Obedience: being real and responsive

A community of transformation like Magdalene, or any recovery programme stands or falls on the Benedictine virtue of obedience. People can try out all kinds of ideals and programmes, goodwill gestures and apologies, but the battle is lost or one in what actually happens, and underlying trends of habitual response to reality and other people tell the real story for good or ill. Clichés about talking talk and walking walk come to mind. Underlying any serious community of grace has to be holy pragmatism.

The roots of the idea of obedience are, as is often pointed out, not conformity but radical listening. In a sense obedience takes in the whole rule of Benedict, whose first word is “Audite...” and last “...et pervenies.” (“Listen...” “...and you will make it.”). Habits of obedience are not about what you do in itself, but what you do as an expression of attitude to everybody else. Disobedience is not naughtiness, but failure of community.

It’s not, in fact, authoritarianism, but the antidote to authoritarianism, to be part of a community to which we hold ourselves mutualy accountable. This is the mutual submission spoken of in the Scriptures.

This all takes me back to the 17th century nursery rhyme we all had to learn at school forty years ago:

A man of words and not of deeds
Is like a garden full of weeds
And when the weeds begin to grow
It's like a garden full of snow
And when the snow begins to fall
It's like a bird upon the wall
And when the bird away does fly
It's like an eagle in the sky
And when the sky begins to roar
It's like a lion at the door
And when the door begins to crack
It's like a stick across your back
And when your back begins to smart
It's like a penknife in your heart
And when your heart begins to bleed
You're dead, and dead, and dead indeed.

This is the third of three posts about the core Benedictine virtues of Conversion, Stability and Obedience, reflected in the Magdalene Community of Nashville, TN.

Stability: Eating your own dogfood

Build a house from the foundation up, not the roof down, right? The second great Benedictine Value is stability. “If everything is falling apart, what sort of people do you have to be?” asks II Peter. Life has always had its share of people who are just out for new experiences, driven by ego and vanity, running the demo but never the whole application.
To be discipled we need to commit to a life of stability in community.

This has various implications. Because I value stability, I will not throw my toys out of the pram when people disappoint me. I will not easily believe the worst of them. I will always recognise that I have more in common with them, in Christ, than separates us. Creatively, I will recognise that what irritates me most about them are my own vices mirrored — therefore by interacting with them rather than walking apart, I can learn and grow in grace.

Seeing the other person as gift, striving to see God within them, does not make people less irritating. It does help me grow up. A stable community rests on deeper foundations than its members short-term satisfaction, or the fears of its weakest members. It can take them beyond the places they could take themselves, but it is never authentic when it is steamrollers their differences. Stable community rejoices in difference and treats it as enrichment.

All this stands in stark contrast to the way of the world with its “Mr Angry” judgmentalism, Celebrity culture, ego-flattering consumerism, superficiality and tribalism. Just say no, because Christianity driven by these passions will always be a harsh and sour charicature of what it could be, with a commitment to stability. There are times you can be so right, you’re wrong.

God loved us with an everlasting love. That is the bedrock on which we build. Therefore we can freely commit to each other, and stick with each other, almost whatever our differences. The first principle of Magdalene is “Come Together” — Come as you are, but stick with one another. In the face of community friction, work it through and journey on anyway in hope. Wthin the community lie the God-given resources people need to grow in grace and hope — and if only they will commit to this life as a shared reality, there is hope.

This is the second of three posts about the core Benedictine virtues of Conversion, Stability and Obedience, reflected in the Magdalene Community of Nashville, TN.

Conversion: Seeing from Inside out

We see everything, even ourselves sometimes, from the outside in. God sees us from the inside out, knowing all we could be. Faith shows us ourselves from God’s point of view. Nice middle class people like me have relearned from Jade Goody that you have to see the person for all they are, and not be taken in by appearances. If she had never had Cancer, how would we have learnt to respect her? Only by questioning our own assumptions, and thinking different. Magdalene is

a two year residential and support community for women coming out of correctional facilities or off the street who have survived lives of abuse, prostitution or drug addiction. Begin in 1997 in Nashville TN, Magdalene offers women at no cost a safe, disciplined and compassionate community in which to recover and rebuild their lives.

Two things particularly interest me about this community.

1. This is not a Michael Palin “Missionary” or Lady Bountiful operation. The energy and resource come from within members themselves, released and developed in community. Thistle Farms is a business venture connected with it, but internally the strategy is not to get trained experts to engineer better outcomes, but to grow organic sustainable communities of grace, which provide a context in which members can grow and address their own particuar challenges.
2. Magdalene has taken as its model the Rule of Benedict. This doesn’t mean founding a Benedictine house, but finding a way to express the base Benedictine values of conversion, stability and obedience in an authentic but accessible way for women off the streets to use as part of the process of recovering what they could be from what is sometimes the wreckage of what they have been.

Magdalene was founed by Becca Stevens, a priest then working as a University chaplain at Vanderbilt. Now it’s run for 10 years, this work has things to teach us all about discipleship, community and personal transformation — in other words, the Gospel we profess, but realise so imperfectly. The community has boiled what they are about down into 24 basic principles, formulated in plain English and illustrated by experiences from members.

Everything begins with a willingness to see others, eventually even ourselves, differently. Doing this expresses the Benedictine Value of Conversion. The call to do this reminds me of an old poem by Edward Thomas (1878-1917)

A Gentleman

“He has robbed two clubs. The judge at Salisbury
Can't give him more than he undoubtedly
Deserves. The scoundrel! Look at his photograph!
A lady-killer! Hanging's too good by half
For such as he.” So said the stranger, one
With crimes yet undiscovered or undone.
But at the inn the Gipsy dame began:
“Now he was what I call a gentleman.
He went along with Carrie, and when she
Had a baby he paid up so readily
His half a crown. Just like him. A crown'd have been
More like him. For I never knew him mean.
Oh! but he was such a nice gentleman. Oh!
Last time we met he said if me and Joe
Was anywhere near we must be sure and call.
He put his arms around our Amos all
As if he were his own son. I pray God
Save him from justice! Nicer man never trod.”

This is the first of three posts about the core Benedictine virtues of Conversion, Stability and Obedience, reflected in the Magdalene Community of Nashville, TN.
mirror photo: credit Michelle’s Photoblog