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We
exist to be miracle workers for one another, and it is in community
that we are called to grow. It’s in community that we
come to see God in the other. It’s in community that
we see our own emptiness filled up by the other. It’s
community that calls me beyond the pinched horizons of my own
life, my own country, my own race, and gives me the gifts I
do not of myself have within me. ...
A
Benedictine spirituality of community calls for more than togetherness.
Togetherness is very cheap community. Benedictine community
calls for the open mind and the open heart. Benedict called
always for minds opened to the shattering implications of the
Scriptures. The fact is that Jesus was an assault on every
closed mind in Israel. To those who thought that illness was
a punishment for sin, Jesus called for openness. To those who
considered tax collectors incapable of salvation, Jesus called
for openness. To those who believed that the Messiah to be
real had to be a military figure, Jesus was the nonviolent
call to openness. And so Benedict also calls us to open-heartedness.
The Benedictine heart, the heart that saved Europe before us,
is a place without boundaries. [It is] a place where the truth
of the oneness of the human community shatters all barriers,
opens all doors, refuses all prejudices, welcomes all strangers,
listens to all voices, black and white, Arab and Jew, male
and female. The data are in. The world is an electronic, commercial,
political village. We cannot, you and I, go on much longer
simply nodding to the neighbors in the parking lot after church,
in the name of hospitality and community. We must begin to
see the immorality of being socially, globally, unconscious.
Socially, globally, narcissistic, and calling it the free market,
democracy, and unipolarism. Individualism has not saved us.
We need the wisdom of community now.
--Joan Chittister
Simone
Weil in 1943, looking into the darkness of that time, said
this: “Today it is not nearly enough to be a saint, but
we must have a saintliness demanded by the present moment,
a new saintliness, itself without precedent. A new type of
sanctity is indeed a fresh spring for invention. If all is
kept in proportion and if the order of each thing is preserved,
it is almost equivalent to a new revelation of the universe
and of human destiny. It is the exposure of a large portion
of truth and beauty hitherto concealed under a thick layer
of dust, the new holiness.” This amazing statement, this
spiritual vision, is just what we need when we look into the
black hole of our present predicament. It’s the hope
we need for our own dark age. ...
So
what about this new holiness? What is it? What’s new
about it? Surely holiness is holiness, saints are saints. Not
quite. For Simone Weil the specific characteristic of this
new holiness is an explicit sense of universality. In the saints
of the past, there was a sense of universality. It’s
almost part of holiness to have this sense of interconnection,
interdependence. But it was largely implicit. Even St. Francis,
one of the most universally minded of saints, was bound by
his culture, his time, his politics, his religion. Modern holiness,
however, according to Simone Weil knows that the universe is
a country, and that for the truly spiritual man or woman it
is our only country here below. And it’s this vision
of holiness with the explicit universality of the global consciousness
that surely is our way towards peace, our way to a love of
country that is not nationalistic, patriotism without nationalism,
local identity without aggressive behavior towards your neighbor,
and religious belief without intolerance or prejudice.
--Laurence Freeman
Mortality
not only connects but unites us, and I can’t help but
think, of course, of the World Trade Center as I say that.
I lived in New York until 1974, and I watched the Towers go
up. One of the few pieces of gratitude I can muster for that
day is before they were coming down, all of the messages that
came out from these people who knew they were going to die: “I
love you, take care of yourself, take care of the children.” I
think one of my favorites was “You’ve been a good
friend.” These wonderful messages coming out from people
who suddenly were faced with their common mortality in a way
that none of them had expected. It seemed an ordinary day and
it was anything but that. Remember, every day that you're going
to die.
--Kathleen Norris
In
the Buddhist view, wisdom and compassion are intrinsically
linked together. One cannot be truly compassionate without
wisdom. Wisdom--seeing the world as it really is--reveals the
deep interrelatedness and impermanency of all things. When
we genuinely recognize this, compassion is our natural response.
When we have wisdom, we cannot help but feel compassion. By
the same token, practicing compassion helps us to realize our
fundamentally wise natures. Living compassionately means to
think and act without putting ourselves at the center of the
universe, without believing that "It's all about me." To
recognize that the whole of existence does not revolve around
these little entities we call our selves is the beginning of
wisdom. Thus wisdom and compassion arise together. As we become
more compassionate, we gain wisdom; as we become wiser, our
compassionate natures are more fully revealed.
Wisdom
and compassion are also innate. Our fundamental nature as persons
is to be wise and compassionate, but years of social and self
conditioning have obscured those qualities. We have learned
to act and think in self-centered ways for so long that selfishness
now seems natural. We need, think Buddhists, a practice, a
discipline for reversing the effects of years of conditioning
to return us to our true selves. Yet because our habits of
self-centeredness are so deep and ingrained, the discipline
needs to be gradual and gentle. We cannot expect radical transformation
to happen overnight, nor can we expect to be the persons we
wish to be simply by willing. Willing must be accompanied by
acting. By acting compassionately and wisely, it becomes easier
to will to be compassionate and wise. Buddhist spiritual practice,
therefore, is a matter of training: learning and acting to
be the persons we truly are.
--Mark Muesse,
“What
Does It Mean to Lead a Spiritual Life? A Buddhist Perspective”