Kathleen Norris speaks of the Rule of Benedict, which she was exposed to upon connecting to a Benedictine community, where sharing took on new heights.

In Benedict’s rule, this was said about how possessions would be shared…

“Whoever needs less should thank God and not be distressed.  Whoever needs more should feel humble because of his weakness, not self-important because of the kindness shown him.  In this way, all the members will be at peace.”

“Whoever needs more should feel humble because of his weakness”…

I can’t say I’ve ever heard that angle in discussions of materialism and wealth, but wow…

Benedict, you nailed it.

And you nailed most of us too.

Speaking of how humility factors in the journey of every person, Joan Chittister said it this way…

Humility requires first and foremost what the ancients called memoria dei, ‘the awareness of God,’ at all times, in all places, at the center of all things.  It is so easy to make ourselves gods of the tiny little kingdoms we occupy.  We climb very small ladders and then assume that we have risen to the heights of our humanity.

The realization that God is god and that we are not requires serious reflection.  Striving for all the tops of all the pyramids in the world will not change the fact that no person ever really reaches the top of anything and that the real acme of creation lies deep within the soul and waits for us to bow before it in awareness and in praise.  Those whose lives are lived without listening to their hearts, those who make themselves, their work, their status, their money their god, never find the God of the universe, who waits quietly within for us to exhaust our compulsive race to nowhere. 

I’ve had more chance to read recently than usual.  And I’m thankful.

Words are powerful in my world.  It’s regularly impressed upon me how the lives of people I’ve never met have spoken powerfully into my own life… through thoughts thought, language found, and words recorded.

I like to dream that my words might do that for someone someday.  I’d like to try.

Then a line from a Zorro movie comes to mind…

“You were trying.  She was succeeding.”

And so I follow this post with several from people who’ve recently succeeded in blessing me with their words.