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.

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.