Over the next thousand years, Saint Benedict's Rule was popular in Western Europe as a way of life for those who wished to make Christian vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Even the lives of those outside the monastery walls were changed for the better by the teachings, the witness, and especially the prayers of those inside. The Book of Common Prayer, the core document of my own Christian denomination, The Episcopal Church, relies heavily on the Rule of Saint Benedict. The original architect of The Book of Common Prayer, Thomas Cranmer, used the prayers and rhythm of life of the Benedictines to create, in the common language of the people, an essentially Benedictine way of life for an ordinary person. For example, he took the seven daily prayer services of the monks and nuns and condensed them into two—Morning and Evening Prayer.
Although Benedictine sensibility is a part of many Western Christian denominations, there are few guides or commentaries on the twelve steps of humility— especially for people who aren't monks and nuns. I'm not sure why that is. What I do know is that I was saved by the Twelve Steps of Humility. In the midst of a season of deep disorientation and pain, I found Michael Casey's A Guide to Living in the Truth.
Casey is a monk in the Benedictine tradition with a doctorate in medieval theology. His book is a commentary for today's monks and nuns and is rooted in solid academic research. Some parts are a bit dry, but there are also parts that, for me, leapt off the page and spoke precisely to my spiritual state. In a time of deep disorientation, the twelve steps as unpacked by Casey gave me a reliable map so that I could, if only faintly, discern God's presence in my pain and so stay faithful. It showed me the path of love and hope, even if I did not always follow it.
Because it was so helpful for me, I was eager to share its wisdom with others. But I found that the words and ideas did not easily translate to individuals' lives and ways of understanding things. My background had made Casey's book accessible to me. I had been to seminary and have always had a passion for ancient spiritual wisdom. For years I had close friendships with monks and nuns, and their struggles and ways of being were familiar to me. When I tried to share Casey's book with others, I found it didn't resonate with them; it didn't sing for them the way it sang for me.
In the decade since I first read Casey, I have read and reflected on many of the books on the twelve steps of humility. I have had conversations about the steps and have taught classes on them. Above all, I have tried to live by them as best as I can. This book reflects this journey and offers one way of beginning to walk a life-saving path for yourself.
Saint Benedict suggests that his Rule is for beginners, and he begins and ends with the suggestion that some saints have progressed far beyond what he describes. Without the benefit of experience, readers might think that if they followed the instructions in the Rule for a year or two, they would soon be ready for the next great spiritual thing. In practice, people have found that the Rule, and in particular the Twelve Steps of Humility, are sufficient for a lifetime. The Rule may only encompass Twelve Steps, but it is, for almost all of us, a long climb.
Furthermore, the way of Saint Benedict is not a solo journey; it is always pursued in relationship with others. So while you can use this book just by yourself, I intend it as an invitation to join a national movement with the same name as this book, The Restoration Project. The movement is open to all Christians who hunger for spiritual depth in community. What binds us together is a set of classic practices that have proven to be effective ways to grow wise, spiritually strong, and loving.
The most important structure of The Restoration Project community is Discipleship Groups. These are small groups that meet regularly, often every week or every other week. Each meeting begins with some time of silence, an expression of a common intention to seek God through Christ, and then a recitation of seven vows. An explanation of these seven vows is integrated into the beginning chapters of this book. (The full liturgy for a Discipleship Group can be found at the back of this book).
Just as Saint Benedict's monastery provided the best context for nuns and monks to follow his spiritual wisdom, so Discipleship Groups provide the best context I know for ordinary Christians who desire to be held in love while they die to their old selves and are reborn in Christ. We all need help. Without loving structure, our spiritual growth will stall, and we will never become the person God created us to be. We each have been given unique gifts and were created to complete a particular piece of God's work. The Restoration Project, like Benedict's Twelve Steps of Humility, is intended as a reliable and tested structure for revealing to the world the beautiful soul God created in each of us.
CHAPTER 2
Foundational Habits:
Two Personal Steps
1. Keeping Watch
2. Desiring God Above All
A team of young professionals—all at the top of their classes—stood with Barcilon in 1980 on the first day of restoring The Last Supper. These passionate young people would draw on a range of skills to help reveal the beauty intended by Leonardo. The team decided to begin on the right side of the painting around the clustered figures of Matthew, Thaddeus, and Simon.
Unlike in many of the previous restoration attempts, the team was not going to repaint. Instead they would focus their energies on cleaning. They were going to use specially designed solvents and fixates to address the dirt and grime. To guide the work, they relied on microscopes, a powerful magnifying lens, and various lighting techniques. They worked with a hygrometer, a tool that uses electronic sensors, x-ray, infrared, and ultraviolet technologies to determine the state of the painting and its environment. They coordinated with a local laboratory to analyze paint chips to identify which layers of paint came from the hand of Leonardo—and which were from later repainting restorations.5 Every member of the team had years of experience in restoration of other paintings, all in preparation for this, their greatest challenge.
Like the professional restorers, we too can acquire skills, practices, and attitudes to ensure our best work as we approach the restoration of our spiritual selves. Now is the time to begin the serious work of becoming who we are. The first four steps of humility are habits that over time help us to become the spiritual equivalents of passionate professionals. These habits give us the best possible opportunity to reveal, by God's grace, the hand of the master creator to the world.
The first two of these four steps are personal disciplines we cultivate within ourselves. As individual practices, we must learn to keep watch, which is the ability to remember at all times that God is with us. We must also desire God above all, which means simply that we begin to follow the Great Commandment, loving God with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength and loving our neighbor as ourselves.
Step One:
Keeping Watch
He guards himself at every moment...
— THE RULE OF SAINT BENEDICT, 7:12
"Are you there, God?"
If there is any question that is as deep, disconcerting, and unanswerable as "who am I, really?" it must be the question of God's presence. I often ask, in many and various ways, about people's favorite passage of scripture. More often than not, it is a passage that reassures us that God is in fact with us and that God knows us and cares for us. "You have searched me out and known me," we say with Psalm 139. "Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me," we say with Psalm 23. "I am with you always, to the end of the age," we hear Jesus say at the end of the Gospel of Matthew (28:20), and we yearn to believe it.
No one feels God's presence all the time, at every moment of his or her life. Even the greatest saints have moments of doubt, uncertainty, and darkness. But saints are those who, over time, are more likely to be aware when God has made Godself known to them. Over time they are the ones who are more likely to shift the question, like Saint Augustine in his Confessions. The more he looked back over his life, the more his perspective changed from the question "Where were you, God?" to, "O God, you were
there; where was I?"6
Benedict's first step repeatedly emphasizes God's presence. For example, he writes, "let him recall that he is always seen by God in heaven, that his actions everywhere are in God's sight and are reported by angels at every hour" (THE RULE OF SAINT BENEDICT, 7:13). Benedict imagines that God is everywhere, around us at every moment.
One way to understand this is to see God like the experience of water when we scuba dive, a constant presence offering both great beauty and some measure of peril. Almost anyone can learn to scuba dive. The modern equipment is intuitive, well designed, and reliable. One can learn to be a safe diver in a matter of days, and by learning to scuba dive, we gain access to some of the most breathtaking sights in our world. But the water also contains an element of danger that no amount of equipment can circumvent. If we rise to the surface too quickly, we can get decompression sickness—the bends. If we don't dive according to plan, we can get lost. If we don't monitor our depth, we can pass out. Diving accidents happen.
But diving accidents don't tend to happen to beginners. After a bit of training, most beginners are attentive and respectful because the newness tends to keep us alert. Accidents happen to people who have been diving for a while without incident and begin to lose their vigilance. Like a good dive instructor, Benedict emphasizes from the beginning that we need to keep watch constantly and over the long term if we wish to make progress. The first step, then, is serious and asks us to take ourselves seriously. It calls us to a life that marks a middle way. We are to be neither flippant and silly nor morose and withdrawn. Instead we are to be watchful, open, and persistent. If we stay watchful, like good divers, we will see rare creatures and have unique adventures without getting hopelessly lost or needlessly hurt.
Benedict also calls us to be like good craftspeople. Throughout his short Rule he refers to his monks as "workmen" and his monastery as a "workshop" (THE RULE OF SAINT BENEDICT, 4:78). Mastering any craft takes time, attention, and seriousness of purpose. The people who joined Barcilon had spent years learning the art and craft of restoration. They mastered chemistry, art history, and painting itself. They spent hundreds of hours training their muscles to be steady and reliable. They learned to be attentive, patient, and careful. Serious spiritual growth demands the same virtues of us.
The difference between the craft of the restorers and our craft of spiritual growth is that, at the end of the day, the restorers could put down their brushes and leave the work. The half-restored face of an apostle can wait weeks or months. By contrast we live with our faces all the time. There's nowhere to go from ourselves. Wherever we go, there we are. Now is always the time to be about the work of soul restoration. There is no other time than now to be spiritual.
This first step of keeping watch reminds us that, in the view of the Benedictine tradition, attention to God is not restricted to what we might think of as "spiritual" practices and experiences. One of Benedict's great interpreters, the eleventh-century monk Bernard of Clairvaux, writes that if a monk can't pay attention to his reading of scripture, he should go work in the garden, on his knees, because there in the dirt he can learn the same lesson that scripture teaches, that of humility.7 Over time, we can learn to do all things with an awareness that God is with us, from gardening to making dinner, from shuttling children to writing an email. Can we picture, as we write to another, that the words we type are an extension of God's care for the world? If, in our time of prayer, we become aware of God's subtle presence, are we able to maintain some palpable connection to the still, small, elusive voice even as we face the screen? The work and practice of the twelve steps allows the restoration of God's grace to slowly seep into more and more of our lives.
In this first step, we are invited to be like a couple expecting their first child. When my wife Chloe and I first found out she was pregnant, our lives subtly shifted. We continued to care for our house, see our friends, and go to work, but our relationship to each of those things changed. Over time our house changed. We redecorated a room, and parenting books started stacking up on our bedside tables. While Chloe was pregnant, we ate and drank differently. Our work began to seem a little less important, and we didn't hesitate to leave for doctor's appointments and parenting classes. My thoughts during the day shifted. On my commute to work I wondered if my car was safe enough to carry a baby.
Similarly, entering into these twelve steps of humility means nurturing a sense of attention and expectation that can change the texture of our lives. If we are watchful in the present moment, perhaps we will cut down the amount of time we spend online with our heads in the Internet cloud and spend more time being fully present where our bodies happen to be. Perhaps we will find a small physical reminder of God's presence like a cross for our necks or prayer beads for our pockets. Perhaps we will learn an ancient repetitive prayer like "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner"8 and spend a little bit of time each day saying it. Maybe every now and then we will close the door and say the Lord's Prayer or sit in a few minutes of silence. Perhaps a few books on prayer and the Christian life will start appearing on our bedside tables.
When a baby is coming, the shifts in our lives are fueled by a sense of expectation. Our preparations and our thoughtfulness come from a yearning to meet the baby and have her enter a world in which she can thrive. Likewise our sense of watchfulness, and indeed our progress throughout the twelve steps, will often emerge from our own sense of expectation and yearning for God.
For those of us in liturgical churches, the experience of the season of Advent can be an important help in carving out this sense of expectation. I often think of the liturgical year as a circle around the mystery of God. Each of the seasons in our tradition—Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Easter, Ordinary Time, and Advent—gives us a different perspective on the unfathomable mystery at the center of our life. In Advent we are asked to attend most to our own yearning for God to come into our lives and do a new thing. We yearn for God to come to us once again as a baby at Christmas and to appear in our lives now in some new, wonderful way. As we sing together "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," we are nurturing our desire for God and learning to heed Jesus' repeated admonition to "keep watch!"
Throughout Christian history, constant watchfulness has been viewed as an entire spiritual practice in itself. One follower of Saint Benedict, Saint Romuald, wrote a short, simple Rule in the eleventh century that still governs his order, now called the New Camaldolese. The Rule captures in sweet, homely images the life of a watchful follower of God. Here it is in its entirety:
Sit in your cell as in paradise. Put the whole world behind you and forget it. Watch your thoughts like a good fisherman watching for fish. The path you must follow is the Psalms—never leave it.
If you have just come to the monastery, and in spite of your good will you cannot accomplish what you want, take every opportunity you can to sing the Psalms in your heart and to understand them with your mind.
And if your mind wanders as you read, do not give up; hurry back and apply your mind to the words once more.
Realize above all that you are in God's presence, and stand there with the attitude of one who stands before the emperor.
Empty yourself completely and sit waiting, content with the grace of God, like the chick who tastes nothing and eats nothing but what his mother brings him.9
The watchful chick in Romuald's lovely closing image desires nothing but the food brought by its mother. Our desires are always more complicated than that, and so we are rapidly brought to Benedict's second step.
Step Two:
Desiring God Above All
loves not his own will nor takes pleasure in
the satisfaction of his own desire...
— THE RULE OF SAINT BENEDICT, 7:31
Jesus' great commandment is apparently very simple. We are to "love the Lord our God with our whole heart, mind, soul, and strength...and (our) neighbor as (ourself)" (Matthew 22:36-40). The good news is that we were created
to fulfill this commandment. When our love is wholly consumed with the appropriate love of God, neighbor, and self, we are the image and likeness of God, reflecting back God's glory as we are intended to do.
And yet this is generally not our state. Other desires always seem to take higher priority. Sometimes we seem to love chocolate more than God. Other times, sleep, TV, or work supercede God in our lives. The second step of humility asks us to be honest about our priorities. What are we drawn toward? What do we really want and desire?
The simplest Christian formula for a virtuous life comes to us from Saint Augustine. In City of God he writes, "hence, as it seems to me, a brief and true definition of virtue is rightly ordered love."10 He is commenting on the Latin translation of a verse from the Song of Songs where the bride observes that the bridegroom has "ordered love in me" (Song of Solomon 2:4). As is often the case in the Christian tradition, Augustine uses the bridegroom in the Song of Songs to represent Jesus and the bride to represent the human soul. Jesus' work with us is to order our love properly so that, as he commands, the love of God is always first, and the loves of self and neighbor follow.
The Christian idea of rightly ordered love assumes that it is okay to love the things of this world. Some of Augustine's great theological opponents were the Manicheans, who assumed the material world was essentially evil and the task of the truly spiritual was to escape it. Augustine, and the Benedictine tradition that followed him, assume with scripture that the world is "very good" (Genesis 1:31). Evil expresses itself not in love of the world but in our love of worldly objects and ambitions more than God, neighbor, and self. Augustine offers the practical example of a miser who loves his gold more than his children.
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