Add This to Repeated Reading of the Rule of St. Benedict

We ended our last post with this:

Regarding our work life, repeated reading of each entry of the Rule of St. Benedict Throughout the year will contribute greatly to stability in our ourselves and in our workplace. That's just what happens when we take seriously the wisdom we've inherited from St. Benedict.

Ideally our message sunk in. If so, we've either developed or intend to develop the habit of reading the Rule throughout the year. And if we're determined to do that, the best way is to get a copy of the Rule - hard copy or online - and follow it. The sort of text you want is one that includes dates for each entry. My hard copy includes three dates by each entry, since the Rule is traditionally read three times throughout the year. So today's entry includes this specific date in May, one in September, one in January. Follow along and you'll be surprised at how easy it is to incorporate this practice into your workflow no matter how busy you are. It takes no more than a minute or two to read any given entry.

Once you get the habit established, you can, from time to time, linger on an entry that grabs you in some special way. You can underline your hard copy, highlight your digital copy, even jot down some notes. It doesn't take much more time - what, a few more seconds? - but doing so engages your attention in a way that simply scanning the passage won't. 

If you combine this with multiple readings, can you see how spending just a minute or two each day on an entry will, over time, yield results. And those results will likely be both spiritual and, for want of a better word, practical. We've identified the benefits that come from reading the Rule many times in the past.

From the perspective of our "Stability Project," consider those results to be solid building blocks of a kind of impermeable castle of stability. 

Recall that we began this project last year because lots was going on in the world that could distract us as we got down to work each day. At the time, most of the distraction could be traced to the mess created by COVID and the relentless pushing of the so-called vaccine on every man, woman, and child. Each day, if you checked the news briefly as I typically do, you could not avoid a barrage of media messages designed to convince and or coerce you into getting yourself, your spouse, and even your children jabbed - not once, but multiple times.

That was bad enough.

Since then, however, we're facing a growing list of distractions, disturbances, and outright threats to our lives and livelihoods that have piled onto the original issues. To name a few, in no particular order: rising inflation; war with the threat of wider, more lethal outbreaks; social unrest; financial market losses; an inevitable recession (which may have already begun).

We could go on, but I think those will do for now. And I'm guessing each of us has been at least distracted by one, likely more of these, never mind disturbed and/or threatened. The weight of these, all descending on us at once, can easily derail an otherwise well-planned and orderly day's work. 

If what we've dubbed the "C-Virus Mess" has somewhat diminished (although by no means dissipated), the additional items we've listed have, as we've noted, piled on to possibly exceed the mental, emotional, and spiritual burden that can easily negatively impact the timeliness and quality of our work.

So our Stability Project now becomes even more essential to those of us who take seriously our intention to work for the greater glory of God, the welfare of our family, the benefit of our clients and customers.

Given that stark reality, our daily reading of The Rule of St. Benedict should be a daily essential for each of us. 

With that, we'll continue our Project to work our way through all of The Rule in sequential order.