Dear Benedict,
Being late has consequences, that’s one thing we learn from chapter 43. That’s because it’s not just ourselves who are affected by lateness. Your instructions about what to do with late monastics show how inconvenient lateness is in a community. Frustrations, resentments, anger all boil up and when they boil over other things result: isolation, exclusion, insularity to name a few.
Keeping a community going needs a lot of thought and attention to the common good, something that individual human beings seem poorly equipped to handle. For many of us the punishment for being late will take us right back to the naughty step and some infantile encounter that left us humiliated. It will not be character building but we will feel exposed and possibly ridiculed: ‘You couldn’t even be on time!’.
But what if being late is a much bigger thing? Late to wake up and smell the coffee may mean more than just cold coffee. Late into lock down and the consequences run to thousands. Late into quarantine and we need a different set of vaccines. Late to understanding the fragility of democracy and the step we find ourselves on is much bigger than the childhood naughty step.
So, don’t be late, even on zoom (last night I took my goat to a zoom meeting for the first time, see footnote for explanation). Understand the consequences of lateness and work to include not exclude so that ‘late’ and ‘on time’ have adult interpretations rather than evoking the humiliation and ridicule of childhood in ways that cause as to sulk rather than amend our ways.
From the remembered bible: The time is coming….
May I be timely in what I think and what I do.
From a Friend of Shcolastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.
Goat Note: I was glad to see that a new habit of taking a ‘surprise goat’ to zoom meetings was flourishing in some places. I have always struggled with meetings, whether zoom or physical ones. Eating jaffa cakes only goes so far, particularly on zoom, but taking a goat to meetings seemed worth trying. You may see me with my goat at further meetings. It’s possible that there’s a chapter in the Rule about this.
Goat explanation here: