Oh, my!

This afternoon, we received a call from a nearby Episcopal Parish asking if we would check in on one of their parishioners who is in the medical center. The reason why they needed our intervention was due to the fact that the grandson told them that "under no uncertain terms, were they to see her, because she had been in the hospital for over a week, and they failed to visit her!" He went on to say that he was "going to contact the local vicar and ask him to watch over his grandmother." Well, it turns out that the clergy of the nearby parish was never told that their parishioner was sick and in the hospital. The grandson made several assumptions and now is condemning his grandmother's clergy for the lack of care, and they didn't even know!

As I talked with the secretary of the parish, I told her that I would not get involved until the grandson called me, and then I would do absolutely nothing until I reported my conversation with her. Well, I never heard from the grandson!

It is amazing how many people think clergy are blessed with clairvoyance and the ability to know things without being informed! I think such thinking is a trap and a way for people who are upset with the parish to discover an excuse to remove themselves. Oh, my!

The New Monastics

"New Monasticism" is the term used for a current religious movement of groups of Christians living within and serving communities of need. According to the site for the Rutba House, a New Monastic community in Durham, North Carolina, the term was coined by Jonathan Wilson, in his book, Living Faithfully in a Fragmented World. Wilson drew heavily on writings of philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, who wrote in After Virtue:

What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us. And if the tradition of the virtues was able to survive the horrors of the last dark ages, we are not entirely without grounds for hope. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time.

The Rutba House defines new monasticism as having 12 distinguishing characteristic, including:

1 Relocation to the abandoned places of Empire.
2 Sharing economic resources with fellow community members and the needy among us.
3 Hospitality to the stranger
4 Lament for racial divisions within the church and our communities combined with the active pursuit of a just reconciliation.
5 Humble submission to Christ's body, the church.
6 Intentional formation in the way of Christ and the rule of the community along the lines of the old novitiate.
7 Nurturing common life among members of intentional community.
8 Support for celibate singles alongside monogamous married couples and their children.
9 Geographical proximity to community members who share a common rule of life.
10 Care for the plot of God's earth given to us along with support of our local economies.
11 Peacemaking in the midst of violence and conflict resolution within communities along the lines of Matthew 18.
12 Commitment to a disciplined contemplative life.

You may read more:

http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/newmonastics/particulars.shtml

The Rule of Saint Benedict

On Humility

The ninth degree of humility
is that a monk restrain his tongue and keep silence,
not speaking until he is questioned.
For the Scripture shows
that "in much speaking there is no escape from sin" (Prov. 10:19)
and that "the talkative man is not stable on the earth" (Ps. 139:12).