WCCM Oblate Blog: Reflections from Daily Reading of the Rule of St. Benedict

WCCM Benedictine Oblates are encouraged to read a designated portion of the Rule daily, and to write a brief, personal response. I hope that this blog will support our Oblate community in this practice. Please, keep blog entries brief and in a first-person ("I") voice. Refrain from discussing, offering an opinion, or commenting on other entries. Simply consider how a particular section of the Rule is speaking to you in your present circumstances.

Thursday, May 12, 2016

Chapter 2: Gifts needed by an abbot or abbess (paragraph 4)

They should not select for special treatment any individual in the monastery. (From para. 4 of Ch. 2 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)

I can't be an authentic leader committed to the welfare of others, and play favorites. But I'll have my favorites, my special friends, and love them in a powerful way that will teeter on the edge of exclusivity. The Dalai Lama and Benedict remind me that true love always sets another free.

1 comment:

ValMay 16, 2016 at 9:41 AM
I like Joan Cittister's quote from the Tao Te Ching in commenting on this chapter. "We join together in a wheel but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move." "Being the person you have been created to be is to be rooted in your own spiritual centre"(John Main in Silence & Stillness in Every Season, May 12, p.133). To be that kind of person, true , other-centered, and loving , I need the daily meditation practice whereby I root myself in my spiritual center which makes my whole life move in harmony.
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