Chapter 7: The value of humility (paragraphs 19-20)
Good habit and delight in virtue will carry us along. (From para. 20 of Ch. 7 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
I detect a grace even in those bumpy periods of being less than faithful to my twice-daily meditation practice -- a grace of knowing for sure, through experience, where to find my real, stable center.
I detect a grace even in those bumpy periods of being less than faithful to my twice-daily meditation practice -- a grace of knowing for sure, through experience, where to find my real, stable center.
"We always manifest humility in our bearing no less than in our hearts." It means trying to grasp the reality of who I am and why I am here. Recently retired, I used to think that my work was my purpose and part of my reason for being. "He who defines himself can't know who he really is."(Tao Te Ching, Stephen Mitchell trans.)Now I have to rethink that whole scenario. Meditation's daily discipline helps me to uncover, unpeel the layers, that bound my heart/spirit with false illusions. It involves a letting go of those illusions, one by one, drop by drop, so that my spirit can be led into the freedom of truth. What is the truth? The truth is I am a little person loved by God just as every other person is loved by God. I am loved in my uniqueness just as every other person is loved in their uniqueness. I am trying to "chew" and "digest" and "wrap" around the fact that I am little instead of big as in important, and loved hugely and immensely in my being instead of my doing.
ReplyDeleteBenedict here connects respectful silence and humility. My inner chatterbox hates this. “But I have so much to say”, it, alias my ego, complains. Then you, Abba, gently remind me that, like all little children, I have so much to learn, so little to fear.
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