Chapter 38: The weekly reader
Everyone on the community should be attentive to the needs of their neighbours as they eat and drink so that there should be no need for anyone to ask for what they require. (From para. 2 of Ch. 38 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
St. Benedict asks for complete silence, without even whispering, total attention to the reader, and simultaneous attention to the needs of neighbors while eating one's own meal. I don't think this is multitasking. I think this is like what a pilot might call "situational awareness", but in the best sense of being totally present to the reality in which the love of God is interpenetrating.
To pay attention to others means to listen not only to words but also to unspoken languages ... Attention and awareness I believe are products of meditatation
ReplyDelete“The Sisters are not to read or chant in order, but only those who edify their hearers.” (Leonard J. Doyle, OSB, “St Benedict’s Rule). To edify means to “build up” (the house of God is, after all, an “edifice”) and is a talent you give to each of us, Abba, each in our own way. I feel that you are teaching me that the most edifying thing I can do today, by your grace, is to be silent and still and simple. For my hyperactive monkey mind, the path to this childlike silence, stillness and simplicity can be extremely challenging. That path is fidelity to the work of my twice-daily meditation and the mantra.
ReplyDeleteSomething mysterious happens in silence. The mystery of God is allowed and recognized. The reader's words, or the words of Scripture during lectio fall like water into the waiting soil of my mind. Faith and trust and complete surrender prepare my mind like the farmer prepares the soil. I wait for the springing up of the word through the dark silent soil of my mind. I gaze and delight in it--its beauty, its color, knowing that it is a gift of love's own doing to me to share through my life. Meditation prepares me to be a patient farmer.
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