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.

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Chapter 7: The value of humility (paragraph 18)

We should be brief and reasonable in whatever we have to say and not raise our voices to insist on our own opinions. (From para. 18 of Ch. 7 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)

This is something I can experiment with: What's the quality of relationship I experience, when I insist on my opinions to another? What's the quality of relationship when my speech is brief and reasonable, and I'm attentive?

1 comment:

valOctober 21, 2013 at 8:58 AM
For me this can even begin in my "conversations" and prayer-times with God. "It must be more than reprocessed God-talk, human posturings in front of the Infinite." ( from weekly rdg. 10/20/2013) How often I find myself using formulas with God. Let them go, I say to myself what do you really want to say to this God you are trying to know and enter into a personal relationship with. "It must be God speaking in and through human experience..." and I need to listen and observe the world, all of creation which is an attention that is grounded in a prayer-like, meditation-like attentiveness.
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