Each day, I’ll read 1 of the 8 chapters of the Rule of Augustine:
Chapter VIII of Augustine’s Rule
Observance of the Rule Continue reading
Starting on October 2nd, I’ll be doing a Jesuit retreat on the Rule of Augustine (which I’ve written about here: “Up to our necks in Augustine”).
Each day, I’ll read 1 of the 8 chapters of the Rule of Augustine.
Today’s reading is from Chapter VII on “Governance and Obedience” from the Rule of Augustine1, one of the “mother rules” of western monasticism. 2 With this set of rules, Augustine aimed to “to found a community of love oriented towards contemplation.” 3
As usual, read as much of the text as you want, slowly and meditatively, observing your own reactions with a broad, open awareness. I offer some commentary and resources in the footnotes for when you want to come back for more context or a deeper understanding.
On Saturday the Art Monastery, a community of artists from a wide range of spiritual traditions working to apply the tools of monasticism to art-making instead of religion, will embark on a 7-day silent retreat in the Jesuit tradition, in which the primary form of activity (and inactivity) will be to read the Rule of St. Augustine, a 1,500 year old document—only about 7 pages long—written by someone who is arguably the 3rd most influential figure in Christianity (after Jesus and Paul).
Are we masochists?!
For a while, it’s been evident that monasticism is still something very other for us artmonks. Sure, we inhabit a monastery, we’ve done meditation retreats, we’ve chanted compline every night for months, and we’ve shared meals and chores and periods of silence and selective abnegation. Yet still, the monastic experience as it has existed for thousands of years remains a strangely scary and romantic, exotic creature. And yet, if we aim to concoct our own Art Monastic rule and vows, we had better know viscerally what it is we’re dealing with.
The unique combination of Jesuit exercises—at their core a form of meditative, reflective reading that unfolds into a visualization practice—and the Rule of Augustine will give us a chance to live, if only for brief moments, according to this 1,500 year-old monastic structure. Having done so, we can choose to incorporate some of the rules into our own set, or toss the whole lot out.
Why Augustine? For one thing, his rule is shorter than the others. He gets to the point. His rule is much less specific than Benedict’s.
Additionally, Augustine was hugely influential on Western monasticism as a whole in all the right ways:
[Benedict's] sources such as John Cassian and The Master emphasize the vertical [hierarchical], whereas Benedict includes that horizontal perspective, a perspective he learned from the monastic writings of, you may be surprised to hear, Augustine—whom we always think of harshly and whom we blame for so many of the problems of modern Western Christians, not realizing that in his monastic teaching, Augustine chose a very different side of himself, and that some of Benedict’s best soundbites about pastoral sensitivity and love for one another, in fact, are stolen from Augustine. (source)
To give you a better sense of the rather daunting task we’ve set ourselves:
We’ll have as our only companion an average of 1 page of Augustine—and nothing but 1 page of Augustine—each day for seven days. Seven days, alone, with the Christian’s Christian, the ideologue’s ideologue, the dogmatist’s dogmatist. 1 Seven days, alone, with the Christian Nagarjuna 2. To me, that prospect is both frightening and fascinating.
That’s one day listening to Augustine the prude saying things like, “Although your eyes may chance to rest upon some woman or other, you must not fix your gaze upon any woman,” and another day listening to Augustine the authoritarian saying things like, “Books are to be requested at a fixed hour each day, and anyone coming outside that hour is not to receive them,” and another day listening to Augustine the zealot saying things like “Chant only what is prescribed for chant; moreover, let nothing be chanted unless it is so prescribed,” and still another day listening to Augustine the fanatic saying things like “Subdue the flesh, so far as your health permits, by fasting and abstinence from food and drink,” etc.
[part of the "__ is an artmonk" series]
One of the Art Monastery’s spiritual teachers, Dr. Joel Levey, just forwarded me a link to the Abbey of the Arts, the “virtual monastery” of Christine Valters Paintner OblSB, PhD, REACE.
What I read on Paintner’s site resonates with so many of the conversations we have been having at the Art Monastery Project for the past three years (not to mention, this morning). More importantly, it gives those conversations acute clarity and voice. It gives me, in the words of Joel’s partner Michelle, “truth bumps.”
This feels deeply timely for us artmonks. We just wrapped a 4-day visioning retreat and are stepping into a 7-day silent Jesuit retreat on the Rule of St. Augustine this Saturday. We’ve been sharing resources on various monastic rules (of Augustine, Benedict, etc.), with a view to concocting our very own Art Monastic Rule.
Did I mention that she has written books called:
Or that she is offering a course called ”Way of the Monk, Path of the Artist” that begins January 17th 2011, the day we wrap up our second Artmonk Retreat in Joshua Tree, CA (which is being led by Joel & Michelle Levey)?
The Rule of Benedict draws on the Egyptian tradition (Eastern), such as the Pachomian rule; the Cappadocian tradition (Eastern), such as Basil’s rule; and the North African tradition (Western), such as Augustine’s rule. The third was a more direct influence than the second, but the first was the most influential, coming through John Cassian and then the Rule of the Master (from an unknown author soon after 500 AD). All had the purpose of regulating the life of monks living in the coenobium.
Via Monastic habits for non-monastics–Glimpses from Dennis Okholm | Grateful to the dead.
Examples of the secular world learning from the world’s ancient contemplative and spiritual traditions abound. Neuroscientists, psychologists, doctors, cognitive scientists and cosmologists are learning from inner technologies of meditation and contemplative practice.
But what of the outer, visible, measurable technologies of those traditions? How are we learning from those technologies that fit into what is broadly called monasticism? And how are we impacting them? This blog asks the question:
What can the secular world learn from monasticism?
and
What can the secular world do for monastic traditions?
Some interfaith and secular groups are already learning from monasticism. For example, I live in an ex-Franciscan convent in Labro, Italy with a community of artists called the Art Monastery, where we live together as “artmonks”. We are growing our own monastic order: the International Otherhood of Artmonks.
Why can’t anyone build or be part of an “otherhood”? Any community or movement—whether seculary, interfaith, or of a single spiritual tradition—can choose to benefit from the wide array of monastic technologies that humanity has produced in the past 3000+ years.
This blog is about:
This is for:
Have an idea for an otherhood you want to start?
Monasticize your community’s future. Add a little order to your life. Grow your own Otherhood.
Nathan Rosquist is a writer and composer living as an artmonk at the Art Monastery in Labro, Italy. He has a MBA in Sustainable Community Economic Development from Bainbridge Graduate Intitute.