Browsing tag: Benedict

  • Choose Your Destination

    Choose your destination before you set out on a path.

    Their law is what they like to do, whatever strikes their fancy.  Anything they believe in and choose, they call holy; anything they dislike, they consider forbidden (Rule of St. Benedict, 1.8-9)

    So . . . if you’re thinking that this is a description of our culture today, actually it’s not.  This is St Benedict describing corrupt monks in the 6th century.  The mental outlook that surrounds us now was already an option then.  It has always been appealing to think that you can do whatever you want now and be fine in the end.  But a closer look at real experience shows that choices have consequences.  You’ve got to choose your destination in order to figure out the right path to get there.

    The monks that St Benedict approves of are the coenobitarum, which is Latin for koinos bios, which is Greek for common life, which is English for what I aim to discuss here. Life in community is the focus of St Benedict’s Rule.  He invites you to choose as your destination community with God and your fellow human beings.

    St. Benedict also refers to the eremitarum, which is the Latin transliteration of the Greek eremitēs, which means “one who lives in the desert” and gives us the English word hermit.  He himself lived as a hermit for three years.  He describes the hermit as ready with God’s help to grapple single-handed with the vices of body and mind (Rule of St. Benedict 1.5).

    When I first started to think of the housewife-mother as a domestic hermit, it was because of the experience of being overwhelmed by the demands of life in a family with children.  And yet I also felt isolated, grappling with all sorts of interior struggles.  I don’t think my experience is unusual.  I think that many people flee the domestic life exactly because of this combination of exterior harassment and interior aridity.

    My goal here is to provide some support for Christian families.  I’m going to write from the perspective of someone who finds goodness difficult and not always attractive.  If you’re very good already, I won’t be at your level.  If you’re hanging on by your fingernails and thinking of letting go, I have a few tips for how to claw your way to survival.

    Most people dislike philosophy, so I’ll just note that I would situate myself in the Existential Thomist line.  If you’re interested in pursuing this topic, I would suggest that you NOT try reading St. Thomas Aquinas on your own.  I would suggest that you read Jacques Maritain instead.  Start with his Christianity and Democracy. The difference between reading Maritain and reading Aquinas is like the difference between drinking a gin-and-tonic and chewing the bark of the cinchona tree to extract the quinine.  In the case of Aquinas, you really do want someone else to distill it for you.

    You don’t need to be a philosopher to notice how challenging it is for Jesus to say, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” John 14:6.  His way of life is a narrow path uphill, and that’s not where the crowd is heading.  Meanwhile, you have myriads of alternatives immediately available.  A lot of nice people are rushing off in other directions, and who can tell yet where they will end up?  But Jesus insists that only his path leads to life (Matthew 7:13-14).

    He didn’t say you have to climb quickly.  There’s no quota of miles you must get through in a day.  You can sit down every ten feet and rest, if you need to.  And you don’t have to get to the end to experience the life.  You just have to be on the path–or in the vicinity of the path, retrieving someone from the landscape.  You can backtrack and retrace your steps, again, because that’s just what you have to do to keep everyone together. And you may find that your children have more energy than you do for the challenge.  They hate to walk, but they love to run.  If you point them in the right direction, soon they’ll get far beyond you, and you’ll be calling to them to wait up.

    Choose your destination: are you aiming for eternal community with those you love and with your Creator?

     

    Home » Benedict

  • Eat Your Vegetables

    Raising Kids

    …we must be vigilant every hour… (Rule of St. Benedict 7.29)

    The kid who is old enough to chew solid food will also be smart enough to realize that you’re cooking peas with his pasta.

    He’s willful enough to feel insulted.

    He’s passionate enough to throw a screaming fit.

    Because you’re a Christian mother–loving, joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, generous, faithful, gentle and self-controlled–you don’t beat him with your wooden spoon at the end of a long, hard day.  Instead, you pour yourself a glass of wine, turn up the music, get down in his face with the bag of frozen peas and say: WATCH ME.  Then in defiance of his will you add the peas to the ziti while he howls and kicks on the ground at your feet.

    So what if he removes every pea from his bowl and refuses to eat even one?  So what if he peers into each tube of ziti and sticks his finger in it to expel each internal pea?  You’ve held the line.  You’ve retained your principles.  That was the Battle of the Peas, and you won it.

    When he’s a little older, you’ll no longer permit him to remove all vegetable matter from his personal space.  Even if he won’t taste the broccoli, he must tolerate it.  He may not remove it to the table, or throw it on the floor, or foist it onto someone else’s plate.  He must suffer the presence of the hated green thing.  When at last he resigns himself to its existence, you’ve won the First Battle of Broccoli.

    Then there’s the Second Battle to fight: he’s got to taste the broccoli.

    When he gags and vomits at your dinner table, you feel disheartened.  You’ve already toiled through years of cooking for an ungrateful, complaining family.  Now you want to give up and never eat again–not with them.  But the night is darkest just before the dawn.  The little boy who gags on his broccoli will one day volunteer to cook dinner for his whole family (Fettuccine Alfredo; extra Parmesan; no peas).

    Far, far more important than the presence or absence of vegetables are the social principles he has internalized:

    1. Everything the cook serves must be TASTED.
    2. The one who provides dinner must be THANKED.
    3. If you want it different, do it YOURSELF.

    The first two principles are essential to civilization.  The laws of hospitality are older than Abraham. Flaunt them at your peril.  The third undergirds a free society.

    So persevere.  One day you’ll reap the rewards of having trained your children in good habits.  When you feel yourself flagging, just take a look around at the consequences of giving up.  Habits of self-control and principle go far beyond food choices.  Children who’ve learned that food consumption is not an act of self-worship will later be able to put other forms of consumption into context.  Habits acquired in childhood are difficult to break.

    Home » Benedict

  • Align Your Will With God’s Will

    Scripture tells us: Turn away from your desires Sirach 18:30.  And in the Prayer too we ask God that his will be done in us Matthew 6:10.  We are rightly taught not to do our own will, since we dread what Scripture says: There are ways which men call right that in the end plunge into the depths of hell Proverbs 16:25. (Rule of St. Benedict 7.19-22)

    You don’t need to wait for eternity to see the train wreck.  The bitter rewards of folly are everywhere exhibited around us.  How agonizing to watch as people you care about make foolish choices and then inflict the consequences on others.  Like King Lear they resent honest advice and choose instead to listen to flattery.  They reject offers of help and surround themselves with toxic influences that justify their decisions.  They go from delusion to destruction and leave sorrow in their wake.  Like the Fool, you trail along in the aftermath: faithful, sorrowful, impotent.

    Or not.  If you have a will of iron, for the love of mercy bend it to conform to the truth.  Sometimes that means diverging from those who have been companions.  There are others following behind you who deserve to arrive at destination safely.  Granted that it’s impossible for any human being to act always with perfect insight.  So, commit yourself to the will of the One who knows everything, and who is always, everywhere working for good.  This is what you’re doing when you pray the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.”  You subordinate your will to the will of God.  You align yourself with his plan and trust his Spirit to guide you through this world and into redemption.

    It’s not that we never make independent decisions or take spontaneous action. We don’t wait around for a special revelation about every detail of our lives.  God is not a micromanager.  God is a delegator. Jesus compares our relationship with God to that of a steward whose master has gone away on a journey, and with whom there’s no communication.  He doesn’t know when the master will return, and he’s on his own with his responsibilities (Matthew 25:14-30.)  God entrusts us with enormous freedom to act at our own discretion–more freedom than we want.

    Subordinating your will means that when you have the impulse to depart from his command, you don’t bestow on yourself permission to disobey.  This temptation can come even after years of righteous living, as another steward parable describes (Matthew 24:45-51.)  It’s tough when you find that your practice of the Christian character, rather than earning you the respect and gratitude of those you’ve helped, actually inspires their contempt.  When someone to whom you’ve always been kind abuses you, it calls into question your mode of relating to others.  There’s a natural impulse toward revenge.  And yet, life depends on curving off to the good.

    This includes speaking out.  The record of Scripture and of the Church shows models who speak cogently and forcefully.  We don’t subordinate our will to the will of everyone we meet.  Still less do we defer to the collective will of any group.  On the contrary, knowing what’s right and wrong–based on the standard of Scripture and of the Church, rather than on a code of convenience–we have the courage to stand firm, and to protest.

    We don’t see what lies around the bend into the future.  But the message of redemption is that when we align our will with God’s will–even when we’re not sure where that’s going to take us–a whole new vista opens up.  There is a path forward, through whatever terrain we find ourselves in, over the horizon and into eternity.

    (“We can but trust God,” says the parson in Dorothy Sayers’ The Nine Tailors.  Read it once for the detective story.  Then come back to it for the flashes of spiritual insight.)

    Home » Benedict

  • Yield Your Imagination

    Our thoughts are always present to God… God searches hearts and minds Psalm 7:10….  The Lord knows the thoughts of men Psalm 94:11….  From afar you know my thoughts Psalm 139:2….  That he may take care to avoid sinful thoughts, the virtuous brother must always say to himself: I shall be blameless in his sight if I guard myself from my own wickedness Psalm 18:24. (Rule of St. Benedict 7.14-18)

    Invite the Holy Spirit into the house of your mind Romans 12:2 ; Revelation 3:20.  The dark and horrible corridors hold no terror for him.  Hand him the keys, and you will find that the doors you tried so hard to keep locked will soon be propped open.  A ray of light will penetrate even fearful corners.  A breath of air will stir in stagnant places.  The Holy Spirit will not demolish your imagination: he will inhabit it.

    Your imagination is not the part of yourself that you must overcome.  Rather, your imagination is the organ God endows you with to help do the overcoming.  Just as he designed the human body with a liver that filters out toxins and aids in digestion, he designed the human mind with imagination.  If you were never exposed to toxins, you wouldn’t need the liver to be the heaviest organ in your body.  If you were living in the Garden of Eden, an impure thought would never enter your mind.  But even if you lived in a pristine environment, you wouldn’t necessarily do the right thing in it.  Adam and Eve certainly didn’t.  Conversely, history shows that the holiest people have often been exposed to terrible things.  Removal from contamination does not guarantee righteousness.  Proximity to evil does not produce sin.

    It’s true that moral toxins can overwhelm the imagination, just as alcohol abuse can overwhelm the liver. You shouldn’t expose yourself deliberately to poisonous influences.  But day after day, a functioning imagination helps us process the moral challenges to which a fallen world exposes us.

    For example, there are occasions when the task that duty calls you to is onerous, boring or repellent.  When you’re cleaning up vomit off the floor, should you fully engage in the moment with all of your faculties?  Because the sight and smell of vomit can induce such nausea that you’ll be unable to complete the task.  In such a situation, the imagination offers a way to distance yourself–to redirect your attention–so that you can complete the task without quite focusing on it.  At the end of the day, right action remains the standard of right living.  If your weird fantasy helped you do your duty, then you’re in better shape than the people who ran away from responsibility because they couldn’t enjoy the moment.

    The imagination also serves as an aid to right living when we rehearse various options for behavior.  When we’re angry, we may imagine any number of phrases we could say to the person who has offended us, or vengeful actions we could take.  But what do we actually say and do?  The imagination gives us a way to consider the consequences of wrong behaviors without actually living them out.  Sometimes it’s only through the process of imagining a wrong behavior that we come to feel that it is wrong.  The important question is whether, after imagining our options, we reject the wrong and choose the right.

    A third way that imagination helps us is by entering into evil, not to embrace it, but to combat it.  If you want to vanquish evil, you must gain an understanding of how it works.  Not all thinking about evil things is sinful, not anymore than working with a deadly virus is sinful, if your goal is to find a vaccine.  However, you must take precautions.  Don’t underestimate the thing you’re called to combat.

    Your imagination also provides a place to escape to, when you’re too weary to cope with reality.  Sometimes your fantasy reveals a specific stressor that you need to address.  In constrained situations, the escape into fantasy may be the best alternative available.  We live in a culture with fewer physical challenges than ever before in human history, but with overwhelming mental challenges that produce chronic psychological exhaustion.

    God knows all of this.  Even in our most intimate, most embarrassing, most bizarre moments, we can always turn to God and ask for grace to grow into habitable dwellings for the Holy Spirit.  When we feel ourselves inclined to evil, we should admit it and ask for strength to behave rightly.  Entrust your thoughts to God, and keep dreaming.

    Home » Benedict

  • Fear Of The Lord

    The first step of humility, then, is that a man keeps the fear of God always before his eyes and never forgets it. Psalm 36:1  (Rule of St. Benedict 7.10)

    The practice of humility isn’t so daunting once you realize that it’s not about what other people think of you.  It’s about your existence.

    The first step in this practice is elemental.  Over and over in Scripture, the fear of God is recommended to us as beneficial to our well-being:

    Happy is everyone who fears the Lord, who walks in his ways.

    You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be happy, and it shall go well with you.

    Your wife will be like a fruitful vine within your house; your children will be like olive shoots around your table.

    Thus shall the man be blessed who fears the Lord.  Psalm 128:1-4

    Immediately it becomes clear that if your idea of happiness is winning the jackpot in Vegas, you’ve got the wrong God here.  The God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the psalmists and prophets, St. Benedict and all the saints of the Church will bless you with a domestic life and a living wage.  God’s idea of happiness for his favorite creatures is not idleness, but satisfying work; not luxury, but abundance; not sexual adventures, but family.

    That’s the carrot.  But in case the carrot doesn’t motivate you, there’s also a stick.  When St. Benedict echoes the psalmist in proclaiming the fear of the Lord, he’s not talking about an intellectual assent to a coherent philosophical proposition.  He stands with all the other prophets in proclaiming that God is a Person.  And this Person holds each human being accountable for every free action.  God will punish those who willfully disobey his commands.  God will reward those who attempt to obey him.  Both the punishment and the reward will endure forever, once we’ve completed our journey through time.  So it is scary.  You’re supposed to feel a thrill of terror.

    But as always in this religion, there’s a paradox.  For those who don’t deserve much of anything, there is infinite mercy, if you’re humble enough to accept mercy.

    The fear of the Lord is a fountain of life Proverbs 14:27 

    The metaphor evokes fresh water in the desert.  On barren cliffs green things flourish.  How can this be?  A seed drifting on the wind lodged in a crack and sensed that it was time to send forth a tiny root.  Just so, the fear of the Lord is the mysterious spiritual sense that God endows his creatures with, enabling them to recognize his presence and to turn to him as the source of their vitality.

    Does it have to be fear?  Fear isn’t nice.  We’ve edited it out of religion.  But then again, we’ll pay money to feel it in a horror flick or on a roller coaster.  If it’s so bad, why do nice people seek it out and pay for it?

    Because we are alive.  Only living creatures can feel fear.  When we feel fear, we also feel alive, because we’re viscerally aware of a threat to our existence.

    The barren rock that never lived cannot fear losing the life it never had.  And people who’ve never felt alive can’t fear the loss of what they’ve never known.  They become indifferent to annihilation, their own and other people’s.  In interactions with others, these petrified souls exhibit a delusion of impunity.  Their moral indifference extends from their spiritual aridity. They’re untouchable, or so they imagine.  This is not a sign of progress or of superiority.  It’s a sign of something missing.

    The fear of God is the first step of humility, because humility is the root that aligns us in the proper posture with respect to our creator, so that we’re able to draw life from him.  We recognize our dependence on the one who called us into being.  We acknowledge the presence of the one who sustains everything at every moment.  And we send out at first just a tiny filament towards him, but as we grow and thrive, this will become a tough root mass that attaches us firmly to the region of our life source.

    What about the trouble that comes to everyone?  The trouble you face in this world is not the punishment of God.  The trouble you face now is what you have to get through on the way to your reward.  Now is the struggle of life in the desert.  Later is the rest at the oasis.

    St. Paul tells us that even if everything in the universe conspires against us–death, life, angels, demons, the present, the future, nature, culture, hurricanes, floods–God is still on our side, through it all, as long as we’re trying to do the right thing (Romans 8: 1-39).  Our struggle toward goodness through harsh surroundings shows that we are vital after all.

    Home » Benedict

  • Communicate Artfully

    As often as anything important is to be done in the monastery, the abbot shall call the whole community together and himself explain what the business is; and after hearing the advice of the brothers, let him ponder it and follow what he judges the wiser course.  The reason why we have said all should be called for counsel is that the Lord often reveals what is better to the younger. (Rule of St. Benedict 3. 1-3)

    You have a dream of a regular dinner time.  The whole family gathers together and discusses all sorts of interesting things.  Children express their opinions freely but respectfully.  The assertive ones voluntarily fall silent and listen as the less cogent ones share their thoughts.  Lively debate ensues and does not degenerate into a ping pong of opposing assertions.  No one goes off on a rant.  You pay attention to them all and praise each one for saying something sensible or insightful.  Your spouse asks for your opinion.  You arrive together at a decision that takes everyone’s wishes into account and that all adhere to with good humor.

    And then you wake up and realize you’re still in the madhouse.  Some of them don’t speak at all: they just scream and scream at the precise pitch to unravel all your nerves.  They can’t understand anything you say, and they want it all now.  They stick their fingers into electric pencil sharpeners and throw themselves in front of moving vehicles and spread five pounds of flour across the kitchen floor daily.

    When you’ve wrestled away the paring knives clenched in each small fist and extinguished the flames from the cardboard waffle box set on “toast” in your oven, you may feel that your own mind is teetering on the brink.  The teaspoons seem to be disappearing, but you’re afraid to tell anyone, because it sounds–well, crazy.  When you catch your son stashing them in the air vent, you’re so relieved not to be insane after all that you don’t even mind the pilfering he’s been doing.

    Your only chance is to outwit them. You must become cunning. Offer them two choices, either one of which is acceptable to you, and let them decide. Guess what they’re going to do next and get there first. If it can cross your mind–no matter how bizarre a thought it is–it can cross their minds too, but they will actually do it.

    It’s easier to redirect them than to halt their motion. So when you forbid them one action, make sure to tell them what they are allowed to do instead. They can be happy for thirty minutes just running around in circles. After all, they don’t need good reasons, do they? They just need suggestions that channel their impulses in a way you can live with.

    Negotiate. If it’s terribly important to them but just a matter of preference for you, let them have their way. Save your energy for the essential things.

    And take the time to communicate with your spouse. Just because you had a hard day doesn’t mean the other person had it easy.  There are wrong times for dumping a to-do list on the other working adult in the household:

    1) Before your spouse is even out of bed in the morning.

    2) After the lights are off at night.

    3) As soon as your spouse walks through the front door.

    4) When he or she is in the middle of getting a necessary task done.

    Beware of DDS (Domestic Drone Syndrome): when you can’t remember the last time you said anything to your spouse that didn’t involve a chore.  Try a heartfelt, positive comment once in a while. Watch Monty Python’s The Argument Clinic and laugh together.

    Most important: let’s try our best not to blame our spouses when things go wrong.  Life can be hard. Sometimes it’s scary too.  It’s not the fault of the person you married.

     

    Home » Benedict

  • Punish For Posterity

    He should not gloss over the sins of those who err, but cut them out while he can, as soon as they begin to sprout, remembering the fate of Eli, priest of Shiloh 1 Samuel 2:11-4:18….  Strike your son with a rod and you will free his soul from death Proverbs 23:14. (Rule of St. Benedict 2.26-29)

    Punishment is not retribution.  The purpose of punishment is to bar the way to a wrong path and to redirect the child toward the right way.  Punishment is no one’s favorite thing, but it’s an aspect of discipline that sometimes becomes necessary.

    Corporal punishment generally is called for when it’s the only way to teach the lesson.  It is fair to spank the child who throws a fit and kicks her mother.  “That hurts!” she cries.  Yes, and that’s the whole point of why you’re not allowed to kick and hit.

    There is an age that feels like an eon: between the time when a child starts to walk, and the time he learns how to talk.  During this phase, the child may be a mortal danger to himself, but he can’t understand anything you say.  This crazy person responds only to emotion and physical stimulus.  Yet each day he acquires a new skill–you never know which one next.

    Don’t spank with anything but the flat of your hand.  You will feel the sting too, and this will deter you from smacking too hard or too long.  No smack should produce any physical result more severe than transitory pink flush on the skin.  Aim to be habitually gentle and calm, so you’ll make an impression on your child when it really counts. The time to get angry and spank him is when he runs into the street and tries to throw himself in front of a truck. Next time when you call his name in that tone of voice, he’ll look back.

    Sometimes it’s satisfying to all concerned to spank the table or the chair, or whatever inanimate object can take the blame for an unfortunate event.  Children haven’t yet lost their sense of humor.

    Transgression of a law of God requires a serious response.  If the child is old enough to know she should not steal, she must return the stolen object to the owner and also apologize for taking it.  She needs to learn that stealing is not just about the object.  It’s an offense against a human being.

    If she learns not to steal from stores but still pilfers around the house, enforce boundaries.  If she tends to take your jewelry, lock up your jewelry.  Even adults have a hard time distinguishing between accessibility and permissibility.  Make the forbidden thing harder to get, so there’s a clear distinction between what she can use and what not to touch.

    If she goes to her grandmother’s house and steals the new purse that she knew was meant to be her sister’s birthday present, and then lies about it, you’ve got to take forceful action to break a habit that she’s now justifying to herself.

    Punishment to be effective must be aversive.  If it works for other people, but your child is clearly indifferent to it, then you’re going to have to think of something else.  This is especially true if you’re trying to break a bad habit, and your child seems to be factoring in your usual punishment as the price of doing business.  You might consider old-fashioned slapping of the palms with a ruler.  But you must react.  Grind routine to a stop until you’ve dealt with the problem.

    And then you redirect her.  Define what she did wrong, but also detail what behavior you want to see instead, and how she could have behaved differently in the situation she faced.  Tell her that you don’t want her to grow up to be a thief.  You do want her to grow up to be an honest person.

    You get angry because you care.  Parents who don’t care are already long gone.  But if you feel that you’re approaching a point where you can’t control your anger, give yourself a time out.  Walk away, lock the door behind you, and pray.  It’s the responsibility of parents to develop a Christian character, and gentleness is intrinsic to that character.  We practice thanking God for the good things in our lives and allow the Holy Spirit to reassert joy in our hearts.  He wants us to become patient, gentle and self-controlled.  Then we’ll be fit to correct our children when they go wrong.

    Home » Benedict

  • Discipline To Win

    In his teaching, the abbot should always observe the Apostle’s recommendation, in which he says: Use argument, appeal, reproof 2 Timothy 4:2. This means that he must vary with circumstances, threatening and coaxing by turns, stern as a taskmaster, devoted and tender as only a father can be. (Rule of St. Benedict 2.23-24)

    The purpose of discipline is to train children in good behavior, directing them along the right path.

    Training and language acquisition go hand in hand. Really you do want your children to learn how to argue on their own behalf. So engage the arguing child with a counter-argument, even as you enforce discipline. Surely you have a reason for why you’re doing what you’re doing? Explain it. Sometimes your motivations are beyond logic: verbalize your emotions too. Announce to your children that you’re about to become very, very angry. It does make a difference when you give them verbal warnings, rather than assuming that they can read your mind. And when you reprove the child for an error, spell out how it was wrong.

    There are parents who tolerate no divergence from their own opinions, decisions and emotions. Nor do they consider that they owe any explanation for the punishments they inflict. So, their children may not even understand what they did wrong, or what they should do next time instead. These parents may obtain impressive results in the short run, but they hinder the development of the initiative their children will need in order to function as adults. When they repress honest dissent, they create the conditions for deceit to flourish. As in larger scale dictatorships, the only options are subservience, rebellion or exile.

    At the other end of the spectrum are the parents who abdicate authority. They discuss options even with young children as though they were peers, without enforcing any discipline. They appeal to a child’s good nature without taking action to thwart the child’s bad impulses. Then they reproach the child for bad behavior without imposing consequences. It’s these nice parents who then complain about how disappointing their teenagers are, when they turn out not to have learned any sense of responsibility, compassion or moral obligation.

    Wise parents vary the approach with the circumstances. You threaten sparingly, because at the end of the day when you’re tired, you’d rather relax than inflict punishments–but you will follow through. You coax cautiously, because you know that children can turn the tables on you and transform bribery into blackmail. You’re stern on principles, but you’re tender on feelings. You’re usually clever, but if you make a mistake, you admit it.

    You teach right from wrong not just in theory, but in a practical way. If a young child steals something from a store, you take her back and require her to replace the object where she found it. When she took it, she didn’t have any concept of stealing: now she does. By making her put it back, you enforce the lesson that the thing that does not belong to her must stay where it is. For some children, this simple, mild intervention is all they’ll ever need. Once she realizes it’s wrong, she’ll never do it again.

    Children misbehave because of any number of factors. The challenge for parents is to observe and deduce what the causes may be, and to address those causes first. A hungry child gets fed. An exhausted child gets bedtime. Injuries both visible and invisible get appropriate treatment. Complicated teenage tangles get hours of conversation. Mistakes get the benefit of the doubt. Extenuating circumstances get full consideration.

    When a child is clearly obedient, docile and patient, you extend a gentle appeal. There’s no excuse for hurting the feelings of a well-meaning child who is making every effort to comply with expectations but through weakness has made a mistake.

    Realize that you too experience all sorts of variables that influence your behavior. Maybe you need to let go of something else you’re expending energy on, in order to have the resources you need to discipline your children constructively. Don’t be the father who didn’t bother. Don’t be the mother who always had something else to do. Engage with your children. Come alongside to help. When you slow down to walk side by side with them and focus at their level, you’ll find that you do have the experience you need to sort things out.

     

    Home » Benedict

  • Cultivate Fairness

    The abbot should avoid all favoritism in the monastery…. But the abbot is free, if he sees fit, to change anyone’s rank as justice demands…. God shows no partiality among persons Romans 2:11. Only in this are we distinguished in his sight: if we are found better than others in good works and in humility. Therefore, the abbot is to show equal love to everyone and apply the same discipline to all according to their merits. (Rule of St. Benedict 2.16-22)

    It’s not that you love one more than the other. It’s just that you like them all better when they’re asleep. Each of your children can be difficult to deal with, for different reasons. But each one also has qualities that you want to cultivate. Each one thrives in a unique way.

    But with all sorts of variability in the details, the same principles should apply to everyone. This includes you too. Encourage good habits, but be cautious about proclaiming absolute laws, because your children will soon be clever enough to interpret them and apply them to you in ways that you never thought of. You’ll excuse younger children from certain tasks that are beyond their ability (but those will be the jobs they really, really want). You’ll exempt older children from restrictions that are no longer needed at their age (but expect them to relapse in the face of responsibility).

    Even if you aim to keep the same standard for boys and girls, you may find that divergence in practice is preferable for all concerned. For example, a boy should not be excused from cleaning up the kitchen because he’s a boy. But if he’d rather pick up dog poop out of the yard, why not let him? A girl shouldn’t be allowed to primp in front of the mirror indefinitely because she’s a girl. But if she manages to get dressed on time in skirt and fancy shoes, with her hair done by herself, doesn’t she deserve the accessible seat in the car?

    If one child puts away the dishes unasked, while everyone else runs away, it is fair to praise that one, and to call attention to the difference in behavior. The other children are sure to speak up and inform you of whatever unacknowledged contribution they have made too.

    Sometimes parents begin to favor one child over the others because circumstances dictate this trend; or because one child is needier; or one child is more demanding. It is fair for parents to halt this trajectory and to impose limitations. Explain to the children that your goal is to be equitable. They can be smarter than you are at figuring out ways to achieve a fair balance, and sometimes you discover that their priorities are different from yours. Encourage them when they bring you novel solutions. Let them negotiate terms with each other. Why not?

    Actual favoritism is more insidious and has to do with identity issues on the part of the parent. Sometimes a parent will favor the child who embodies an ideal. For example, a mother may favor the daughter who is everything she wishes she could have been, when she was a girl. The other daughter, who resembles her in other ways (maybe with traits that she dislikes about herself) becomes the inferior one. Both daughters are hobbled as a result: one by the tangled expectation of success; the other by the cutting expectation of failure.

    We arrive at Christian identity in a different way. Our relationship to Christ is analogical. Only Jesus is the definition of God as man. But each one of us is an example of God at work in a human being.

    To realize this is to let drop the heavy burden of idealism. Jesus promises that his Holy Spirit is at work within us to develop the traits God desires. We participate in this process voluntarily, and yes, it is a lot of work. But it’s not the work of desperation. This is because our confidence is not in our own efforts but in the promise of God.

    We can also be confident that God is at work in each of our children. No matter what trials they face, no handicap is insurmountable in an ultimate sense. We grieve when we see them suffer. But we remain confident that God is working out some good purpose in each one. So we don’t flog them on to perform, if they have the traits associated with success. Nor do we abandon hope for them, if they have other traits. The journey of faith includes the assurance that there is no ultimate cause for anxiety, no matter what challenges we face together right now.

    Sibling dynamics movie suggestions: Rain Man (1988); Unbroken (2014); Sense and Sensibility (1995); Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986); Little Women (1994); A River Runs Through It (1992).

     

    Home » Benedict

  • Aim For Judgment Day

    The abbot must know that anyone undertaking the charge of souls must be ready to account for them. Whatever the number of brothers he has in his care, let him realize that on judgment day he will surely have to submit a reckoning to the Lord for all their souls–and indeed for his own as well (Rule of St. Benedict 2.37-38).

    Bad news: you have to face God on Judgment Day. Good news: you don’t have to dress your son in polyester and make him play Little League games in 100 degree weather while you broil on the bench. Patience, kindness and faithfulness are mandatory. Olympic medals, perfect test scores and perfect teeth are optional. You must conform to the image of Christ. You don’t have to conform to the image on the cover of the magazine.

    Of course, we do want the best of everything, for ourselves and for our children. But we also want to be able to enjoy what we’ve got. When you see how miserable people can be when they have it all, you realize that there must be more to life than everything the world has to offer. You still want the good things in life. But you understand that the good life is not dependent on the good things. It’s all about priorities.

    That he may not plead lack of resources as an excuse, he is to remember what is written: Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all these things will be given you as well Matthew 6:33. (RB 2. 35).

    Jesus says, “If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it” John 14:14. To ask in Jesus’s name means asking for something that’s consistent with the will of God. Raising the children you’ve been entrusted with is certainly consistent with God’s will. So lay out all of your needs in this area with no inhibition in prayer. You are the manager, the trainer (and the janitor). God is the owner. This doesn’t mean that you never lose a game. It means that you don’t quit when you see the bills. You have someone to turn to when you need more resources.

    Your job is to negotiate a variety of temperaments, often different from your own. You coax, reprove and encourage as appropriate. This means adapting your strategy to each child’s unique personality and abilities. You cultivate each one’s welfare. But the child is not your possession. Parents are trustees of something that belongs to God. If you need ideas as you think about how to develop another person’s potential, check out these best-of-the-best movie trainers: Sam Mussabini, in Chariots of Fire; Mr. Miyagi, in The Karate Kid; Yoda, in The Empire Strikes Back; Mickey Goldmill, in Rocky.

    The goal is not to turn our children into replicas of ourselves. It’s not even to realize an ideal. The goal is to form characters in the image of Christ. In the process of correcting our children’s faults, we realize exactly where those faults came from. Their most annoying personality traits are often the ones they inherit from us. Sometimes it’s only after having a child that we even begin to realize what our own weaknesses are. And so we realize that we too must change for the better. We ask God’s grace to transform us together with them into people who reflect his character.

    “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit” 2 Corinthians 3:18. St. Paul is telling us that God is the one in charge of this makeover. Our part is to contemplate Christ; to study him as the model; and to rehearse the lessons that we learn. When you look into a mirror, you adjust your own face to conform to what you think it should look like. As Christians, we adjust ourselves to resemble Jesus.

    The call to mimic Christ doesn’t mean that you won’t face limitations. If God himself voluntarily took on human limitations, should a human being expect to transcend them? But at the end of the day, even the impossible–if it was consistent with God’s purpose–will be done. Sometimes the impossible is the ordinary day ahead. But you don’t have to face the whole day in one gulp: a Psalter organizes each day into segments, with prayers for each time period based on the Psalms. At whatever moment you feel yourself flagging, take a few minutes to pray and ask for strength to make it through just the next few hours.

     

    Home » Benedict
    • Previous