Stability

I am a very impulsive person, so too much stability seems BORING to me. Now that winter is here, part of me wants to buy a plane ticket and go... somewhere, anywhere... where the sun is shining and the sidewalks are free of ice!

But at the same time, I enjoy the benefits of stability: living in a predictable family, having predictable work and income, as well as predictable relationships with family and friends. I also have "promises to keep"... (Among them, doctors' appointments to take my mother to...)

Yet, as I reflect on many of the wonderful Benedictine principles that teach me so much, I struggle with the idea of STABILITY: "The workshop where we are to toil faithfully at all these tasks is the enclosure of the monastery and stability in community," Benedict wrote 1,600 years ago. (RB 4:78)

Could I be "stable" enough to live with the same people in the same place all my life?! I don't think it would have worked for me... I have too much wanderlust!

I read on: "The spiritual value of stability lies in commitment. Like everything else in monastic life, stability works best when it is wholehearted, without escape hatches or preserves of autonomy." (Benedict's Way, p. 52)

Perhaps my stability lies in my commitment to my family - which involves give and take. And which sometimes makes demands of me. So for me: "The spiritual value of stability lies in commitment. Like everything else in FAMILY life, stability works best when it is wholehearted, without escape hatches or preserves of autonomy."

My commitment to my family is wholehearted... But sometimes I need to "escape" and take a vacation...

But it does make me feel better, when I go off for a few days... that my mother waves me off with a smile: Have a good time!

(Her memory may, at times, be foggy, but her character hasn't changed: she also loved to travel in her younger days. So she's happy for me when I go.)