RB 59 and RB 60
14/December/2007 Filed in:
JottingsFor a monastery of nuns in the twenty-first century, neither the chapter we read yesterday, about the offering of children, nor today's chapter, about priests wishing to enter the community, seems very relevant — or are they? Benedict is surprisingly fierce and insistent about two things in the monastery: living a common life from which every trace of private ownership/personal possessions is excluded, and a personal humility which recognizes that no individual gifts or distinctions confer any sort of privilege or status on the monk or nun. Everything we use in the monastery belongs to the community as a whole; our place in community is decided by the simplest of means, the order in which we came through the door or the superior's decision (for which he/she is answerable to God). In practice, this means learning the art of contentment with sometimes very unsatisfactory circumstances and being ready, for the sake of the community, to exercise talents through sacrifice. It strikes me that this is relevant for the world beyond the cloister. Would that those debating climate change in Bali were prepared to recognize that voluntarily limiting some freedoms for the good of all is far from wimpish.