Chapter 1: Four approaches to monastic life
Finally those called gyrovagues are the fourth kind of monk. They spend their whole life going round one province after another enjoying the hospitality for three or four days at a time at any sort of monastic cell or community. They are always on the move; they never settle to put down the roots of stability; it is their own will that they serve as they seek the satisfaction of their own gross appetites. They are in every way worse than the sarabaites. (Para. 4 of Ch. 1 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
This is a pretty good description of my occasional states of mind -- too often at the time of meditation -- always on the move, never settling down, serving my own will, seeking the satisfaction of my imagination, ideas, images, moods, my own "gross appetites". And yet St. Benedict calls me to be stable. The practice for this stability is in silence and stillness. Saying the mantra. Simply -- embracingly -- to be.
I too find Benedict's gyrovague an excellent personification of my wandering ways, a way of being that more and more I find completely exhausting. Lord Jesus, thank you for revealing the narrow way that leads to freedom, and thank you for the gifts of your teachers St. Benedict, John Main and Laurence Freeman who light the way to simplicity and love.
ReplyDelete"You can no longer be content to live at a distance from God."(from Where Love Can Only Go: The Cloud of Unknowing, ed.John Kirvan) I travel quite a bit visiting children and grandchildren when they need help and feel the discontent and emptiness when my meditation practice and lectio are let go for one reason or another. There is that longing in the heart for that stability in the heart where everything and everyone come together in one place- in the silence before the Divine.
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