Chapter 55: Clothing and footwear for the community (paragraphs 1-2)
The community must not be too sensitive about the color and quality of this clothing; they should be content with what is available in the locality at a reasonable cost. (From para. 1 of Ch. 55 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
Well, at least St. Benedict permits me to be a little sensitive about the color and quality of my clothing. But more importantly, I ask myself, when I catch sight of myself, however dressed, am I able to wink back at the divine spark loving me?
“But It cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.” (Thomas Merton, “A Book of Hours”, Sunday, Day, kindle loc 566). That’s how you clothe me, Abba, by your presence just as you clothe everyone I meet today! Give us eyes to see you shining like the sun here within me and all about me.
ReplyDeleteI am amazed at all of creation and nature, the varieties and the colors even those tiny flowers that we trod underfoot musing to myself, "Look, how beautiful they are." It is the outer trapping of nature's life, the colors and forms, that help me to notice and wonder that nothing is "superfluous" in God's world. Even something as small as a tiny fir tree growing in a wood hidden by tall branched trees has purpose. All of creation is "necessary" no matter their size or their hiddenness, or their external visibility. All, like everyone of us, gives glory and praise to God. I need not worry about what I wear as long as I identify with that tiny fir tree so beautiful in its wholeness pointing upward and inviting me inward to my heart.
ReplyDelete"They should be content with what is available in the locality..." "Locality" is a derivative of the Latin word "locus" meaning place. Of what "locality" am I an inhabitant? Belonging to a monastery "without walls", where I am guided by the Rule of St. Benedict, and the practice and teaching of meditation expressed by John Main gives me a position that is not defined by exterior places or moves. I am not a sightseer,(the opposite of a local) nor a "gyrovague" (Rule, 1:10). My "locus" is within and it is in there that my contentment lies giving me stability, tolerance and openness to all places and peoples in whatever "vicinity" I find myself.
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