only thing that matters is that it’s a good story. That is why we keep death daily before our eyes.
There is a beautiful dedication that comes at the beginning of John Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden. Steinbeck wrote it for his editor. He likens his book to an exquisitely carved box. What he says about his box, I’d like to say about my life at the end:
“Here is your box. Nearly everything I have is in it … Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad, and evil thoughts and good thoughts … the pleasure of design and some despair … and the indescribable joy of creation. And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you. And still the box is not full.”
This is what the living do. We put everything we have into our life. And on top of it all the gratitude and love we have for one another. May our boxes never empty.
For Reflection:
Your way of acting should be different from the world’s way; the love of Christ must come before all else. You are not to act in anger or nurse a grudge. Rid your heart of all deceit. Never give a hollow greeting of peace or turn away when someone needs your love. Bind yourself to no oath lest it prove false, but speak the truth with heart and tongue.
—FROM CHAPTER 4 “THE TOOLS FOR GOOD WORKS”
We live in a world awash in fear.
My friends who live in Paris don’t take the Metro anymore for fear of a terrorist attack. Others I know, who have undocumented family members living in the US, worry they will receive a phone call one day saying their relatives have been taken to an undisclosed detention center. Muslim women friends say they look around carefully when they go to the supermarket wearing a head scarf. Whenever I am in crowded place, a train station, or a theater, the thought crosses my mind that some mentally disturbed person who has been allowed to purchase a semiautomatic rifle might suddenly open fire. It is as if the toxic fumes of fear and anxiety pollute the very air we breathe.
Fortunately, when I am feeling despondent about the state of our world, I can visit my mother’s ninety-plus-year-old cousins in Brooklyn. Their Dyker Heights neighborhood is a mix of longtime Italian American residents like my relatives, Chinese immigrants and their American-born children, and Egyptian newcomers drawn to the neighborhood by the presence of a Coptic Christian church.
After visiting my cousins one day, my husband and I drove to see a friend of his who lives in another Brooklyn neighborhood. We passed blocks of synagogues, Hebrew schools, and kosher groceries. Men with long beards and side curls in black fedoras and long dark coats ambled along the sidewalks. Women in maxi skirts with covered heads pushed strollers. Their young sons wore yarmulkes decorated with cartoon characters. This is Borough Park, a neighborhood where many of New York’s Hasidic Jews live.
As we approached our friend’s neighborhood, shop signs changed from Hebrew to a mix of Spanish and Arabic. Our friend, who is American, had worked for USAID in Egypt. He says Brooklyn reminds him of Cairo. In this mini-United Nations of a borough, diverse people manage to live peaceably day after day on a cramped piece of real estate—tinier even than that other crossroads of culture, the city of Jerusalem. In contrast, there, conflict rages daily. Looking out on Brooklyn, I thought: this is the America I love.
Just a few days after the Brooklyn trip, I met with a student from Illinois Wesleyan University who had been shadowing me for a video project on professional women in our community. She asked if I would read a favorite passage from The Rule for her. There was no hesitation. I turned immediately to chapter 4.
Like the Prologue, “The Tools for Good Works” dazzles with its practical wisdom. I think of it as a kind of Magna Carta for ethical living. If the Prologue is a road map, “The Tools for Good Works” is like those insets on a map that chart a particular city or metropolitan area in greater detail. This chapter provides the steps we need to attain the Prologue’s broader promises of a more meaningful life.
It begins with a reminder of the Ten Commandments. I prefer the moniker given to them by Benedictine Abbot Jerome Koddell of Subiaco Monastery in Arkansas. He calls them the “Ten Words of God,” meant to guide us out of emotional slavery and “show us ways to live in freedom.”
First of all, “love God with your whole heart, your whole soul and all your strength, and love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt 22:37–39; Mark 12:30–31; Luke 10:27). Then the following: “You are not to kill, not to commit adultery; you are not to steal, nor to covet” (Rom 13:9); “you are not to bear false witness” (Matt 19:18; Mark 10:19; Luke 18:20). “You must honor everyone” (1 Pet 2:17) and “never do to another what you do not want done to yourself.” (Tob 4:16; Matt 7:12; Luke 6:31)
—FROM CHAPTER 4, “THE TOOLS FOR GOOD WORKS”
Never do to another what you do not want done to yourself. That is the blueprint for peaceful living. Then, St. Benedict pushes us further.
You must relieve the lot of the poor, “clothe the naked, visit the sick” (Mt 25:36), and bury the dead. Go to help the troubled and console the sorrowing … Harbor neither hatred nor jealousy of anyone, and do nothing out of envy. Do not love quarreling, shun arrogance. Respect the elders and love the young. Pray for your enemies out of love of Christ. If you have a dispute with someone make peace before the sun goes down.
—FROM CHAPTER 4, “THE TOOLS FOR GOOD WORKS”
Benedict lays out these tools in simple, declarative sentences. What he urges might seem straightforward enough, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Interestingly, he doesn’t call this chapter prescriptions for good works, or recommendations, or even commandments. He chooses the word tools. Tools are items you learn to use well only through practice. A carpenter spends a period of time working as a journeyman with a more experienced craftsman. Every surgeon passes through a rigorous internship
