Tis the season!
A time to keep, and a time to cast away
In a short story, Rudyard Kipling quotes what he says is an old Indian proverb—Twenty years a youth, twenty years a fighter, twenty years a householder, and twenty years a monk.
The demographic that is most interested in the work of the Center for Benedictine Life is older women; women whose children have launched, perhaps, women who have retired from their careers. This fact is disturbing to some, who are looking for vocations among the young, but we are happy to have them!
We old people have had some of the selfishness rubbed off of our characters by the challenges of life. We have more patience than we used to. We are less likely than we were decades ago to be unmoored by some social storm.
So we have already begun to develop the qualities of a monastic. And while the young can put off thinking about death, for us it is looming as inevitable, which motivates us to focus on running while we have the light of life.
Children are flown, the daily working life is over—An an excellent time of life to focus on the One in whom we live and move. This focus expresses itself differently in different individuals. For some, it is pouring their love into the next generation. For some, it is pouring their love into the Holy, and discovering where that leads.
We all probably want to keep the generosity, patience, and stability we have developed over the years, but we have cast away youth, we have been fighters and householders. . . it may be our time to become monks.
What else are you keeping, and what are you casting away?
Core Benedictine values include prayer, deep listening, humility, simplicity, community, stability, service, stewardship, hospitality, peacemaking, and inner transformation. I believe these values are important at all stages of life. If people learn these values in their youth, their work during the “fighter” stage will be more purposeful and compassionate, and they will teach these values to their children, by word and example, during the “householder” stage. Then, by the time they transition into the monastic stage, they will already have decades of experience of living these values in various ways, and their work during the monastic stage will be all the more meaningful. On another note, I wouldn’t consider people of 60-70 years of age to be old; many sexagenarians today have decades of productive life ahead of them. But the decades of life behind us at that stage contribute to a more complex, nuanced understanding of the world.
So thankful to have found Center for Benedictine Life and this new journey in the 'householder' stage.