Benedict’s option

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Benedict’s option

Saturday, March 18, 2017

Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock of your inheritance. Who is there like you, the God who will again have compassion on us, treading underfoot our guilt? … And Jesus concludes his parable, “The father said to his son, ‘My son you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate because your brother was dead and has returned to life. He was lost and has been found.” – From Micah 7 and Luke 15

When my brother and I disagree (I’m often the prodigal, by the way), how do we learn what Parker Palmer calls “the art of holding tension,” so that we not only don’t kill each other but can grow in love?

This “art” comes naturally to God, who continually finds compassion for us, even when we fail to find it for each other. The end of Jesus’ story of the lost son spotlights the son who was never lost. Both sons had lessons about patience and acceptance to learn from their Father.

In an essay about his friend Rod Dreher’s book The Benedict Option, David Brooks suggests another option, what he calls “Orthodox Pluralism: to surrender to some orthodoxy that will overthrow the superficial obsessions of the self and put one’s life in contact with a transcendent ideal. But it is also to reject the notion that this ideal can be easily translated into a pure, homogenized path. It is, on the contrary, to throw oneself more deeply into friendship with complexity, with different believers and atheists, liberals and conservatives, the dissimilar and unalike.”

It is right for me to follow Jesus when he says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” It is not easy for others, and certainly they will not do so just because I’m doing it. In the “Benedict option” we grow in faith by focusing on Benedict’s 6^th century principles of order, prayer, work, simplicity, stability, community, hospitality and balance. That lifestyle appeals to many. It can be lived alone or in community. And it provides a place for us to land in our cross-bred culture.

Reminding us of our national commitment to unity through diversity, my cousin Jan Conrady asked, “Is our country now so diverse that our common good is the common victim?” She shared a fascinating chart with us of various sources of news and their biases, as well as a blank chart for us to fill out ourselves (use this link; the charts are linked at the bottom). Where do I get my “facts?” Where do I want to get them?

More importantly, how do I learn to admit when I’ve made my opinion somehow more important than my relationship with you, just because we disagree? Can I start with myself?

Can I go to my father, look into his eyes, and say, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son.”

Those words release the tension I hold inside. They are words which precede brotherhood that’s worth its name. They free me from pride, and release me into the wideness of God’s mercy.

Lord, your word is a lamp unto my feet. Too often, I forget that my I-Phone is not. My habits either lead me into honesty and humility, or they don’t. It matters, how I learn about and connect with your world. It matters whether or not I learn to be still, and pray. Thank you for your example, Jesus. Give me grace to follow you.

http://www.davesandel.net/category/lent-easter-devotions-2017/

http://www.christiancounselingservice.com/archived_devotions.php?article_id=1573