Chapter 58: The reception of candidates for the community (paragraphs 4-5)
Before making their profession novices should give any possessions they may have either to the poor or to the monastery in a formal document keeping back for themselves nothing at all in the full knowledge that from that day they retain no power over anything -- not even over their own bodies. (From para. 5 of Ch. 58 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
Retaining no power over anything, controlling nothing even with my thoughts and fantasies -- this is the poverty of spirit that the mantra demands.
There is struggle here, I cannot deny it. "Empowerment" is the cry for women and for men today. To have the power to make decisions for your life and over your own body are arguments for women's rights today . From this I can see that the need for power is ego-based and destructive in a society and in a community. In a community that is seeking a common goal, living according to the Rule of Benedict and to the rule of the meditation practice the need for power, causes a moving away from poverty of spirit and away from total dependence on the love of Christ alone. There is a petition in one of the reflections of The Cloud of Unknowing that goes like this: "let me for one moment at least,...direct my whole being to you alone, and love you and praise you for yourself."(Where Only Love Can Go, Day 6) How hard it is to be poor in spirit. I am like a wet dog, that shakes to get the water off and it still clings to the fur.
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