In particular this vice is to be rooted out of the monastery: that anyone… have anything at all as his own.

Sr. Joan Chittister, Rule of Benedict

We are now a society that counts our steps and fusses that praying four times daily is too hard. We walk laps around the kitchen at 10 p.m. to make sure we hit our goal for the day while our prayer books and Bibles stay unopened on our nightstands. We hoard “me time” and lose hours to social media. We overschedule ourselves.

In these often hard, strange, dark, confusing and divisive times, the temptation to stay busy and distracted is powerful. But it’s not what we were made for. We were made, like Abraham, to sit in the heat of the day and wait for the Lord. We were made to sit still at the feet of Love and worship together. When the world seems to be coming apart at the seams, it is time to stop all our Doing, counter-intuitive as it is, and begin to practice Being.

Waiting. Silence. Solitude. Stillness. These are not the same as relaxing or being lazy, as Martha suggested to Mary all those years ago. Being still isn’t just a physical act. It is an internal act as well. Stillness and Silence are about being present. Present to God and to each other. They cultivate the humility to say, “This isn’t all about me or what I can do or say; this is about what God is doing among us.”

The spiritual practices of Stillness and Silence can help us become aware that this life is not ours alone; we are part of a greater whole. When we practice Being over Doing, we open ourselves up to what is beyond us—beyond our abilities to fix, mend, solve or do on our own—making space for the wisdom of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of our wider community to lead us toward lasting change.

For Reflection
Part of being in community with others is sharing time and space, often going at a slower pace than we would like. How do you cultivate a posture of humility that allows others to lead?

God himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race.

Thomas Merton

Loneliness and isolation hurt whole communities.

Dr. Vivek H. Murthy, U.S. Surgeon General

Think about your family and your friends. Think about your church, Bible study group or fellow choir members. Think about your neighborhood, your neighbor, your town. Think about all the arguments, the pettiness, the frustration, the slights and the judgments—big, little and ridiculous—that we have inflicted on each other over time. Now, imagine being able to choose to come to Earth as any creature. Would you choose to come as a human? Would you, by choice, willingly enter a community filled with flawed members who would annoy, hurt, irritate, disappoint and ultimately kill you?

We talk a lot about God becoming one of us, taking on flesh, living a human life and dying a human death. But how often do we recognize that God in Christ chose to come and be annoyed, disappointed and ignored—not just in the three years of his ministry, but for his entire earthly existence—in the same little daily ways that you and I experience? The way of Jesus is not the way of isolation. Jesus’s whole life, including his ministry, death and the revelation of his resurrection, happened within the context of community. To live like Jesus, we must live solidly and actively with great intention within community. We must be involved. We must be joiners. We must attend, volunteer and participate in our common life alongside people who sometimes annoy or frustrate us. If we believe we are truly called to share the Good News of God in Christ, we must begin as Jesus began, repairing the fabric of connectedness in our churches, neighborhoods and homes.

For Reflection
Consider this statement: “Our mission, as followers of Jesus, is to work to eradicate aloneness together.” Do you agree or disagree? Say more.

Pray and work.

Saint Benedict

A decade ago, if you had told me that I would begin to crave the feeling of dirt between my fingers in late winter, I would have laughed out loud. Gardening was never my thing. It was Nathan’s thing, my mother’s thing, my mother-in-law’s thing, but not my thing. I was firmly a house person, an indoor sort. I was not a gardener. Until I was.

A line in the General Thanksgiving, a prayer toward the end of an Episcopal eucharistic service, says: “We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life.” I have found that the more I garden and want to garden, the more I understand specific prayers and passages of Scriptures. Standing in my living room, reading The General Thanksgiving out loud, windows open, birds chirping, dining room table covered with seed pots and rooster crowing in the yard, I realize that the words are filled with a deeper meaning now that I work to preserve the lives of animals, gardens, trees and children in my care, now that I am harvesting blessing after blessing of fresh eggs, herbs, flowers and copious amounts of vegetables, each of which always comes to me as a sort of miracle. That we plant a seed tinier than a freckle into a mound of dirt, and months later, we are eating an endless meal of tomato sandwiches, so fresh and ripe that the juices run down my chin, is a miracle every time.

This is one of the ways Saint Benedict’s motto of ora et labora—pray and work—has been made real to me. Work and prayer come together as co-creators in the goodness of creation, in the miracle of planting, tending and harvesting tomatoes, peppers, lettuce and okra.

For Reflection
What does “pray and work” mean to you?

Preside in order to promote the good of those whom you govern…Provide rather than dominate.

Bernard of Clairvaux, In Consideration

In the summer of 2023, a team of Episcopal Church staff, volunteers and consultants hosted a four-day-long festival in Baltimore called “It’s All About Love.” Each night, after the evening revival service, our team would gather in a meeting room to review the notes and plans for the next day, tackling all the things done and left undone, often working late into the night. The second night of the event, perhaps because we were our most exhausted selves, no one remembered to order dinner. Instead, we emptied our hotel mini-fridges and snack stashes in a loaves-and-fishes moment.

The Rev. Marna Franson, serving as a chaplain to the team, spent most of that evening figuring out how to feed us with our limited supplies. For several hours, as we prayed, reviewed schedules and triaged issues that had cropped up, she served us. Paper plates with scoopfuls of cheese spread onto kettle chips, apples sliced with a pocketknife and covered in peanut butter, heated-up Chinese leftovers and bowls of chocolate-covered peanuts continued to appear on the table, nourishing and sustaining us. That night, Marna knew what Jesus knew at the Last Supper: meaningful leadership and systematic change are taxing work. To do it well, we must be nourished and fortified.

The work we are called to as Christ-followers is the same work Jesus asked of the twelve disciples, and it requires collaborative, just and reconciling leadership. It calls for leaders willing to do what it takes to nourish people spiritually and physically, providing, not dominating. We need leaders who prioritize being vulnerable and clear with their people instead of controlling and micromanaging. In the Way of Jesus, we look for leaders who are willing to serve all, who make praying and breaking bread together a priority, and who, in every decision they make, seek the flourishing of all.

For Reflection
Most of us lead in some capacity. We lead in our households, at church, in the workplace and in the public square. How does this picture of leadership challenge or encourage your practice?

There is a grief that is useful and a grief that is destructive.

Syncletica

Scientists have divided our tears into three categories: reflex tears, continuous tears and emotional tears. The first two categories are the kind of tears that help us remove toxins and debris from our eyes: smoke, onion vapers and dust. Those tears are predominantly made of water and protect our bodies from invasive elements. The last kind, emotional tears, contain different hormones and substances that are particular to the emotional reason we cry.

These tears protect us differently; they help to heal us emotionally and physically. They help us expel the hormones we don’t need, and they release the ones we do need. Good Friday seems like an appropriate day to contemplate grief and tears.

We can think about Saint Peter and the grief that led him to deny Jesus three times. We can think of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and her grief at the foot of the cross. And we can think of the two thieves, also dying on crosses to the left and right of Jesus. One, in his grief, lashes out in anger and bitterness. The other comes to Jesus with humility and openness. I wonder if the one who opened his heart to love was crying. Could it be that his tears helped heal his spirit while providing comfort to his dying flesh? What about the one who held on to bitterness and doubt? Was he stoic, clinging to his anger, unwilling to let the tears flow, refusing healing and comfort? In this picture, we see a community in pain, with Jesus in the center, and we see two different approaches. One is rooted in vulnerability, the other in control. One has the hope of resurrection; the other sees only despair. There is a grief that is useful and a grief that destroys. Both are a choice.

For Reflection
Is there a point of pain in your life or your community’s life? How are you responding?

No one grows simply by doing what someone else forces us to do. We begin to grow when we finally want to grow.

Sr. Joan Chittister, The Rule of Saint Benedict

In the film As Good As It Gets, the heroine, Carol, says to her mother, Beverly, “Why can’t I have a normal boyfriend? Just a regular boyfriend, one that doesn’t go nuts on me!” Beverly replies, “Everybody wants that, dear. It doesn’t exist.”

To me, this is the essence of being human. Each of us, in some way, in some corner of our life, wants to be the exception. We want to draw the lucky straw. We want to slide under the wire of having to experience certain parts of being human.

But here is the thing about a common life: all of us struggle. All of us celebrate. All of us have good days and horrible days. We all want to be loved and give love, even if it scares us. And all of us have choices. No matter where we reside in the world, our position in society, our economic status, our gender or our beliefs about God, we all have choices to make every single day about how we will act and react as members of Creation. We humans can never escape the reality that as complicated, messy, emotional, spiritual and physical beings, our actions and reactions affect others—animals, minerals and vegetables—every single day.

Whether we get better at this or become more loving, kinder, considerate, generous, patient, just, flexible and empathetic in these actions and reactions, well, that is up to us. It’s not dependent on our bank accounts, education, churches or families. It depends on us choosing to grow, learn, change and accept what is, with God’s help. Here on Holy Saturday, as we wait for resurrection, it is time to decide. Will we grow? Or will we remain where we are, as we are?

For Reflection
As you wait for Easter, consider where and how God is calling you to grow.

It is solved by walking.

Saint Augustine

Here we are. Today, we can shout the alleluias and celebrate Love’s defeat over evil. And we got here the only way we could: walking together, one step, one day at a time.

For me, these words by Saint Augustine are a reminder that the only way to grow, the only way to experience the abundant life we are promised in Christ, the only way to the other side of whatever season we are in is to do the things in front of us, one step at a time. There are no shortcuts to becoming beloved community; there are no express trains to the dream of God. No amount of reading, planning or thinking it over will alone accomplish the urgent, bold and inclusive humanitarian action that reaches those made most vulnerable and builds a better tomorrow. It takes walking the walk that Christ has set before us, one our monastic siblings have modeled for us as individuals and faith communities.

Often, we forget that the only way to Easter, the only way resurrection happens, is through the pain of death. For something new to rise, something old must first end. We must make the choice to either stay behind with the ashes of what was or bravely step into that newness with open hands and hearts, loving our most annoying neighbor, sacrificing our comfort to ensure others feel seen and heard and living and worshiping simply so that those in need have enough. These are just some of the steps that lead to wholeness for all.

For Reflection
Where are you looking for resurrection in your community life? What do you need to let die in order for something new to arise?