Living with Contradiction

Living with Contradiction

Esther de Waal is one of today’s most popular authors writing in the field of spirituality. She lives in Herefordshire, close to the border between England and Wales, having returned to the countryside where she grew up. A sense of place has always been important and, after Cambridge, she became the first research student in the newly founded Department of Local History at Leicester. It was the buildings and the landscape that originally encouraged her to explore the Benedictine, Cistercian and Celtic traditions. Her first interests now are her garden and her increasing number of grandchildren, but she also finds time to write, to take retreats and to travel – feeling a particular connection with South Africa.

Other titles in the Rhythm of Life series

THE BOOK OF CREATION

– the practice of Celtic spirituality

Philip Newell

CALLED TO BE ANGELS

– an introduction to Anglo-Saxon spirituality

Douglas Dales

ETERNITY NOW

– an introduction to Orthodox spirituality

Mother Thekla

THE FIRE OF LOVE

– praying with Therese of Lisieux

James McCaffrey

TO LIVE IS TO PRAY

– an introduction to Carmelite spirituality

Elizabeth Ruth Obbard

THE WAY OF ECSTASY

– praying with Teresa of Avila

Peter Tyler

A CONDITION OF COMPLETE SIMPLICITY

– Franciscan wisdom for today’s world

Rowan Clare Williams

RHYTHM OF LIFE SERIES

EDITOR: BISHOP GRAHAM CHADWICK

Living with Contradiction

An introduction to Benedictine Spirituality

Esther de Waal

© Esther de Waal 1989, 1997, 2003

This edition published 2003 by The Canterbury Press

Norwich

(a publishing imprint of Hymns Ancient and Modern Limited a registered charity)

13a Hellesdon Park Road,

Norwich, NR6 5DR

Third impression 2012

Originally published by Fount Paperbacks, London, in 1987

All rights reserved. No part of this publication which is copyright may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Esther de Waal has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this Work

British Library Cataloguing in Publication data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 85311 545 5

Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR04YY

Contents

Series Introduction

Preface to the Second Edition

Preface to the First Edition

The Prologue to The Rule

I. A Way of Healing

II. The Power of Paradox

III. Living With the Contradictions

IV. Living With Myself

V. Living With Others

VI. Living With the World

VII. Together and Apart

VIII. Gift and Grace

IX. Desert and Marketplace

X. Death and Life

XI. Praying the Conflicts

XII. Yes

Notes and Comments

Further Reading

Series Introduction

Wisdom is to discern the true rhythm of things: joy is to move, to dance to that rhythm.

These books on various traditions of Christian spirituality are intended as introductions for beginners on the journey of faith. They might help us discover a truer rhythm as something of the experience of those who follow any particular tradition resonates with our own.

Too much can be made of the distinctions between the different expressions of Christian spirituality. They all derive from the experience of what God has done and is doing in us and among us. While emphases differ, their validity is their congruence with the good news of Jesus Christ in the scriptures. As the various instruments in an orchestra make their special contribution to the symphony, so we delight in the extra dimension that each tradition brings to the living out of the Christian faith.

The present wide interest in spirituality seems to indicate that, in the midst of all the current uncertainties that we meet in contemporary life despite its relative comfort and technological advance, there is felt a need to reconnect with our spiritual roots and find a deeper purpose for living.

Each volume offers an introduction to the essential elements of the particular spiritual tradition and practical guidance for shaping our everyday lives according to its teaching and wisdom. It is an exploration into the way that spiritual practice can affect our lifestyle, work, relationships, our view of creation, patterns of prayer and worship, and responsibilities in the wider world.

Many books, of course, have been written in all of these areas and in each tradition classic commentaries are available which can never be surpassed. The aim of this series is to meet the needs of those searching for or beginning to explore the journey inward into their inmost being and outward to relationship with people and the whole of creation.

We live in a fragmented society in which a balanced rhythm of life is difficult to achieve. St Benedict, for fourteen hundred years, has been an inspiration to lay people as well as monks to seek and to find that balance which involves body, mind and spirit. This book provides an opportunity for those who are seeking God to explore what Benedict has to offer.

Bishop Graham Chadwick

Sarum College

Preface to the Second Edition

When this book was first published, I helped the publisher design a cover and I chose the boss of a Gothic vault. It was an image that spoke to me powerfully of the role of the keystone (which I discuss on pages 30–31) as the point at which stress and tension meet and are held together. This was very much the product of years spent living under two great cathedrals, Lincoln and Canterbury. These buildings as I came to know them spoke of something that I, and I think many others as well, have experienced.

I have since found it expressed most eloquently in words from that superb craftsman of words, Michael Stancliffe, then Dean of Winchester. He spoke of the thrusting and counter-thrusting, the never-ending combat between mighty unseen forces, 'the whole fabric struggling to burst asunder but manfully resisted by the system of countervailing forces … But now translate that to the language of support and sacrifice, the untiring effort of vaults and walls, columns and buttresses, to uphold and strengthen one another.'

Ten years later, when the book was published as a new edition, I chose a cover showing a monastic scribe with a quill in one hand and a scraper in the other, an image that spoke to me of how the monastic tradition knew so much about the holding together of opposites (one hand to write and the other to change) and how to use the two together for a creative end.

But today, in this third edition, the image is the date on which I am writing, September 11 2003, the second anniversary of the terrorist attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York. And 9/11 has passed into common parlance, with each of us having a picture of the crashing of those two towers. Since then conflict and opposing ideals and forces have become an increasing reality. Fundamentalism, whether religious or political, seems sometimes to threaten to envelop the entire world.

The fundamentalist looking for certainty knows nothing of living with contradiction, the challenge of hearing the other, of the openness to being changed. I am glad therefore that this small book is to appear again, for I feel that the underlying issues I try to raise remain both immediate and urgent.

Esther de Waal

September 11 2003

Preface to the First Edition

It is very fascinating to see how, in the ten years since this book was first written, increasing numbers of lay people like myself are turning to the monastic tradition. Here they find support on their Christian journey which they often fail to find in the institutional church, where parish and diocesan life can be extremely busy and seemingly lacking in any sort of contemplative focus. 'The church is getting a bad press – except for her monasteries.' This comment, which I read recently in an American national newspaper, shows how widespread this feeling is. Debates on political issues, on fund-raising or administrative concerns seem to drown out the voice of prayer.

Why is it that 1500 years after it was first written, so many thousands of people today are reading the Rule of St Benedict? I believe that it is because this short sixth-century monastic text, coming as it does from St Benedict’s own experience of life, can still bring support, inspiration and challenge. His Rule is simply a practical manual to give guidance to a family of brothers, an extended household, who had to earn their living, who were concerned with food, with the care of visitors or the sick, with the upkeep of buildings and land, while recognizing the need for time to read and study – and yet determined to make prayer the central focus, the one priority of their lives. St Benedict helped them to bring balance and rhythm into a life whose pressures and demands were remarkably similar to our own.

Balance and moderation are commonly regarded as the hallmarks of Benedictine spirituality. Yet it is vital, if we are to recognize the power and the influence of the Rule, not to see this as anything mediocre, lukewarm or middle of the road. There is nothing safe or easy in holding a central position between opposites. It asks me to be fully alive, constantly moving forward, even at those times when I am feeling as though I am only holding on precariously. The way of St Benedict is the way of the Gospel. As Christ came to make us fully alive, to open eyes and ears and hearts to the fullness of life that is on offer, so too is the Rule vibrant and infused with energy.

At the heart of the Gospel,. as at the heart of Christ’s own life, of course there is paradox. So living with the Rule of St Benedict means living with paradox, with contradiction. This is something for which I am profoundly grateful, and that gratitude increases as the years go on. Life does not add up: the longer I live the more that is brought home to me. It was not the message that I received from my parents or one that was taught to me by any educational establishment as I was growing up. Nevertheless I think, looking back, that this is probably one of the most useful lessons that one can hear. It is curiously liberating to realize that I shall go on until the day of my death trying to hold differing things together and that the task (for which I need all the help that I can get) must be to do it creatively, so that the tensions may become life-giving.

Today as I look around me I see a world in which there is not so much holding together as splitting apart. There is increasingly polarisation, whether in politics or in religion or in the divides within society itself. People seem to be building barricades to maintain their positions, unwilling to listen to other points of view, as they metaphorically (and sometimes actually) wave banners and shout slogans which make statements declaring the certainties to which they cling. It seems so adversarial, antagonistic.

How far this is from the stance of St Benedict, whose first, opening word of the Rule establishes the keynote of all that is to follow: Listen. Listen, he goes on to say, with intention, with love, with 'the ear of the heart' – that most lovely small phrase which suggests that we listen not cerebrally