Whither Leadership 2

Last week, I began to explore the qualities of leadership which were developed in the Rule of St. Benedict.  This week, I want to continue with that exploration.  The first quality I explored was that of actions as well as words.  The Rule requires that leaders, “are to lead the community by a two- fold teaching: they must point out to the monastics all that is good and holy more by example than by words.”

This week I want to explore what qualities the leader must have to be able to actually practice what they preach.  Chapter 2 of the Rule states, in part, “They must know what a difficult and demanding burden they have undertaken: directing souls and serving a variety of temperaments.”  Joan Chittister’s commentary delves into this seemingly straightforward - if not easy requirement - and truly brings out the essence of what this means. 

Chittister points out what the leader, and by inference all of us, must do to achieve this.  They must encourage those whom they lead to, “struggle as they have struggled to grow in depth, in sincerity, and in holiness, to grow despite (my emphasis) weaknesses, to grow beyond weaknesses.”  The challenge of this is brought into focus in Chittister’s closing sentence of the commentary:

We must each strive for the ideal and we must encourage others to strive with us, not because we ourselves are not weak but because knowing our own weakness and admitting them can we with great confidence teach trust in God who watches with patience out puny efforts and our foolish failures.

There is truly the rub as Hamlet might say.  To acknowledge our weaknesses to ourselves, much less to others, is no small feat.  Indeed, that goes against our instincts, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, our egos.  Our ego does not want to admit to any weakness and will go to great lengths to excuse, rationalize, and even hide them from ourselves much less ourselves.   Carl Jung identified that hidden part of ourselves which contains the collective weaknesses which are inevitable in ourselves.  He named that aspect the Shadow which is resident in our unconsciousness.  The Shadow can appear in our dreams as a dark, foreboding, character, often of the same sex as the dreamer.  It can be very helpful, and I propose necessary, to get to know the shadow part of ourselves as Chittister proposes.

The fact is that we all have weaknesses as well as strengths – or at least part of ourselves that we hold to be weaknesses. It is part of our humanity.  We are formed in God’s image as we are told in the book of Genesis; we are not gods.  However, the good news and the Good News is that if we are to acknowledge our weaknesses to ourselves and to others there is great strength which will lead others by example as well as by words.  It will truly enable us to love one another as Jesus loves us.

Blessings on your journey and do not be afraid to ask for directions when the way is not clear – or even when it is.

Whither Leadership

 On the weekend, I watched a documentary on CBC, #BLESSED, which explored the C3 church movement which has now been expanded to Toronto from its beginnings in Australia.  The C3, which stands for Christian, City, Church, is an international evangelical church which has had great success attracting millennials.

The documentary, which rightly has been criticized for not being an in-depth critical look at the church, presented a church which seems to have many things I am in agreement theologically.  However, I was left feeling uneasy about what was not explored in the documentary.  It presented C3 as what could be described as not untypical evangelical church with praise leaders, a charismatic pastor who connected with his flock, and little in the way of liturgy.  There can be no arguing with its success, if success is measured by growth in the number of people who attend services and in the number of congregations and the ability to plant new church congregations. 

As was noted in one critical article, the documentary did not explore what the church does to make the church so attractive to the millennial aged people they are apparently so successful in attracting.  It also doesn’t explore the potential danger that a charismatic leader, who almost becomes an object of worship, can cause for those who follow his or her – especially if there are few, if any, constraints in place in the organization itself.

We have currently many examples of what can happen when leaders do not live up to the expectations which are placed on them.  We have all the politicians and civil servants who have demanded that citizens do not travel in this time of the COVID shut down and have turned around and done just that because “they deserve it” implying that they are special and, therefore, the rules - which they impose - do not apply to them.  We have the much more serious example of bad leadership in the United States which has incited insurrection to attempt to over turn a legitimate election. 

The question that is being begged to explore (but not begging the question) is what makes a good leader?  As I have mentioned, at the end of 2020 (that seems a long time ago), I took a course on Benedictine Spirituality.  I have continued to read one of the books recommended for the course, The Rule of Benedict by Joan Chittister.   The Rule of Benedict includes much information of what is required of leadership and leaders.  Over the next few week, I will explore aspects of leadership which are outlined in the Rule.  I find it particularly interesting that the Rule of Benedict was written over fourteen hundred years ago but it has stood the test of time and is just as applicable in today’s circumstances as it was when it was written despite the times being very different.

I will begin by looking at one aspect which is a good foundation for good leadership.  It states in the Prologue to the Rule that the leaders of the monastic community, “are to lead the community by a two- fold teaching: they must point out to the monastics all that is good and holy more by example than by words.”  Chittister’s commentary on this expands on its relevance today:

Autocrats and militarists and spiritual charlatans and abusive parents and corporate moguls want the people under them to obey laws from which their exalted positions hold them exempt.  Benedict says that the only authentic call for obedience comes from those who themselves demonstrate the value of the law.

This is a good application of the Golden Rule which Jesus and others taught, ‘do unto other what you would have them do unto you’.  If leaders do not have this as a guiding principle, he or she will be in danger of leading themselves down a wrong and potentially dangerous path.

Blessings on your journey and may you have God as your guide. 

Wake Up and Live

 

Late last year I took part in a course on Benedictine Spirituality with the Sisterhood of St. John the Divine in Toronto.  Of course, in this time of COVID-19, we did this course via Zoom.  One of the books we used in the course was The Rule of Benedict, by Joan Chittister.  It provides daily commentary on the Rule developed by Benedict which I find to be a very good way to explore and inwardly digest the charters of the Rule.  The Rule has stood the test of time since it was written twelve hundred years ago. The Rule (rules actually) are very applicable to our world today and the commentary by Joan Chittister make them very accessible to the modern reader.

Today, I want to explore the commentary of the author on the Prologue to the Rule which begins, “Listen carefully, my child, to my instruction, and attend to them with the ear of your heart.”   Chittister writes:

Let nothing go by without being open to being nourished by the inner meaning of that event in life.  There is an Oriental proverb that teaches, “Take from death before is takes from thee.”  If we do not live life consciously (my emphasis), in other words, we may not be living at all.

The question that I want to explore from this statement is, what does it mean to live consciously?  Coincidentally, if you believe in coincidences, I was listening, about the same time as I read this, to an interview with Noam Chomsky, the famous (some might say infamous) linguist and philosopher.  He noted that people spend most of their lives in unconsciousness.  The concept of consciousness is one that has interested me for quite a few years.  In my view consciousness is the great gift of God and what it means to be created in God’s image as we are told in the book of Genesis. 

Chomsky was proposing that people - many, if not most - are not conscious most of the time they are in a waking state.  Your reaction to this may be one of rejection and you might well say, of course I am conscious when I am awake.  There is a simple way to test this proposition.  Think about the last time someone was talking to you.  How much of the time were you thinking of something else whether it is being somewhere else, or thinking of another person, of something that happened some time in the past, or anything else.  If you are honest you will admit that those thoughts, intentional or not, consumed much of the time you were ‘engaged’ in that conversation.  Another test you could engage in is trying to think about nothing.  Empty you mind – or try to – and see how long it is before some thought enters into you head unsought.

One of my regular spiritual practices is to engage in Centering Prayer on a daily basis.  This involved being in a state in which I empty my mind of thoughts for twenty minutes.  The idea is this allows God full access to my self without the day-to-day thoughts getting in the way.  If, or better when, thoughts enter I let them go using a “sacred word” to return my focus or non-focus to being open and receptive.  In invite you to give it a try and see how it works for you.

If you want an example of what happens when they are in an unconscious state, you only have to look at the videos of the mob which invaded the United States Capital building last week.  Many of them were there without being conscious of the consequences of their actions and or even their actual motivations.  It was a case of mob rule.  The collective consciousness of a mob is much lower than the consciousness of the individuals involved. 

If you want to practice consciousness and live more fully, one way you can do this is to pay attention for a set period and see if you can identify the times in which your mind wanders or times in which thoughts enter your mind unsought.  Do this for a perhaps five or ten minutes at ta time and be conscious of what is going on in your head.  Remember, if we do not live life consciously, we may not be living at all.

Blessing on your journey and be conscious of where God is on that journey. 

A New Year of Gifts to Bring.

Yesterday, we celebrated Epiphany which is the visit of the three Wise Men (sometimes known as the three kings) to the stable in Bethlehem.   They are reported to have brought gifts for the divine child whom they recognized as King of the Jews – gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 

These gifts, as precious as they were being fit for a king, are also symbols and precursors of what was ahead for Jesus.  The gold was symbolically a gift for the ruler of God’s kingdom; the frankincense was used by priests in worship symbolizing Jesus Christ the High Priest; Myrrh which was used to anoints the body before burial foretelling Jesus’ sacrificial death. 

These gifts can have meaning for us as well.  We could see them as the inspiration for gift giving at Christmas and all that has become with the mad materialism we partake in today’s cultural celebration of Christmas.  But if we stop and reflect and pray, we can ponder, as Mary did, what gifts we can bring to the Christ in us.  

When I think of the gifts of the three Wise Men, I am reminded of the wonderful trope which the novelist Roberson Davies explored in his novel The Rebel Angels.  In the story, the character Uncle Yuko, understood the gifts as Gold, Frank Innocence, and Mirth.  Those gifts are something that the world needs more of today.  We need to have a heart of gold – as Neil Young was searching for.  We need much more frank innocence in our openness to the wonders of God’s creation which is being abused in so many ways.  And above all, mirth – to be able to experience “the laughter at the heart of things” to quote T.S. Eliot who wrote in an introduction of a novel by Charles Williams:

For the reader who can appreciate them there are terrors in the pit of darkness into which he can make us look; but in the end, we are brought nearer to what another modern explorer of darkness has called “the laughter at the heart of things.” 

Eliot, unfortunately, did not name the modern explorer who was the source of that phrase.  However, the laughter at the heart of things is to see the true nature of how things fit into the whole – how we all fit into what we are intended for in a world that sometimes seem to be chaotic and meaningless.  That, indeed, is the laughter at the heart of things.

Blessings on your journey to find the gift which you are intended to bring to the divine child.