Today's reflection on the role of the cellarer fits well into this election time when we have heard so many divisive, misleading, and arrogant statements that I think some real damage has been done to our collective psyches. Yet, God always moves into the broken spaces and mends us with love. The green leaves in the photograph seem to me to be celebrating - not because they are still green; we know the tender green all too quickly fades, but because they belong. That is true for each of us. In this spirit, I want to share part of Chittister's reflection because I think it gives us a direction in which we all can move. We do not have to shrink into smallness, isolation, and despair, but recognize that we all can take a role in the healing process of this nation.
The cellarer gets a lesson from Benedict that we all need to learn sometime in this life; we have a responsibility to serve others "without any pride or delay, lest they be led astray." It is not right, in other words, to tax other people's nervous systems, to try other people's virtues, to burden other people's already weary lives in order to satisfy our own need to be important. We don't have to lead them into anger and anxiety, frustration and despair. We don't need to keep them waiting; we don't need to argue their requests; we don't need to count out every weight to the ounce, every bag to the gram, every dollar to the penny. We can give freedom and joy with every gift we give or we can give guilt and frugality. The person with a Benedictine tenor learns here to err on the side of largesse of spirit.*
Let us use this time to learn a new way of being and living generously with one another - in our families, in our communities, in our world. The elected come and go, but we can always control how we treat one another and this life.
*The Rule of Benedict, Joan Chittister, O.S.B., entry for November 8, page 106
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