Tool-kits
I’m very happy about my new tool tote! I made it to carry tools for a community boat build. I had to cancel that project at Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd due to an uptick in Covid-19 cases. The tool box would have been great for carrying tools there. I believe this remains a season in which to try our practices and tools for seeking peace-ful, life-giving patterns of life as as human and christian communities.
The wooden tool-tote is ready just in time for July 11, the commemoration of St Benedict. He contributed durable ways of living in christian community that have lasted for 1500 years. The Rule of Benedict seems to imagine itself as a tool-box, a purposeful, portable, and mysterious collection of the tools for contemplative living and daily work. It also attends to matters of life, to which communities need to give attentive care. The first word of the rule is ‘listen.’ Pay attention from your heart. If you listen, and faithfully put into practice what you hear in your heart, you will find that the way, though narrow at first, opens so that “we shall run on the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love.” (RB, Prologue v. 49)
Life is for living, attentively, lovingly. And the tools of life are for using, in order to grow and walk in the ways of Christ and to meet the Kingdom of Heaven as it swings low into our time and place.
A number of legends attest to Benedict’s character and doings. Among my favorites are stories that indicate his close bond with ravens. Somewhere I encountered a speculation that as children of some social standing, Benedict and his sister Scholastica may have been trained in the art of falconry before their turn to monastic life. Falconers learned necessary skills and equipment use, but the purpose was to keep and fly birds, to watch the creatures fly, chase and stoop. Admiration, wonder, and love for the birds is what moves falconers. Maybe Benedict and Scholastica liked the company of the birds. The birds certainly liked their company! Raven’s helped save Benedict’s life at least once.
A falconer has a love that moves him or her to learn what tools and practices will suit the pursuit. So too the pray-er. Benedict’s rule has aided monastic communities of pray-ers, as well as individuals living out their life in the community of home and work. It contains an assortment of tools for the spiritual life in community, such as detailed times of prayer, with appropriate psalms to accompany the mood of shifting times of day, suited to the changes of work that went with the seasons. The rule expected that monks devote time to ‘lectio’, daily study or reading done in a heartful way so to listen for the Holy Spirit.
The rule makes clear that the monks were to take good care of the tools of the monastery. They had kitchen tools, farm tools, tools for copying and recording. A small detail in Chapter22, “Sleeping arrangements,” indicates that the monks carried knives on their belts. This section deals with an assortment bed-time matters, (maybe even some of the kinds of things dormitory residence advisors handle.) At least one blogger in the more hypertense rightward christian world has hinted that this detail about knives could be a warrant for keeping and bearing arms. No doubt that the brothers and sisters who planted their communities of prayer in a chaotic world of warlords, slavetraders and other kingly profiteers were no push-overs. More likely to my mind, these were utility knives for women and men who worked in field, kitchen and coppice. The spirit of this rule, and that particular detail, have much more to do with being ready to receive and respond to the advent of God, which could arrive at anytime. Lamps burning lightly, the monks are to sleep clothed and belted, ready to hop up greet the Lord, or go to prayer and work, encouraging, or at least not annoying one another, as they rose. But there is such as thing as too ready, for sleeping with your belt-knife (or you garden spade) would be dangerous and imprudent. Sr. Joan Chittister writes appreciatively of this particular rule that “in a culture of peasants who came out of clans where whole families slept in one room-and still do in many poorer areas of the world-Benedict proclaims a policy of at least limited privacy and simplicity and adaptation. Benedict wants an atmosphere of self-sacrifice, true, but he also wants people to have opportunity for reflection. He wants no living situation to be so austere that both sleep and thinking become impossible in the cold of winter. In Benedictine spirituality people get what they need, both beds and bedding, both privacy and personal care.” (Joan Chittister OSB, The Rule of Benedict: A Spirituality for the 21st Century) To be ready to listen and respond to the incoming presence of God involves appropriate provision for body and soul in the furnishings of a simple, shared space for living.
Benedict is a among a small crowd of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters in the faith who inspired forms of commited, community life in pursuit of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Benedict did not devise this rule on his own. He drew upon several sources, including rules and traditions from the Christian desert communities of Egypt and Syria. He recommended the writings of John Cassian to his monks. Cassian travelled and stayed among the hermits and communal sisters and brothers of Egypt, and wrote about what he learned. He carried his writings to what is now France, where he influenced Benedict and western monasticism. This quote from Cassian, in which he speaks with Abba Moses, shows the metaphor of tools and the purpose as applied to a discussion of the means and ends of the spiritual path.
“A man diligently collects the tools of his trade. He does not expect to sit in idelness and enjoy possession of the tools but to use them skillfully for the purpose for which they were designed. In the same way fasting, watching, meditation on the scripture, nakedness and poverty are not perfection but the means towards it; not the end of our discipline but the means to that end. The man who is content with these practices as the summum bonum and not as a means, will use them in vain. He possesses, the tools of the trade but has no idea what they are for.”[1]
Abba Moses imparts wisdom regarding practice to two inquiring visitors, Cassian and his friend. He even shocks one of them when he states that at times the tools of the monk (prayer, long reading of scripture, keeping vigil, fasting and other rigorous spiritual practices) can actually disturb their heart and mind, distracting them from their true pursuit. In such a case, it would be better to leave those off, at least for a time, until ones goal was re-attained, one’s motives purified.
To receive the right tools is a true gift, and to have a purpose for them is greater gift still. In Eddie’s Toolbox, a lovely book by Sarah Garland, a new neighbor moves next door to a young boy named Eddie and his family. The neighbor has a daughter the same age as Eddie’s sister, and these families become friends. The neighbor invites Eddie to help him build some furniture and cabinets. The opportunity to help this man inspires the boy’s imagination, and his heart leads him to help his family around the house with his work. He begins to repair things, mend things and make things. One day the neighbor gives the boy a tool chest with all manner of tools. And he puts those tools to loving use, along with his family and neighbors.
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1424456