Chapter 60: The admission of priests into the monastery
An ordained priest who asks to be received into the monastery should not be accepted too quickly. (From para. 1 of Ch. 60 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB.)
If I head into a community thinking I have superior gifts and no need for humility, I become a threat to the community. I think that transformative relationships abolish hierarchy for hierarchy's sake.
“The way that our tradition teaches us to approach this self-revelation of God is not to think, to analyze or to reason but to learn to be like a little child, to learn to be humble.”(John Main, “The Way of Unknowing” Kindle loc 1143) No matter what my professional background or formal didactic history the entry to wisdom is low, requiring me to stoop, become small, a little one.
ReplyDeleteSomething that I think is good has to be tested. Having a good intention in doing ordinary things is to be preferred from doing great things with bad intention. Meditation has its gentle way of revealing the truest me.
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