Keeping wisdom alive

CAC faculty member Brian McLaren reflects on the person of Benedict of Nursia (ca. 480–547) whose world closely resembles ours today. History, it seems, repeats itself. Hopefully Benedict’s solution helps us on our way. Long live wisdom.

It’s not hard to imagine a world that seems to be falling apart with political division and corruption, economic instability, and different ethnic groups clashing for power and resenting one another. It’s not hard to imagine a world where religious leaders make deals with political leaders and vice versa, for mutual benefit. It’s not just our world; it was the world Benedict of Nursia lived in.

Benedict saw what the Christian religion was becoming, and he recalled Jesus’s life of simplicity, love, and nonviolence. And something deep within him called him to do something new. Benedict believed that it was possible to live by the path of Jesus, rather than by the standards and norms of the crazy system that was operating around him. I can imagine him thinking:

I’m going to leave the city and my privilege. I’m going to go out and establish an alternative community, a little island of sanity in a world that seems to be going nuts. I’m going to try to create a place where we seek to live by the law of love in the kingdom, kin-dom, or sacred ecosystem, of God. We will care for the sick and the dying. We will welcome the stranger and create an order of life that has dignity. We will preserve learning, writing down ancient wisdom. Every day, all day, we will enter into deep listening with God and with one another to keep Jesus’s wisdom alive. 

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