Chapter 2: Gifts needed by an abbot or abbess (paragraph 3)
Any, then, who accept the name of abbot or abbess should give a lead to their disciples by two distinct methods of teaching -- by example of the lives they lead (and that is the most important way) and by the words they use in their teaching. (From para. 3 of Ch. 2 of Saint Benedict's Rule, trans. by Patrick Barry, OSB, 1997.)
"To give a lead" -- I recognize that as a parent of grown-up children my main job is to listen, to support, and, perhaps, gently to remind them how to choose a good path. I can listen, I can model, but what I can't do is control. Leadership is not about control but about love.
I was moved by Sr Joan's reflection: "...what we do not live we do not have a right to require [of others]."
ReplyDelete"I t is a spiritual axiom that whenever I am disturbed there is something the matter with me." How I resisted that "axiom" at first, when a "Twelve-Stepper" first read that to me out of the AA "Big Book". Now today, Benedict and you, Abba, through your First-born, tell me the same thing: "[when you were disturbed] you were looking at the speck in your brothers eye and did not see the beam in your own.(Mt. 7:3)." Open my ears, Abba. Open my heart.
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