Chapter 22: Sleeping arrangements for the community
In the morning, as they are getting up for the work of God, they should quietly give encouragement to those who are sleepy and given to making excuses for being late. (From para. 2 of Ch. 22 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
Sometimes I can give gentle encouragement; often I need it myself. Gentle encouragement is not about projecting my own faults onto another or controlling them. Rather, I think this concern of which Benedict speaks emerges from somewhere between good habit and compassion. I think it may be like the small acts of kindness John Main encourages us to practice as a preparation for meditation. Then, the fruit of meditation is more kindness, more community.
“ . . . let them gently encourage one another that the drowsy may have no excuse.” Everything about me and my ego within me, encourage, on the contrary, my drowsiness, my continuing to live life unaware, unmindful of Reality. Reality: that means you, Abba, here within and about me. The community that meditation and the mantra create gently encourages me to stay awake to the love that is you.
ReplyDelete"In the morning", there is freshness, newness, energy, and hope in a brand new day and there is the quietness and gentleness of dawning of light as night gives way to day. Taking the morning as an example,and how it affects me with its quiet fresh newness, I would like to be like that to others-not brusque, noisy, and interfering-but gentle and loving and quietly encouraging.
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