house divided against itself which cannot stand. This is the paralysed self which appears when the inner and the outer fail to correspond. Instead I need to try to find some degree of equilibrium and unity within myself which will allow these contradictory forces to work together, which will enable the tensions to become life-giving.
Perhaps another way of expressing this would be to say that what I am looking for is some sort of balance in my life—a balance “so delicate, so risky, so creative”, as Maria Boulding puts it, that she likens it to a bird in flight, a dancer in motion. One of the favourite words in the Rule is “run”. St Benedict tells me to run to Christ. If I stop for a moment and consider what is being asked of me here, and what is involved in the act of running, I think of how when I run I place first one foot and then the other on the ground, that I let go of my balance for a second and then immediately recover it again. It is risky, this matter of running. By daring to lose my balance I keep it.
Or another way of thinking about this might be to reflect on the rhythmic alternation which governs the whole of life. Throughout the Rule we are made aware of the conflicting demands of body, mind and spirit, and of the need to pay attention to their contrasting claims. There must be time to work, time to study and time to pray. There must be time to pray in solitude and time to pray with others. There must be time to be alone and time to be in community. There is a daily, weekly, yearly pattern of life in the monastery. Life is inextricably bound up in the alternation of day and night, of the changing seasons, of the ebb and flow of the seasons, of the changing shape of the liturgical year. This way of life brings us into touch with the rhythm inherent in all things, in the holding together of the contradiction of growth and decline, of light and dark, of dying and rising again.
Here is something profoundly important for my own humanity. To paraphrase what Parker Palmer has written in The Promise of Paradox, if I am to live wholly and fully and freely then I must accept that I am in the contradictions and that the contradictions are in me, and that all is held together by a “hidden wholeness”. When I became aware of my relatedness to all of life, to the dark and to the light, to death and to life, then I can walk freely in the certainty that the ultimate contradiction of the Cross is also the promise of fullness of life.
If I make a list of the paradoxes in my life, in particular concentrating on the light and dark, I may then be better able to see where I am lacking in balance.
III
Living with the Contradictions
‘run while you have the light of life’ Prol 13
The Rule of St Benedict addresses itself to us, each of us, just as we are. St Benedict understands human nature, its strengths and weaknesses, limitations and potential. He respects the mystery that each person is, and the result of this is that the thrust of the Rule is never towards dictating, rather it is towards the inner disposition of the heart. This is an approach which follows from his firm understanding that each of us is a highly complex being, and that allowance must be made for this.
When a novice enters the monastic community and lays the vows on the altar, the prayer is always Suscipe me, accept me, O Lord. These are wonderful words that I too can come back to, time and again, as a prayer for myself: accept me, O Lord, just as I am, in my frailty, my inadequacy, my contradictions, my confusion. Accept me in my complexity, with all those discordant currents that pull me in so many directions. Accept all of this, and help me so to live with what I am that what I am may become my way to God. Accept the tensions and help me to hold them together, so that I may learn to live fully, freely, wholly, not torn apart but finding that balance and harmony that will allow me to discover my point of inner equilibrium.
I suspect it is true of all of us that the older we grow the more urgent it becomes that we learn to live with these discords within ourselves, and live with them in such a way that we are neither fragmented nor exhausted; not succumbing to lassitude or depression but rather learning how to hold tensions together and let them become powers for good, powers to liberate and affirm us, powers to release the energy to allow us to run the way to God that is St Benedict's concern in the prologue to the Rule: “Run while you have the light of life…Run on the path of God's commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love.”
What I have gained from the written text of the Rule has been made more vivid and immediate for me by the way in which the themes addressed by the Rule are reflected in Benedictine monastic buildings themselves. Living for ten years under the shadow of Canterbury cathedral has furnished me with images that have slowly worked themselves into my subconscious, have fed me and sustained me and above all coloured my understanding of the Rule and of the life to which it gives rise. Two images in particular seem illuminating. In the crypt, built in the twelfth century when St Anselm was abbot and archbishop, the massive romanesque pillars bear amazing carved capitals. The four sides of one show a succession of scenes: on the first, a carefree jester throws a fish into a bowl as he perches on another's head; on the second, a lion, an amiable creature with a curling tail, smiles an innocent, warm smile. On the third side the mood changes: here we find strange, devouring creatures that feel like elemental forces at work attempting to swallow or destroy one another. Finally, on the fourth side there is a double-headed monster combining male and female features. Here is the contradiction between the light and the dark, the masculine and the feminine, the life-enhancing and the life-destroying. This portrayal was put here, in this holy place, by men who were not afraid to carve what they knew and present it to God in the heart of their monastic crypt. I find here a very simple message that we all need to hear: being committed to God is not about being nice. It is about being real.
The second image comes from the vault of the nave, built towards the end of the Middle Ages. Stand beneath that triumph of late Gothic building and you find pillar and arch, rib and vault, all brought together in one great harmonious unity, each separate and individual part linked both with the other elements and with the whole. Here is the Pauline analogy of the body of Christ spelt out in stone. Here is a statement in the structure of the church itself of that common life experienced by the medieval Benedictine community and well described in a sermon by one of its thirteenth-century abbots “Being many we are one body, members of one another. And one spirit gives life to our whole body through the members and parts, and brings about a mutual peace…”
But to discover the secret of this harmonious unity, this peace and concord, one has to climb the hidden stairways and explore the space between the stone vaults and the roofs above. Here is thrust and counter-thrust. Here is never-ending conflict. The high vaults strive to push the walls outwards; the flying buttresses strive to push them inwards. Here are columns, arches, walls all locked in unceasing combat. This great cathedral is maintained, and has been maintained for centuries, through the interplay and interdependence of contradictory forces, the unremitting pull of opposites.
The keystone is firm at the point of equilibrium.
The boss is still at the heart of the tensions.
If there is a single reason why the Benedictine way of life has remained dynamic across the centuries, I suspect it is because the Rule carries within itself this same ability to hold together opposing forces, conflicting tensions. I believe that the Rule is able to feed the divergent streams within each of us because it is itself made up of divergent streams. It is precisely here that its fecundity lies, as does
