The Mud and Rain Are My Novice Masters
March is St. Benedict's month. Clearing thorn trees from the rocky shoulder over the middle bottom, where the new road is being made, I got to be good friends with his relic yesterday. How weary I am of being a writer. How necessary it is for monks to work in the fields, in the rain, in the sun, in the mud, in the clay, in the wind: these are our spiritual directors and our novice masters. They form our contemplation. They instill virtue in us. They make us stable as the land we live in. You do not get that out of a typewriter.
For then are they truly monks: when the live by the labor of their hands, as our Fathers and the Apostles did.
--The Rule of St. Benedict 48:8
March 3, 1951, II.450
Spring is not nearly as wonderful without you in it.
ReplyDelete