'the youngsters these days,' I wish everyone could come to the Theta Community on any given Wednesday night. Heartfelt worship. Grappling with challenging teaching. Desire for cultural missional engagement. Habituating practices that sustain and deepen prayerfulness and an awareness of God. Not bound by the previous captivities to grasping or trying to recover hegemonic political power, they see influence in a much more neighbor-loving, salt-and-light-and leaven kind of Jesus way. We have grounds for hope.
"We are not waiting for a Godot, but for another--doubtless very different--St. Benedict." (MacIntyre, 245)
This is not the first dark time in human history. God seems to respond with little communities of light. Noah and his family, eight in all. Hannah and her listening son. Nehemiah, Ezra, Esther and team. The Upper Room fellowship. Benedict and Scholastica and their communities. Francis and his. Bonhoeffer and his. Teresa and hers.
Theta’s new cohort began at the end of August 2022. If you know a local young adult point them our way. www.trinitysanpedro.org/theta We also began an over-30 Theta-style community this year at Trinity called the Telos Community. www.trinitysanpedro.org/telos World Mission Prayer League has started Discipleship House in downtown Minneapolis this Fall. Faith Lutheran in Hutchinson and Dave Wollan is starting one in the Fall. The Awaken Project is rolling at Mount Carmel Ministries in Alexandria, MN. Wild Goose Collective just held its first community cohort not far from the Flathead in Southern British Columbia. CLBI and Free Lutheran Bible College are veterans at this kind of community. I'm in conversations with about 5 other congregations who are interested in this type of intentional discipleship community.
How will we make it through the current dark ages? Together. With Jesus at the center.
Find one. Or, start one.
Helpful books on Benedictine Community:
Strangers to the City: Reflections on the Beliefs and Values of the Rule of Saint Benedict. Michael Casey, Monk of Tarrawarra. Paraclete Press, Brewster, MA. 2005.
Casey presents a particular kind of community that, together, will “undertake the journey to the kingdom.” In RB 4:20, “To make oneself a stranger to the actions of this age.” To put it positively, Casey presents the rule and way of Benedict as becoming familiar with the actions of the age to come—the city to come.
Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict. Esther de Waal. The Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN. 1984. Both this book, and Casey’s could be used devotionally as well as for research. They are both beautifully written. It was her chapter on stability that got my attention (asculta) stopped me in my tracks (stabilitas). “The reason for stability? God is not elsewhere.”
Holy Living: The Christian Tradition for Today. Rowan Williams. Bloomsbury, London. 2017. The helpful chapters are also in Williams book, The Way of St Benedict. But this one is filled with other great themes as well. So, I’d pick this one. There is so much distilled wisdom here. One begins to notice that writing about the Rule of Benedict, and the Rule itself presents itself not as a confessional or constitutional document, but as wisdom literature. My favorite quote from this chapter, “make your soul inhospitable to untruth about yourself.” (56).
Saint Benedict’s Wisdom: Monastic Spirituality and the Life of the Church. Luigi Gioia. Translated by Barry Hudock. Liturgical Press, Collegeville, MN. 2020. Gioia writes, “We can, then, summarize the strategy of wisdom as Benedict took it up: (1) to establish a school for the Lord’s service that (2) awakens one’s taste for the things of God, helps one experience the goodness of God, and in this way (3) opens up a more authentic understanding of oneself, others, and the world.” (15). This book invites the soul itself to God’s workshop. The chapters on anger and chastity had me sitting on the potter’s wheel. Other helpful chapters are geared more toward ecclesial or communal life.
Prayer and Community: The Benedictine Tradition. Columba Stewart OSB. Orbis, Maryknoll, NY. 1998. Steward provides important historical context. Monasticism was not novel, nor was a rule of life. But the cenobitic form and Benedict’s rule were ways that were sustainable (durable/resilient) and sanctifying. The anchorite life might be heroic and holy, but the cenobitic life could be human and holy? Bonhoeffer would pick up on this dynamic in Life Together, in his discussion on “The Day Apart” and “The Day Together.” Every chapter is helpful, but Stewart’s discussion on accidie (acedia) and stability was diagnostic of “the shadow side of stability.” “A day becomes something to get through, its demands seemingly endless and equally unappetizing. Anything promising diversion has great appeal, but genuine satisfaction lies always out of reach, with someone else, in doing something else. Evagrius Ponticus, the acute fourth-century monastic psychologist, described it this way: ‘it seems that the sun hardly moves and that the day is fifty hours long; the monk constantly looks out the window, walks around outside, peers at the sun to figure out how long until dinner time; there arises a dislike for the place, for the monastic life, for work; the monk thinks that love has fled from among the brothers and that there is no one to provide any encouragement.’” (76). There is so much else good, here, but personally I was captivated by ecumenical fruitfulness of the Benedictine life. Benedictine communities precede and transcend the schisms and reform movements that have divided Christ’s church. Stewart writes, “It crosses ecclesial lines, for Benedictine spirituality is a legacy to the whole western Church, and a point of union with the eastern Christian traditions which draw from the same wells Benedict did. The ecumenical significance of biblically based common prayer is immense.” (117). This has also been our experience in the Theta Community which consists mostly of young adults from our own Lutheran congregation, but also has Roman Catholics and Evangelicals among its membership.
Under the Unpredictable Plant: An Exploration in Vocational Holiness. Eugene H. Peterson. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, MI. 1992. Peterson is a Benedictine in his view of the vowed-to-place life of pastoral vocation. “The congregation is the pastor’s place for developing vocational holiness.” (21). Modern North American church life provides many evasion tactics, or as Peterson using the Jonah image, many travel agents in Joppa offering tickets to Tarshish. Highly recommend!
There are many other great resources on the Benedictine life. Byron Borger is a treasure to the whole church, both in providing amazing service, but also providing a treasure trove of book reviews. Personally, I have been trying to more frequently purchase from Hearts and Minds Books, and Borger has been super helpful in bulk orders as well.
https://www.heartsandmindsbooks.com/2017/03/books_about_benedict_the_rule/
