How to Live: What the rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning, and Community. Judith Valente

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       3

       RUN WITH THE LIGHT

       On Waking Up

       Let us get up then, at long last, for the Scriptures rouse us when they say: “It is high time to arise from sleep.” (Rom 13:11)

      —FROM THE PROLOGUE

      There is a wonderful scene in the novel Zorba the Greek in which Zorba tells the young foreman he’s befriended about meeting a ninety-year-old man who planted an almond tree.

      “What, Grandfather, planting an almond tree!” Zorba exclaims, guessing the old man won’t live long enough to see the tree bear fruit.

      “My son, I carry on as if I should never die,” the old man says.

      Zorba replies, “And I carry on as if I was going to die any minute.”

      “Which of us was right, boss?” Zorba asks the young foreman.

      I tend to agree with Zorba. I like to think I try to live my life fully, as if I might die any minute. In college, I had a writing professor named James C. G. Conniff who routinely railed about students he felt were sleepwalking through life. The Jesuit writer Anthony de Mello writes, “Most people, even though they don’t know it, are asleep. They’re born asleep, they live asleep, they marry in their sleep, they breed children in their sleep, they die in their sleep, without every waking up. They never understand the loveliness and the beauty of this thing we call human existence.” Even a long life is no guarantee that any of us will ever awaken from our emotional stupor.

      That same sense of urgency to “wake up!” permeates the Benedictine Rule. It is especially pronounced in the early chapters. We need to get serious, St. Benedict seems to be saying, about living what the poet Mary Oliver calls our “one wild and precious life.” Action verbs prevail here.

       Let us open our eyes to the light that comes from God …

       The Lord waits for us daily to translate into action his holy teachings …

       Let us set out on this way with the Gospel for our guide …

       We will never arrive unless we run there by doing good deeds …

       Are you hastening toward your heavenly home? …

      And one of my favorite lines in all of The Rule:

       Run while you have the light of life, that the darkness of death may not overtake you.

      Yearn. Love. Pray. Renounce. Respect. Live. All words that pop up early on in The Rule.

      Most mornings, I rise around 4 A.M. to the sound of a thwack against our front door. It is the signature of Lauren or Junie, one of our two paper carriers, carrying out a line of work that one day soon will likely go the way of the milkman, the TV repairman, and the doctor who made house calls. Sometimes I am swift enough and awake enough to open the door and give one or the other a greeting. That never fails to startle them, accustomed as they are to seeing only dark and silent houses at that hour of the morning. I used to just scoop up the New York Times and dash back inside. But lately I’ve taken to lingering outside for a few minutes. I survey our front yard, the other houses on the block, and the sky at that moment when the birds begin their morning calls. The moon is still stationed overhead, and daylight is starting to creep onto the horizon.

      I witness some strange and wonderful sights. Once it was a skunk exiting from between two bushes. It must have been a polite skunk, as I don’t recall it leaving behind its traditional calling card. Often there are rabbits romping across the grass. They become quite still at my arrival, as if they are imitating statues. Other days, a snake or a slug on the front step. One morning I will never forget, I happened to look up just as a shooting star streaked across the sky. I felt so lucky to have been watching at that precise moment. I should say here that our house isn’t in the middle of some prairie. It sits in the heart of a university town, so a shooting star or undomesticated animal isn’t something you are likely to see. Unless, of course, you’re paying attention.

      On my first visit to the Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, I wanted to savor the entire experience. I was determined to wake up in time for the 3:15 A.M. Vigils, the first prayers of the day. My room wasn’t in the regular retreatant’s quarters attached to the abbey, but rather on top of a hill overlooking the monastery in what the monks call the Family Guest House. I had to walk about five minutes down the hill to get to the abbey church. One morning I stepped outside my room before dawn and saw an amazing sight. The entire southern edge of the sky was awash in stars. I felt as if I could step inside this doorway of starlight. One of the monks, Brother Paul Quenon, told me later I had been looking into the Milky Way. He pointed to a solitary, bright star suspended in an opposite direction—the planet Venus. Suddenly the reason for waking up that early acquired a whole new dimension. The candlelit prayers in the abbey chapel and the chanting of the Psalms provide a wonderful, soulful entry to the day. So do the magical sights you can behold at that time of morning when much of the world is still asleep.

      The 3rd- and 4th-century monks who lived in the desert considered the silence of the night a valuable teacher. Night reminds us that time is passing. Our lives, like days, are finite. Antony, one of the most revered of the desert monks, advised, “Each day when we arise, let’s assume we won’t live until nightfall. And at night, when going to sleep, let’s assume we won’t awaken.” His wasn’t a morbid fascination with death, but a reality check. We have a limited amount of days in which to live, so we might as well wake up and act now. There is important work to do.

       If you desire true and eternal life, “keep your tongue free from vicious talk, your lips free from all deceit; turn away from evil and let peace be your quest and aim.” (Ps 34: 14–15).

      —FROM THE PROLOGUE

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