Back when we were in graduate school umpteen million years ago, Brad entrusted me with his favorite plant, a lush fichus tree named Herman (in honor of Herman Melville), before he left town for a while.
I moved Herm into my house, positioned him in a sunny spot next to the sliding glass doors and then watched as he began to drop leaves at an alarming rate. I moved him to a South-facing window. More leaves littered the carpet. I watered Herman, fed him plant food, repositioned him yet again in a less chilly spot. Still he dropped leaves.
A week after Brad left, I called to report that I’d killed Herman in a record-setting seven days flat.
Turns out, fichus trees crave stability. Brad had left Herm next to the same sunny window for years, without sliding his pot so much as an inch. Then we had tossed the plant into the backseat of my Pontiac Grand Am and carted him to my house, where I’d moved him from spot to spot in a desperate attempt to quell the leaf-shedding.
There’s a Benedictine lesson to be learned from Herman the fichus, a lesson about stability.
When they first join the order, the Benedictines take a vow of stability. As Jane Tomaine explains in St. Benedict’s Toobox: The Nuts and Bolts of Everyday Benedictine Living, “Stability is saying ‘Yes’ to God’s will for me in the place where I believe God has placed me and with the task I believe God has given me to do.”
Our culture promotes the opposite of stability. Over time, we are conditioned to think that it’s okay to drop one thing and move onto the next. Marriage grown stale? Divorce. Bored on the job? Quit. Shoes scuffed? Buy a new pair. Acquaintance irritate us on Facebook? Unfriend. We abandon with ease, enticed by the fresh and new.
This relentless pursuit of the perfect place, the perfect situation, the perfect person, leads to the Herman phenomenon. Instead of finding contentment and peace, our searching results in greater dissatisfaction. We feel restless, uprooted and displaced. We wither rather than thrive.
The solution, Benedict tell us, is that we should aim for stability.
“The vow of Stability affirms sameness, a willingness to attend to the present moment, to the reality of this place, these people, as God’s gift to me and the setting where I live out my discipleship,” writes Elizabeth Canham. “We are discouraged from fantasizing some ideal situation in which we will finally be able to pray and live as we should.”
I get that inclination toward fantasy. I often find myself imagining a serene retreat at a monastery, in which I can relish the silence, the peace and the time and space to pray without interruption and distraction. But the reality is that I have a job, two young kids and a household to maintain. If I wait to find God in the ideal, I miss him in the here and now.
Stability means we hang on in the situation we are in and with the people who are there with us. As we stay put, as we quell the inclination to flee, we find God’s presence.
As it turned out, much the same was true for Herm the fichus. I finally stopped moving him around the house and let him simply be, and after a few weeks passed, I began to notice tiny buds sprouting on bare branches. Leaf by delicate leaf, Herm began to thrive, unfurling and blossoming into a lush, verdant canopy. In his stillness, he grew strong once again.
What’s your reaction to this notion of stability? Have you ever been grateful that you stayed the course? [I want to note here, too, that I am in no way advocating staying in an abusive or unhealthy relationship. I’m talking about situations that are uncomfortable, not destructive.]
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I’ve recently revisited a series I wrote three years ago called Blogging Benedict, and I’ve decided to run some of these posts on Fridays through Lent. They are based on the book by Jane Tomaine called St. Benedict’s Toolbox: The Nuts and Bolts of Everyday Living, which I am re-reading this Lent.
I am so glad you are blogging this series right now. It is perfect for me – God using you to speak over the clutter. Thank you, friend!
I’m so glad, Jamie – it’s been really fruitful for me to revisit this book, these practices and this series, too!
Darn it, MIchelle! Didn’t you know I was feeling restless? I want desperately to flip over the game board, pack up my belonging, sell my house, and become a full-time granny? Stay rooted? Find contentment here? What??!!!!
You just had to re-blog these now, hmmm???!!! 🙂
I am restless by nature, Nancy, always assuming that the “next thing” will be the key to my happiness and contentment. This practice of stability is hard, really hard. I’m feeling for you, I really am.
My husband and I just moved to Tiny Town, Iowa, about eight months ago, so that he could be a pastor at a little Baptist church here. And we hope to be here until we retire. You’re right, this completely goes against the culture of our world, which views the small as unimportant. Even the seminary my husband attended often gave the impression that the only point of a small church was to serve as a stepping-stone to a big church.
But we don’t feel called to big churches, and we don’t feel like that’s the way God measures success. We desire to be here, with these people, in this town, until we are as much a part of the town as they are, until we have walked with each of these precious people through the valley, and they have walked through the valley with us, and we have come out on the other side stronger and more equipped to do God’s work here together.
I am not criticizing people who stay at a church a few years and then leave. That’s not my place. But for me, for my husband, stability is exactly the word. Stability and commitment. May God grant it to us in the years to come.
Oh I can SO relate to this, Erin. We moved to Nebraska from Massachusetts 11 years ago when my husband took a job as an English professor at a small liberal arts college. For several years, I assumed this was just a stepping-stone, and that we’d be moving on to bigger and better things. What happened, though, was that my husband loved his college – he loved the small environment, the connection with the students, and he thrived there. He had no desire to keep moving up the chain. So we stayed. That was hard for me, at first, because I am restless and driven by nature, so I thought he should continue to climb the ladder. Plus, I wasn’t entirely happy here, with my extended family back in Massachusetts. Over time I’ve come to see that God placed me here for very particular reasons — one of which was to find him. And though I fought it, stability — staying — was one of the key turning points in my life.
Thank you so much for sharing part of your story here today!
Good word for me today. I’m feeling the fidgets lately. We’ve moved so much that at the 3-5 year mark, I feel the need for change. But sometimes, staying the course is where I need to be. Thanks Michelle. Enjoyed this.
Oh, Michelle, this is so rich! Thank you for posting. I am reading Richard Foster’s book on prayer right now, and this falls right into place with what God has been saying to me.
This is the very idea H and I have been discussing lately. When he began his sabbatical, he travelled to Missouri to spend a week at a monastery, and one o fhe ideas he brought home that struck me is the idea of stability. It’s a vow they take. The idea that where I am is exactly where God wants me, and that he wants to accomplish something in and through me in this very place. My life has taken me from place to place to place, and the ilfe of a nomad has become my default. But this challenge to stay…. Yeah.
I spent the better part of the last two years moving my “Herman” all around this darn house, desperately hoping it would bloom. Never pausing to look up the information to learn what this “Herman” needed. Now, I know (less sun, let the soil dry a bit). I won’t say there are blooms yet, not even buds, but the green is different.
We must learn to be both content and grateful for where we are or, you are so right – we will miss out on so many moments we could have, and should have, spent with God. Beautiful post, Michelle!
Blessings!
I am learning the truth of this Michele. Looking around at what others are doing only produces a discontent in my spirit. Peace comes when I rest in the center of where He places me.
Ditto for me, Linda. I have had a lot of discontentment, simply because I look around at other people’s lives and wistfully wish I was anybody else, any place else but here, where He’s placed me. I’ve been learning the hard lesson of being content in all things. My life here is pretty quiet and uneventful…but it’s also very stable. I need to be much more thankful for that!
And ditto for me, too. Especially when it comes to comparing myself to others’ accomplishments in writing and publishing. Focusing on the work God is doing in me and with me right now is key.
Michelle,
I loved the illustration you gave of Herman the fichus to help us picture the benefit of stability. Loved it. It’s an image I’ll keep in mind for a long, long time.
Thank you!