In class today, my upper-level college students and I were discussing Benedict’s Rule. I am always fascinated by what today’s Facebooking, texting college students find relevant in this timeless, wise work.
Students keep on raising their hands and saying how Benedict’s Rule is an antidote to our “overachieving” lives. Woah. The spiritual principles that Benedict describes are attractive to our brilliant new generation of digerati because these truths teach us how to love our enemies, how to accept God’s love for ourselves and for our own inner “enemies” (you know—our perpetual conflicts of soul that no one but God and we see), and how to become intimate with Christ and so know real peace.
Students are especially drawn to the longest chapter of the Rule, number seven, on humility. Benedict says, “The first degree of humility, then, is that a person keep the fear of God before his or her eyes and beware of ever forgetting it.” We discussed the two kinds of fear—the “alarming” kind and the fear that is “respect” or “reverence.” We are to “respect” and have “reverence” for God, ever mindful that he is Love and that “perfect love casts out all [of the alarming kind of] fear” (1 John 4:18).
In chapter seven, Benedict also recommends this restful approach: “Let us consider that God is always looking at us from heaven, that our actions are everywhere visible to the divine eyes”; what a cheerful difference that would make in our lives.
So I found myself saying to these awesome students that we spend all of our lives trying instead to make sure our resumes are fat and stellar, while our souls remain emaciated and dull, when all along God’s wonder and love are inside us, as Christ reminds us: “The kingdom of God is within” (Luke 17:21).
I told them that if my resume had a category titled “Rest,” it would be a thin category, with few bulleted entries, and that if I were being hired on my experience in resting in God, I would not be hired anywhere. I am not proud of this fact, but admitting it to myself and also out loud started me some time ago on the road of Learning to Rest.
This road is very different from my past way of living. My mode of “rest” has always been to work until I exhausted myself and then to keep on working. I call it “being conscientious.” Some might call it, “not obeying Psalm 46:10,” where we are given very specific divine instructions: “Be still and know that I am God.”
It’s the ultimate homework assignment from the ultimate Teacher: “Rest.” The due date is simple. I have from right now until I am dead to work on it, and I must work on it daily and keep working on it until I take that ultimate (as Mr. Gary Davis calls it) “dirt nap.”
How can we love each other if we have not yet learned to rest in Christ?
That’s the question I ask myself daily: If I learn to rest in Christ and truly rest, how much better will I get at loving God, my self, and others? I am willing to stake my life on trying to answer that question.
I am willing to make myself ultimately vulnerable and open to God in doing so.
Or, as Yoda says, “There is no try. There is only do.” Well, I should quote Yoda accurately. When Luke says to him, “All right, I’ll give it a try,” Yoda tells Luke, “No. Try not. Do. . . . or do not. There is no try.”
Of course, such wonderful, awesome impossibilities are made possible when one’s best friend is Christ, through whom anything is possible, with enough true grit and humility (Philippians 4:13).