The Rule of Benedict takes a turn as we enter Chapter 8. Indeed, from now through chapter 70 there is a different tone. It is the tone of “taking care of business.” Thumbing through the pages quickly lets us know that we are entering another dimension of life together.
This has struck me with particular force because I have been reading the portion of Acts between Jesus’ ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost (1:12–2:1). And one of the things we find in that ten-day period is that the Christians continued their routines and dealt with matters needing their attention.
Community requires that details be dealt with. The Bible and Christian tradition never separate spirituality from specific activities. But there are times when we do so. We like the obviously “intangible” moments and blessings, but we can become easily bored when things that need to be done are so “tangible” as to be completely ordinary. Our souls rise up when spectacular things are happening, but they sometimes “tune out” when only familiar things are occurring.
Not so in true spirituality and Christian community. Life has to be arranged and ordered. Life not only requires a center, it also requires a radius—details which extend out to the circumference to create the 360-degree “world.” Details that are not properly organized become rogue items, left to random and subjective interpretation. Even if benign, no one knows what to do with unattended things. Vacuums tempt the ego to take charge.
Taking care of business is not an exercise in dictatorship; it is an effort to keep the circumference in relation to the center in ways that establish and maintain the shape as a true circle. It is a shape where all the dots can find their place and pattern in the larger picture.
We must enter this next, extended segment of the Rule understanding why it is there. We must read through it realizing that life together is designed to reflect order, not chaos. The commitments we make to Christ are not exclusively our own; they are commitments believers have made for twenty centuries.
We do not “make it up as we go along;” we step into a stream that has already established its fundamental course and which flows at speeds we do not determine. The Rule of Benedict now becomes for us an example that when we unite our branch to the Vine, we find ourselves connected along with other branches as well. Taking care of business is the way we commit ourselves to living in ways that produce fruit.
Oboedire 