Monday, January 19, 2015

Chapter 4: Guidelines for Christian and monastic good practice (paragraphs 3-5)


Don't let your actions be governed by anger nor nurse your anger against a future opportunity of indulging it. (From para.3 of Ch. 4 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)

Nursing anger: even the phrase itself betrays a self-deception. "Nursing" anger is steeping myself in the delusions of the ego -- living in the past (what I think happened or should have happened) or the future (how I want things to turn out, or what I'll say when I get the chance).  What I'm called to nurse, to nurture, is a constant awareness of existing only in the present moment, in the Presence.

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