Reflections on the Rule - November 2024

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What Day is It?

Dr. Brandon Beck

Lay Chaplain, COHI

Monk, The OOOW

Theology Student, Brite Divinity School

“This is the day that the LORD has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

— Psalm 118:24 (NRSVUE)

Every day is important and for the Lord in the Benedictine tradition, and so must it be for those of us who have accepted the call to COHI lay chaplaincy. We are called to be present, holding space for everyone to do their jobs and for God to intercede whenever and wherever God needs; God is at work everywhere all the time.

As I’m writing, the day is Sunday; the date is November 17, 2024. I’m sitting in the family minister’s office at Church of the Reconciliation (CoR) in San Antonio, TX, awaiting breakfast before formation hour and service.

Our reading in RSB is about the proper amount of food, and here at CoR we are sharing a month-long theme studying food insecurity in combination with a campaign of service and generosity to provide food for those in need in our neighborhood. The breakfast we serve on Sundays before formation and service is a hot meal open to all, and unsheltered folx from the community enjoy dining with us. We have a little food pantry attached to our little free library that we are stocking regularly; the pantry guild is a new addition to the teams of service for CoR.

As a COHI lay chaplain, learning about food insecurity and sharing in these meals and campaigns of service and generosity require that I prepare my heart and mind before I enter the workspace and after I leave the workspace. I have my own weaknesses, burdens, and sorrows, and I have to attend to them with God and my spiritual director and therapist, in my heart (cell?) so that I can be fully present to hold space for God to show up.

Chittister tells us that “Benedict of Nursia never takes food away from the community…Everybody needs something in life to make the rest of life doable and uplifting.” (p. 184-185) As we provide for ourselves in our homes (monasteries?), let us also remember to share what we have so that all may rejoice and be glad in it.

Reflections on the Rule - October 2024

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Recovering Humility

Dr. Brandon Beck

Lay Chaplain, COHI

Monk, The OOOW

Theology Student, Brite Divinity School

I love October. It’s one of those three times a year we are privileged to read the Humility Ladder together. As a person in recovery, the Humility Ladder is a source of great joy, as Recoverers who practice the 12-Steps can relate their 12 Steps of Recovery to the Humility Ladder with great ease.

““Now the ladder erected is our life on earth, and if we humble our hearts God will raise it to heaven. We may call our body and soul the sides of this ladder, into which our divine vocation has fitted the various steps of humility and discipline as we ascend.””

—

Benedict’s description of the ladder we must set up for ourselves, akin to Jacob’s vision (Gen 28:12), has been oft represented in art and stories. I’ve written to you before of John Edward Crean Jr.’s Benedictine devotional Recovering Benedict in which he reflects on his journey with RSB in conjunction with 12-Step Recovery. His stories and prayers related to the Humility Ladder rival any artwork you might find in emotion and call to compassionate reflection.

As I’ve read Crean again this month, I’ve been renewed and reminded of the amazing work God does every day in providing me with miraculous reminders of why I stay on the ladder and keep climbing.

From Crean’s reflections:

September 26: “Help me remember who I am supposed to be and who you intended me to become.”

September 27: “God is much more focused on my efforts rather than on my successes.”

September 28: “I will trust you, Lord, to provide me with even a few extra moments to consider whether choosing this or that activity will help or hinder me.”

September 29: “You are all Love, Lord.”

September 30: “Cheap thrills don’t last and offer no solutions.”

October 1: “This third step up the ladder of humility requires an open heart.”

October 2: “May the fire of your Holy Spirit prevail over the heat of my own unruly passions.”

October 3: “I cannot reap the full benefits without my humility reaching for that fifth rung, where I conceal none of the evil thoughts that enter my heart.”

October 4: “Lord, please let me just say thanks that I have a job, and then just do whatever I am assigned.”

October 5: “Don’t let me buy into the fantasy that I am large and in charge.”

October 6: “Thank you, Lord, for this one sentence reminding me that humility requires me to adopt, not adapt, twelve-step principles.”

October 7: “Please help me to speak less and listen more.”

October 8: “Lord, please help me to reflect rather than react.”

October 9: “Lord, please make me into a quieter, kinder, gentler, less loquacious person.”

October 10: “Lord, help me to wear humility without being proud of it. Help me to trust you in all things. Help me to be so deeply wedded to your Perfect Love that I may transcend fear and transmit Love. Lord, grant me the gift of humility and the grace to make it my way of life.”

You don’t have to be in recovery to be in recovery and not everyone in recovery does it the 12-step way. Still, Everybody hurts sometimes. We are a Community of Hope steeped in Benedictine spirituality ready to listen compassionately, right?

Reflections on the Rule - June 2024

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“Hey, don’t be so scared to look around you and find God!”¹

Dr. Brandon Beck

Lay Chaplain, COHI

Monk, The OOOW

Theology Student, Brite Divinity School

In “God’s Time” (Feb/Mar 2011) Sr. Jeana Visel of The Sisters of Saint Benedict, Ferdinand, IN, writes about The Rule in today’s society. She says that the values Benedict teaches in The Rule are community, seeking God in prayer, care for the needy, and hospitality to others. Sr. Jeana offers a very valuable insight about these values in our modern era - especially for those of us who follow Benedict in the world rather than in vowed-cloistered communities. She says, “Hey, don’t be so scared to look around you and find God!”

As Community of Hope lay chaplains, community, seeking God in prayer, care for the needy, and hospitality to others are our essential goals as well. On every pastoral call, in every Circle of Care meeting, and even in representing COHI to the larger community, these four pillars guide us. Yet, when we read The Rule each day and reflect on Benedict’s words, the context for our reading and reflection is different today than it was the first time we read the Rule twenty years ago and different than it would have been for the monks who lived with Benedict 1500 years ago. What we read and how we reflect is different from the experience of Sr. Jeana and those cloistered in Indiana with her see and hear.

Still, across time and space, we all share community, seeking God in prayer, care for the needy, and hospitality to others.

Benedict and his original followers had to choose daily to turn toward God and away from self; Sr. Jeana and those cloistered in Ferdinand have to do the same. As COHI lay chaplains, we also choose to turn away from self and toward God daily. No one has ever said this is easy (or even that it’s easier for those cloistered or ordained!).

But, Sr. Jeana tells us something that speaks to us in this time and place: “Hey, don’t be so scared to look around you and find God!”

So often we get caught up in the procedures and rubrics and liturgies that we forget the people. We’re afraid of making a mistake, and we forget to look around. We lose God in the muddle of the human expectation.

If we trust in community, seek God in prayer, look at those for whom we care, and offer hospitality to all, we will find God in it all. And in finding God, the job does become easier and more rewarding.

“Hey, don’t be so scared to look around you and find God!”

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 ¹Sr. Jeana Visel, OSB, Ferdinand, IN, thedome.org

Reflections on the Rule - March 2024

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Visualizing the Ladder

Dr. Brandon Beck

Lay Chaplain, COHI

Monk, The OOOW

Theology Student, Brite Divinity School

““If we wish to reach the very highest point of humility…, we must by our ascending actions erect the ladder Jacob saw in his dream…. By that descent and ascent we must surely understand nothing else than this, that we descend by self-exaltation and ascend by humility.””

— RSB, Chapter 7.2

The return to Jacob’s Ladder brings us to a liminal space - the space between here and there. In such a liminal space, a great opportunity for kenosis presents itself. How do you empty yourself? The discipline of Lectio Divina is deeply valued and taught in Benedictine monasteries still today. I am drawn to its related Visio Divina. Gazing on an image or creating an image of scripture allows me to fully pour out all my self-exaltation, for who am I among these great images? How do you see this ladder set before us that we climb through growing less? Where up is down and down is up?

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Jacob’s Ladder - An Orthodox Icon

Notice that in Orthodox tradition, this Hebrew story is written with Mary, the Theotokos, in the story of Jacob dreaming the ladder between Heaven and Earth. Just as this ladder is a bridge, so will Jesus be through his Mother.

The Ladder of Divine Ascent - An Icon of St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mt. Sinai

Notice that these are monks on the ladder. These are the monks of St. Catherine’s. John Climacus (Climacus means Ladder) wrote a book called The Ladder of Divine Ascent from St. Catherine’s ca. 600, a rulebook similar to the RSB. The monks are ascending following John’s instructions and stories; however, the temptations and “wretched inner demons” are trying, always, to pull them off. John is near the top, in white. Jesus looks down, welcoming them to Heaven.

William Blake’s Jacob’s Ladder c. 1799

British author, mystic, artist William Blake rendered Jacob’s Ladder did this pen and ink watercolor illustration to The Bible for commission.

My own rendition using Google Gemini’s AI

I’ve recently become interested in using my creative writing in combination with the ever improving resource of AI to generate art responses to Scripture as a devotional technique. Using the newly-released Gemini from Google, I ran through several iterations of journal responses to the Genesis passage, the RSB ladder of Humility, and the John Climacus Ladder of Divine Ascent, and I produced this.

Reflections on the Rule - January 2024

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Reflections on the Rule at Advent

Dr. Brandon Beck

Lay Chaplain, COHI

Monk, The OOOW

Theology Student, Brite Divinity School

“It is hard to let go of the past, and yet, until we do, there is no hope whatsoever that we can ever gain from the future.”

—

“[Priests] had been a world unto themselves and leaders of others. In the monastery, they would have to be formed in a whole new way of life and spirituality. They would have to defer to the presence and needs of others. They, who had given so many orders, would have to take some. They would have to begin again. It could be done but it would not be easy.”
-Chittister

Author Melody Beattie works with Hazelden Center and their publishing house to share theories of codependence recovery and what she calls “the language of letting go.” In a series of daily devotionals, Beattie shares stories from people in recovery on that language of letting go and on the process of hope and beginning again.

In The Language of Letting Go, on December 31, Beattie references her textbook Beyond Codependency: “Fun becomes fun, love becomes love, life becomes worth living. And we become grateful.”

Beattie gives a little advice for the new year ahead, and it sounds a lot like Benedict’s Chapter 60 and Chittister’s adjoining commentary: “Wait, and expect good things–for yourself and your loved ones. See the best in your mind; envision what it will look like, what it will feel like. Then let it go. Come back into today, the present moment. Do not obsess. Do not become fearful. Live today fully, expressing gratitude for all you have been, all you are, and all you will become.”

Benedict and Chittister tell us it is hard for priests wishing to join a monastery to let go of the ways they had leadership, status and influence in the outside world; Beattie says those in recovery from codependency have trouble letting go of fear of what is coming and fear of what has been.

In each case, we can begin again through community, stability, and conversion of self, growing together in the fullness of Christ, knowing that everyone with us is beginning again as well.

Amen.