Michelle DeRusha

Every Day Faith. Faith Every Day.

blogging Benedict

The Spiritual Habit of Staying in Place

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Back when we were dating, Brad entrusted me with his favorite plant, a lush fichus tree named Herman (in honor of Herman Melville, because of course) 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 him to report that I’d killed Herman in a record-setting seven days flat.

Turns out, fichus trees require stability to thrive — a lesson we would be wise to apply to ourselves as well.

When they first join the order, Benedictine monks and nuns take a vow of stability. “The vow of stability affirms sameness,” says author and Episcopal priest Elizabeth Canham, “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.”

To “affirm sameness” is radically counter-cultural in our society. We are conditioned, even encouraged, to drop one thing and move onto the next. Marriage grown stale? Divorce. Bored on the job? Update the resume. Shoes scuffed? Buy a new pair. Acquaintance irritate us on Facebook? Unfriend. We abandon with ease, enticed by the fresh and new.

We are also expected to be as productive as possible, to hustle, push ourselves to the max, and multitask like a boss. The person who resists the rat race is an anomaly and is often seen as weak, an aberration. We wonder what happened to their ambition. A lot of us – dare I say most of us — equate stability with failure, or, at the very least, stagnance.

Yet it’s clear this relentless pursuit of the perfect place, the perfect situation, the perfect job, and the perfect person often leads to the Herman the Fichus phenomenon. We feel restless, uprooted and displaced. We wither rather than thrive. Like Herm the Fichus, we begin to lose pieces of ourselves. We begin fall apart.

Stability as a spiritual habit or discipline can be practiced on both the macro and micro level. For me, practicing stability in the big picture of my life means practicing contentment in my career, my parenting, my marriage, my home and my place.

This does not come naturally to my Type A, driven personality, especially when it comes to my work. I’ve long worn productivity, achievement and success as badges of honor, so seeking contentment and self-worth in the present status quo takes intentionality.

Likewise, on a micro level, practicing the habit of stability means making a concerted effort to stay in one place and do nothing, if only for a few minutes at a time.

Last November I began the practice of sitting on a park bench for five minutes during my daily afternoon dog walks, and I’ve kept up the routine pretty regularly. Josie automatically veers off the path and toward our bench now and patiently waits while I listen to the birds and gaze at the trees. It’s become a habit for both of us, and it’s good for me to simply stay in one place, to let my thoughts settle into a low simmer.

As it turned out, much the same was true for Herm the Fichus: he simply needed to stay in one place. I finally stopped moving him around the house and let him be, convinced he was dead but too guilty to dump him into the trash bin. A few weeks passed, and that’s when 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. Left in one spot, he grew strong and whole once again.

A Word about Personality and Habits

In addition to identifying the Four Tendencies, Gretchen Rubin (author of Better Than Before) also identifies several personality aspects (she calls them distinctions) and how they relate to habit formation. For example, she asks whether the reader is a familiarity lover or a novelty lover, a lark or a night owl, an underbuyer or an overbuyer, a marathoner, sprinter or procrastinator, etc.. Identifying which end of the spectrum you lean toward can help you discern which spiritual habits might fit best for you.

Case in point: I am a familiarity lover. I’ve eaten the exact same snack at the exact same time pretty much every day for the last four years. New experiences make me uncomfortable. I’m not adventurous, and my favorite place in the world is my own backyard. So, given what I know about myself, it makes sense that I might gravitate toward the spiritual habit of stability – I’m inclined toward stability anyway. Sitting on the same bench at the same place on my walking route at the same time every day is not a huge stretch for me. It was relatively easy to integrate that new spiritual habit into my everyday routine.

BUT, if you’re a novelty lover — if you gravitate toward new experiences — the thought of sitting on the same bench in the same park at the same time every day might sound like your idea of a ticket straight to crazy town. For novelty lovers, the spiritual habit of stability might be more challenging. Not impossible, but probably more challenging.

Read more about Rubin’s personality distinctions here.

If you missed the first two posts in my Spiritual Habits series you can catch up here:

How Our Habits Can Impact Our Spirituality {introduction}

The Spiritual Discipline of Digging Dandelions

Next week: The Spiritual Habit of Scripture Reading

 

What I Learned about Jesus from Mohammed on the Bike Path

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Y is for Yaweh

We passed each other on the path several mornings a week. He walked slowly, shuffling, staring ahead with a stern, almost angry look on his face. Occasionally he rode a bike, the old-fashioned kind with a wide seat and no gears. He sat straight and tall like a diplomat, his winter coat flapping open in the breeze. When I waved or said hello, he didn’t make eye contact, but held up his hand, palm out, as if to offer me a high-five.

One morning, as we traveled in the same direction, I passed him as he was walking. “How far are you going?” he called out to my back.

“Four,” I answered, turning around, still jogging backwards. “Four miles. What about you?” He told me he was walking six; the same route he walked every day, unless he decided to ride his bike instead. I was impressed. The man was far from young, although it was hard to discern his exact age. I thought seventy; maybe even eighty.

We chatted for a long time that morning. Because his accent was so thick, I had to ask him to repeat himself numerous times. He told me he was Pakistani; his name was Mohammed. He had five children; his wife died several years ago. He lived with his son here in Lincoln.

“Do you like Pakistani food?” he asked me.

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t think I’ve ever had it. Is it like Indian food? I really like Indian food.”

“No, no, no,” he said, shaking his head and waving his hand dismissively. “Pakistan and India, very different, very different.” Mohammed seemed annoyed, although it was a little hard to tell because he never smiled anyway.

Only much later did I realize he probably didn’t appreciate the fact that I’d lumped Pakistan together with its arch-enemy India. I’d managed to insult Mohammed in the first five minutes of our conversation.

After that first meeting, Mohammed and I talked on the path at least once a week. One of the times we chatted he mentioned he was Muslim, but had been attending the Mormon church in town. I couldn’t quite figure that one out.

Whenever I saw him, Mohammed always asked me the same question, “How far you are walking?” And I always had to bite my tongue from answering, “Does this look like walking?” as I wiped sweat from my brow and heaved like a Clydesdale.

One day, about a month after our first conversation, when I stopped to talk to Mohammed he wanted to discuss food again – it was a popular topic with him.

“So you’ve never had Pakistani food?” Mohammed asked.

“Nope,” I answered, shaking my head. This time I didn’t mention my love of Indian food.

“You need to come then. I make you Pakistani food. Your husband and children come, too.” Mohammed proceeded to give me elaborate directions to his house, only a quarter of which I could make out through his accent.

“Okay, sure. Yeah. That would be great. Maybe we’ll come to dinner sometime. Thanks for asking,” I stuttered.

Mohammed took a slip of paper and a pen from the inside pocket of his jacket. “Here,” he said, handing them to me, “you write your address.”

Now I was confused. The whole language barrier thing was making this exchange terribly complicated. Had I misunderstood? Had I just inadvertently invited Mohammed to my house for dinner?

“Oh, um, okay,” I said, stalling. “Well, how about just my telephone number? You can call me, okay? I wrote my cell number on the slip of paper and handed it to him.

Had I just made a date with an eighty-year-old Pakistani on the bike path?

Later I announced to my husband and kids that we might be going to Mohammed’s house for dinner. I also mentioned there was a chance he might be coming to our house; I wasn’t totally clear on the details. “What?” Rowan yelled. “Pakistani food? What’s Pakistani food? It sounds gross! What if I don’t like it?”

As it turned out, we didn’t go to Mohammed’s house for dinner, and he didn’t come to our house either. Mohammed never called. In fact, more than a year went by before I saw him again. For a long time I looked for him every time I ran. I missed his grumpy, unsmiling face and his high-five wave.

Back in the sixth century a monk by the name of Benedict of Nursia had a lot to say about hospitality. So much, in fact, he wrote what’s now known as The Rule of St. Benedict, a guidebook of sorts on how to live a spiritual life in community with others.

Among his many words of wisdom, Benedict conveyed to his monks that the notion of hospitality extended far beyond a home-cooked meal served on fine china and fresh hand towels laid out the guest bathroom. Benedictine hospitality was, and is, centered on the act of receiving a person as if he is Jesus himself:

“All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, who said: ‘I was a stranger and you welcomed me’…By a bow of the head or by a complete prostration of the body, Christ is to be adored and welcomed in them.”

Think about this for a moment. As awkward and downright bizarre as it would surely be to bow your head to Christ in every stranger who appeared at your front door, or who stood in line ahead of you at Walgreens, or who sat next to you in the waiting room at the dentist’s office, can you imagine the radically transformative power of such an approach?

Can you imagine, for a moment, the possibility of seeing Christ in everyone, even in the people you might least expect to see him? I don’t think we’d ever be the same, which is exactly what Jesus, and Benedict, intended.

This was the kind of hospitality Mohammed showed me. He could have brushed me off after I’d demonstrated my complete ignorance of his native country and culture. But instead, he went above and beyond expectations by continuing the dialogue every time I saw him on the path and by inviting my family and me to his home for dinner.

Mohammed offered love, respect, community, camaraderie, and above all, the gift of Jesus in a stranger, exactly where I least expected to see him.

I saw Mohammed on the path again yesterday. It had been a long time.  He gave me a high-five wave as he road past on his old-fashioned bike, his winter coat flapping open in the breeze. I doubt he recalls the dinner invitation, or perhaps even who I am. But I smiled big when I saw him, remembering how he’d unexpectedly extended Jesus’s grace and hospitality, remembering how he’d shown me what it looks like to be Christ to a stranger.

Blogging Benedict: Real-Time Obedience

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Funny how God works sometimes. As I read and write about St. Benedict’s vow of obedience this week, God is teaching me the lesson of obedience in real time.

Jane Tomaine notes that the Latin root for obedience is obaudire, “to listen thoroughly.” She points out that in his Rule, Benedict describes obedience as both listening and responding:

“Those who practice obedience set aside their own concerns, plans, and tasks, even going so far as to leave work unfinished  in order to respond quickly to the request. The requested action would be completed without hesitation, almost at the same moment the request was made.” (from St. Benedict’s Toolbox: The Nuts and Bolts of Benedictine Living)

When I check my phone on Monday, I see a message from an unfamiliar number. It’s Lelia. Turns out, one of the speakers on the agenda for her conference this weekend has a family emergency and can’t make it … might I be able to speak in her place?

I say yes.

Let me tell you, one of my greatest fears, second only to throwing up, is speaking in public. I would rather visit the gynecologist and get a mammogram and a root canal and my legs waxed all in the same day. I would rather stand in line at the DMV every day for a month straight. I would rather clean hard water deposits off my bathroom faucet and my neighbor’s bathroom faucet and her neighbor’s bathroom faucet with a toothbrush. I’d rather do just about any other dreaded task over speaking in front of an audience.

But I say yes. It’s so obvious I should say yes that I don’t even think about it. “No problem,” I tell Lelia. “It’ll be totally fine, I promise.”

Then I hang up the phone. And Freak. Out.

The funny part about this story is that only hours before, I’d griped to Brad about how I needed to line up some speaking engagements. Not that I want to line up speaking engagements, mind you, but I realize speaking is part of the territory: published writers are expected to speak. Some days I wish I lived in the 19th century so I could hole up in an attic like Emily Dickinson and just write without worrying about the platform-schmatform and social media and whether I should wear pants or a skirt when I speak in public.

“It seems like all these speaking opportunities seem to drop right into other people’s laps,” I told Brad that afternoon. “I don’t get it.” He’d shrugged. Clearly he didn’t get it either.

After I got off the phone with Lelia and was catatonic on the couch in primal freak-out mode, Brad reminded me of our conversation earlier in the day. “Hey, you just got a speaking engagement dropped into your lap.” Not to be an ingrate, but I’d been thinking more along the lines of “dropped-into-my-lap-with-four-months-notice,” rather than “dropped-into-my-lap-with-four-days-notice.”  God is clever like that sometimes, isn’t he?

Oddly, in between bouts of catatonia and feverish PowerPointing, I am also feeling an overwhelming sense of peace and calm. Part of me knows that everything will be fine, just like I told Lelia. There’s something liberating about being so hopelessly out of control and in over your head. There is serenity in knowing I can’t possibly do anything but hand it entirely over to God.

So that’s what I am doing. Being obedient. Handing it all over to God – the worry, the insecurity, the fear, the queasiness. Trusting that he will be right here with me, teaching me what to say (Exodus 4:12).

So tell me, when’s the last time you were hopelessly in over your head? How did God set your heart and mind at ease?

I would so deeply appreciate prayers for my friend, the one who was originally scheduled to speak, who is dealing with a family emergency right now. And also, while you’re at it, that I might keep my head on straight, not succumb to primal freak-out and, above all, convey God’s message to the ladies at the Refresh My Heart conference this Saturday. Amen. And thank you.

This post is part of my Friday Lenten series  called Blogging Benedict. I am using the text St. Benedict’s Toolbox: The Nuts and Bolts of Everyday Benedictine Living as my guide.

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Blogging Benedict: Because Conversion is Supposed to Take Forever

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A few years ago, when I felt the first inkling of belief, I assumed I was set. I figured once I’d experienced my official “conversion,” I’d be home free, transformed, smooth sailing for eternity.

As with most everything else in this journey so far, I thought wrong.

Believing in God, it turned out, was just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The real conversion, I’ve since learned, takes place continually, incrementally, from that first moment and in every moment forward. Come to find out, there are a lot of backwards steps in the process of conversion, too.

Benedict called this continual conversion conversatio morum – the conversion of life. Author Jane Tomaine explains the concept this way:

“While stability calls us to remain, conversion of life calls us to change and to grow, to be transformed by the Spirit. It has an outward dimension and an inward dimension. Outward behavior or attitudes change as well as the inner self. God works with both dimensions…Conversion of life is a process where, again and again, we recognize that we’ve turned from God, we listen to how God is calling us back, and we take action to return to living a gospel life.”

Conversion isn’t instantaneous. It doesn’t happen overnight or in a split second. It’s a lifelong process. A two-steps-forward, one-step-back kind of journey.

Case in point:

A few summers ago I got mad at my neighbor. For weeks he’d parked his pick-up truck in front of the flower garden that sidles along our picket fence, right next to the street. Day after day I couldn’t run the sprinklers, couldn’t weed or deadhead or prune, couldn’t even admire the blooming lilies and bee balm and phlox because his big ol’ truck was in the way. “This is ridiculous,” I fumed to Brad. “I can’t even see my own garden. All I see is his stupid, ugly, red truck. Why can’t he park in his own driveway?!”

I plotted revenge. I decided I would confront my neighbor about the parking issue, and when (of course I assumed when, not if) he refused to move, I planned to yank weeds, toss them into the back of his truck, flip on the sprinkler system and watch as the bed of his pick-up turned into a muddy, glumpy mess.

Of course you know what happened, right? When I marched over to confront my neighbor, he couldn’t have been more gracious.

“I’m so sorry about that,” he said immediately. “We are about to resurface the driveway, would you mind if I parked the truck there just a few more days?” Not only was he pleasant and apologetic, he also took the time to show Rowan how the fountain in his front yard pumped water. And he invited us inside for a tour of the remodeled kitchen. And he offered free three-day passes for Brad and me to use at his son’s new gym.

Needless to say, I was properly humbled. I’d forgotten one of Jesus’ most important commandments, second only to love God. I’d forgotten to love my neighbor. I needed a re-do, and now God was calling me back for yet another chance to live a gospel life.

True conversion requires that we continually prepare our hearts for transformation. We continually strive to make God, rather than ourselves, the center. But it’s not a day-long or month-long or even a year-long process. It’s lifelong. A true conversion of life.

What about you? Do you ever feel like you should be “done” with your transformation by now?

On Fridays during Lent I am re-visiting (read: rewriting) a series called Blogging Benedict that I wrote a couple of years ago. I am using the text St. Benedict’s Toolbox: The Nuts and Bolts of Everyday Benedictine Living as my guide.

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Blogging Benedict: How to Stop Speed-Reading the Bible

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I’m a speed reader. I skim and scan and tear through text, whether it’s a blog post, a magazine article or a novel. Blogging, tweeting, texting, Facebooking and Internet surfing have all exacerbated that tendency.

The problem, of course, is that my speed-reading has carried over to the Bible, too. I find myself skimming it, reading it just to get through it so I can move on to other items on my to-do list. Or, worse, reading whole paragraphs while simultaneously obsessing over the fact that the wet laundry sat in the washer all night. I’m not thinking about God. I’m thinking about mildewy underwear.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Benedict’s advice to “listen with the ear of your heart” – a kind of deep, attentive listening for God’s presence in your daily life. One way to do that, says Benedict, is through a close reading of Scripture, called lectio divina – literally translated from Latin as “divine reading.”

I admit that I have to work at this, and I don’t always do it very well. I have Bible Attention Deficit Disorder. That said, lectio divina is a valuable practice, and I’d like to think I’m getting better at it.

Here are some tips for practicing lectio divina (there are a few different methods – this is one I’ve tweaked a bit here and there so that it works for me):

1. Choose a very short passage (just a few verses) in the Bible, and read them through several times. If you are just beginning lectio, you might start with the Psalms, the Gospels or Paul’s letters – don’t head straight for Revelation or Leviticus or you’ll throw in the towel after 30 seconds flat.

2. Read the verses aloud– usually I whisper, because I’m the self-conscious type, even when I’m the only one home. While I’m reading, I try to listen closely for words or phrases that jump off the page or seem to speak to where I am or the challenges I am facing at the moment.

3. Write it – If something resonates, I jot those particular words or phrases in my journal, as well as my reaction to them. This is not eloquent prose. Usually I don’t even write in complete sentences. It’s simply a stream-of-consciousness reaction from the heart.

4. Mull over it – I try to take a word or phrase from Scripture and carry it with me throughout the day, repeating it to myself like a mantra while I’m driving the kids to school or emptying the dishwasher. I like the way even a single, small piece of Scripture can inform my daily life.

Don’t fret if you don’t have a dramatic epiphany during lectio divina. It’s not perfect or foolproof, and there will be days when you simply can’t move beyond your obsession over the wet laundry. I’ve had a couple lectio lightning bolt moments, but they are few and far between. Mostly this practice simply helps to remind me that God is indeed present in my everyday life.

Do you practice lectio divina? If so, what are some tips that work for you?

On Fridays during Lent I am re-visiting (read: rewriting) a series called Blogging Benedict that I wrote a couple of years ago. I am using the text St. Benedict’s Toolbox: The Nuts and Bolts of Everyday Benedictine Living as my guide.

Click here to get posts in your email in-box. Click here to “like” my Facebook Writer page. Thank you!