Living With Contradiction. Esther de Waal

people fear the Lord, and do not become elated over their good deeds; they judge it is the Lord working in them. ³⁰They praise (Psalm 14[15]:4) the Lord working in them, and say with the Prophet: Not to us. Lord, not to us give the glory, but to your name alone (Psalm 113[115:1):9). ³¹In just this way Paul the Apostle refused to take credit for the power of his preaching. He declared: By God's grace I am what I am (I Corinthians 15:10). ³²And again he said: He who boasts should make his boast in the Lord (2 Corinthians 10:17). ³³That is why the Lord says in the Gospel: Whoever hears these words of mine and does them is like a wise man who built his house upon rock; ³⁴the floods came and the winds blew and beat against the house, but it did not fall: it was founded on rock (Matthew 7:24–25).

      ³⁵With this conclusion, the Lord waits for us daily to translate into action, as we should, his holy teachings. ³⁶Therefore our life span has been lengthened by way of a truce, that we may amend our misdeeds. ³⁷As the Apostle says: Do you not know that the patience of God is leading you to repent (Romans 2:4)? ³⁸And indeed the Lord assures us in his love: I do not wish the death of the sinner, but that he turn back to me and live (Ezekiel 33:11).

      ³⁹Brothers, now that we have asked the Lord who will dwell in his tent, we have heard the instruction for dwelling in it, but only if we fulfil the obligations of those who live there. ⁴⁰We must, then, prepare our hearts and bodies for the battle of holy obedience to his instructions. ⁴¹What is not possible to us by nature, let us ask the Lord to supply by the help of his grace. ⁴²If we wish to reach eternal life, even as we avoid the torments of hell, ⁴³then – while there is still time, while we are in this body and have time to accomplish all these things by the light of life – ⁴⁴we must run and do now what will profit us for ever.

      ⁴⁵Therefore we intend to establish a school for the Lord's service. ⁴⁶In drawing up its regulations, we hope to set down nothing harsh, nothing burdensome. ⁴⁷The good of all concerned, however, may prompt us to a litle strictness in order to amend faults and to safeguard love. ⁴⁸Do not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the road that leads to salvation. It is bound to be narrow at the outset. ⁴⁹But as we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run on the path of God's commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love. ⁵⁰Never swerving from his instructions, then, but faithfully observing his teaching in the monastery until death, we shall through patience share in the sufferings of Christ that we may deserve also to share in his kingdom.

      Amen.

      I

       A Way of Healing

       ‘the love of Christ must come before all else’ 4.21

      We all stand in need of healing. We are all seeking wholeness. For most of us it is a most urgent and ever-present reality in our lives, one we may perhaps try to bury or neglect but which, if we are honest with ourselves, we find we cannot ignore. We all know also that unless we attend to our inner conflicts and contradictions, not only will we find ourselves torn apart by our inner divisions but also we shall very likely inflict wounds on those around us.

      Our God, the God of love, does not want a broken and divided self. He created us for fullness of life. He created each of us to be a free son or daughter, that son or daughter whom in our deepest being each of us longs to be, to become. And we all know in our heart of hearts (even if we are unwilling to admit it) that this healing of our divisions, this search for wholeness, must be an ongoing process. There is no once and for all moment when we can say that at last we are whole, the past is buried and over, the hurts forgotten, the wounds healed. Instead we find that it is to be a search that we must expect to continue throughout our lives.

      This search is one that is very evident in our world today. Concern for healing and for wholeness is a theme much written or spoken about. There are countless paperbacks with the word “healing” in the title. There are countless workshops which hold out the promise of healing. Faced with something which none of us can evade, even if we wanted to, I believe that we can turn to the Rule of St Benedict, and find there a handbook of healing. St Dunstan's first biographer, almost a thousand years ago, described the saint as a man “following the health-giving Rule of St Benedict”. I am sure the same can be true of us all today. But the promise is not one of some idealistic, escapist healing, which will lead us into some easy wholeness. Rather the promise is that we shall learn to live with contradiction, holding together the tensions in such a way that will let them become creative and life-enhancing for us. And in fact I find it reassuring to think that there is no easy path, no short cuts, no simplistic answer.

      Jean Vanier writes of this with understanding when he says

      In our times there is a danger of thinking that everyone may become perfectly healed and find perfect unity in themselves and with others. This type of idealism is rampant everywhere. New therapies engender more and better illusions. And each day new techniques are born which will bring about this long-awaited healing. Personally I am more and more convinced that there is no perfect healing. Each human being carries their own wounds, their own difficulties of relationships and their own anguishes. It is a question of learning to live day after day with this reality and not in a state of illusion…

      When we stop and look at ourselves we are broken and fragmented in so many areas of our being – in our relations not only with ourselves, but also with other people, with the world around us, and not least of all with God himself. Here are the four aspects of our lives which we must all at some time confront if we are to grow into that fullness of stature to which we are called. This search for healing is a search which is common to us all; it is basic to our humanity. We are faced with it right from the start, in the Garden of Eden. We return to that story and find there a story that is our own. For each of us is Adam and each is Eve. And as we read what happened there, step by step the full impact of those successive alienations is brought to bear on us. We see the drama unfolding in relentless detail with an almost terrifying sense of inevitability about what men and women can do to themselves.

      The setting is a garden. There are two players, but dominating it all is God, his voice heard, his presence felt. We watch what happens. Encouraged by that subtle snake the man and the woman, whole in their nakedness, disobey the very simple command given to them by God. The relationship of God with the men and women of his own creating has been challenged and damaged. Then immediately they discover that they are naked, and so they sew fig leaves together to make a garment which will cover parts of themselves. Here is a split within themselves, for when they cover their nakedness with leaves they are rejecting their original wholeness. And then God speaks to Adam, and Adam blames Eve, but Eve says it was all due to the snake. Then God speaks to Adam of the enmity that there will be between him and the woman, and he speaks to Eve of the pain that she will feel in child-bearing. Now there are splits in the relations between persons. And finally God tells Adam that he is to till the earth with sweat on his brow – there is no longer any harmonious relationship with the earth. Here is the split with the environment.

      All these elements are part of the drama. They tell me that I must not think that I can try to heal myself without also trying to heal my relationships with other people, those with whom I have to live. Nor must I forget that I have a debt to the world around me, to the earth and the environment that gives me life. But above all there is God himself, the root and ground of my being. Unless my relationship with him is made whole I shall remain standing in the shadow of the