Benedictine Stability: More "Practical Spirituality for Dummies"

Benedictine monks take a vow of "stability", meaning that they promise to stay put in the monastery where they are. In our 4-session study of "Practical Spirituality for Dummies" at Christ Church Cranbrook we learned about a community of families and single people who have undertaken to live Benedictine-style together in Durham, N.C., and "stability" is one of their key principles. They have renounced the hyper-mobility of contemporary life, and promised to stay put where they are.

         I get their point, but I think it cannot be strictly a "geographical" commitment. I just spent the day rearranging my office at home so as to allow the unpacking of books and papers from my office at St. Stephen's. They had  been sitting in boxes on the floor for 2 years! That is not a sign of "stability", but rather of "gridlock". I have accumulated so much stuff it has me pinned to this spot like Gulliver, tied down by the Lilliputians. 

        That can't be what st. Benedict had in mind. Too many possessions blocks our view of the space around us. "Stability" requires an intentional appreciation for wherever it is we find ourselves. It means sharing the blessings and the pain of that locality, that neighbourhood, that landscape. 

       But the gospel is portable, and only nomads can hear it. Even stable old Benedictines in their monasteries are essentially pilgrims, wearing their stability more lightly the more deeply rooted they become. What we must seek to renounce is the impulsive urge to flit from place to place, to consume the produce of a place without putting anything of ourselves back into it. It's easier to be a tourist than a pilgrim. 

      I guess one has to have a dose of Benedictine stability in order to understand what it means to surrender control over one's surroundings. And the converse: only a pilgrim appreciates the true value of a hospitable house, a warm welcome, and a familiar path. 

     Benedictines place a high value on marking the rhythms of daily life with prayer. At Christ Church Cranbrook we have our own modest version of this monastic pattern: at 8:30am each weekday we ring a bell, observe silence, and then recite the rhythmic verses of psalms, much as St. Benedict taught his monks to do 1500 years ago, and as they still do, whether in monasteries, or in emergent communities like the one in Durham, or in St. Paul's Chapel at Christ Church Cranbrook. 

"They shall be like trees planted by streams of water, whose leaves do not wither." Psalm 1, if I'm not mistaken.