Dear Benedict<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019m just getting\nin touch about your 1,500 year old best seller, \u2018The Rule of St\nBenedict\u2019. Still read around the world today, I am one of those\nwould-be readers. I admit it\u2019s challenging. For a start, I don\u2019t\nlive in a monastic community and of course our contexts are different\nin other ways too. However, I\u2019m determined to give it a go and find\na way of opening it up for me and others like me, a dissenting woman\nof the 21st century, and maybe others too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I like the\nbeginning. Everything needs an introduction and your prologue is just\nthat. Simple enough to start with, the first thing I remember is\n\u2018Listen!\u2019 Sounds easy but it\u2019s often much harder than that one\nword suggests. Our world is probably noisier than yours was. Having\nsaid that many traditions both religious and secular value listening.\nLike your Rule, they recognise that true listening gets under the\nsurface of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019re currently\nsuffering from a viral pandemic and in my small corner of rural\nEngland, listening has many dimensions. First there\u2019s physical\nlistening: I love to go outside and listen to the sounds of the\ncountry side. We know this is a good healthy thing to do, but even\nthis simple step may be difficult for some. Such listening can\ncertainly be easily interrupted by other sounds added to our\nenvironment. We live in a constant tangle between what is good for us\nas people, what keeps us healthy and what we think is good for us who\nwant to better standard of living. High above me is a flight path to\none of the UK\u2019s regional airports. Along the valley one of the\nbusiest arterial roads in this county. At the end of the road a\nbuilding site offers affordable housing and construction noise. It\u2019s\na struggle to know what is best for us. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then there\u2019s\nanother side of listening: listening to speech and attending to what\nis really being said. In our pandemic times there\u2019s a lot of speech\ntravelling round the world. Some is honest and straight forward and\nsome is not. We have to pay attention to sieve one from the other. So\nwe are agreed, in your time and in mine, listening is essential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have spent a lot\nof my professional life as a listener, but all of us can learn to\nlisten better. Maybe we should each try to make a note of some of our\nlistening and see what we really hear. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From Proverbs\nchapter 1, a remembered version:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If you\u2019re wise you\ncan still learn more by listening again: even experienced people can\nlearn something new.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Make me a new listener, ready to learn new things.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n From a friend of Scholastica\u2019s, and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Benedict I\u2019m just getting in touch about your 1,500 year old best seller, \u2018The Rule of St Benedict\u2019. Still read around the world today, I am one of those would-be readers. I admit it\u2019s challenging. For a start, I don\u2019t live in a monastic community and of course our contexts are different in other … Continue reading “A letter to Benedict about the Rule”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,35],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-listen","category-rule"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":190,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/190"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/foowr.org.uk\/notesfrombambi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}