The Rule of Benedict: Prologue (1/122)



3:34 PM EDT Saturday.


This is my comment. It is presently awaiting moderation:

Thank you so much, Andrew, for this wonderfully helpful and hospitable website! I am 54, I've been meditating on a zafu for over 35 years, I was born again in 2022, and I've been wanting to dive deeper into your implied Benedictine meditation retreat invitation for more than 3 years. This cycle around I finally feel strong enough to attempt a 122-day contemplative marathon through the RB and your commentary on it. I started about an hour ago. It's taken me that long to read your page here, as well as the translation and footnotes for this portion of the RB in RB 1980, and the translation, commentary and application for today in Commentary for Benedictine Oblates. Now I have an hour to reflect and respond. I say this for others who may be wondering about the time involved: two hours a day for 122 days. Of course, what is happening during the other 22 hours of the day will likely make a difference in the online retreat experience, too!

This will be my first time through the RB, so understand that I am a beginner and please be forgiving of me in this regard. I pray to God that I will have the stability to see this good work through to the end.

As an American, surely, but also as a Westerner, I cherish my individuality and personal freedom. Maybe this is why I am so heavily drawn to eremitic monasticism (and that might not be a good thing). I don't want anyone telling me to surrender my ego to the potentially even bigger ego problem created by a communitarian life supervisor or monastic political faction. But I know that is not what you and the RB are talking about here, and I am not overly identified with my American and Western ego attributes. As a global citizen, I am powerfully drawn to the daily and even hourly surrender of my particularist ego to a United Nations "hivemind" that is reforming in the direction of a truly peaceful, sustainable, and human rights-protecting world federation with interfaith Christ consciousness at its cultural core. This is one of the reasons I am so drawn to your presentation of the RB. Thank you for the excellent opening commentary and for this provocative follow-up dialogue. Deep listening definitely brings the ego into alignment with the needs of the collective. Perhaps it also brings the collective into alignment with the needs and rights of the ego? This kind of dynamic mutual obedience could be essential to the organic harmony at the heart of the Western social contract and seems very much emphasized in the New Testament epistles.


End 6:23 PM EDT.

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