As we begin the new year, we reflect on How to Listen and Attend. We ask the question How are We Different?

Several friends made strict New Years resolutions. Some of these friends confessed that they have already failed. And yet, some other friends vowed to begin again, this time with intentionality. There is a little 4”x6” booklet I keep nearby, entitled “Always We Begin Again” which keeps me on an even keel. I refer to it often. The subtitle of the book is The Benedictine Way of Living.

I began seeking the Benedictine way of living in the mid ‘80’s when I met a person who, in spite of all the challenges, lived what appeared to me to be a peaceful, reverent, life of integrity. I asked him how he did it. He taught me about the Liturgy of the Hours which eventually led me to St. Scholastica Monastery in Boerne, Texas. After 16 years as an Oblate, Bill and I now serve on the Leadership Team for the Benedictine Oblates, those who live by the Rule of Benedict, associated with a monastery but not living in it.

We soon are beginning a new cycle of Initial Formation, that is, gatherings of lay men and women desiring an intentional search for God through a life of spiritual guidance drawn from scripture. The 16^th-century Rule of Benedict is based on scripture and revered ancient writings. There must be something very valuable about a rule of living that has lasted that long and now enjoys a flourish in today’s challenging times!

We invite you to meet with us, an ecumenical group of welcoming Benedictine Sisters and Oblates, by Zoom for 2 hours on January 23, February 20, March 20, April 24. You might learn more at these websites - What is an Oblate? - Benedictine Spirituality - or by contacting St. Scholastica Monastery or replying to this newsletter.

The Prologue to the Rule opens with these words: “Listen, child of God, to the guidance of your master. Attend to the message you hear and make sure that it pierces to your heart….”* This is a good time, in the new year, to take this invitation to heart and remember, we can always begin again.

--Jan

We know so little about the Magi. We don’t really know who they were, where they came from, or how many of them there were. (We are told there were three gifts, but not how many “kings” or “wise men” or whatever.)

We do know that after bringing their gifts to Jesus, they were warned in a dream not to return to Herod in Jerusalem, so “they returned to their own country by a different way” (Matt. 2:12, JB). I wonder: Did they simply go home by a different route? Or did they go home different?

Of course, I am not the first to ask that question. T. S. Eliot, in “Journey of the Magi,” imagined one of them saying, long afterward, “We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, / But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation….”

No longer at ease with the way things were. I tend to agree with Eliot. I don’t think the Magi simply returned from Bethlehem by a different route; I think they went back different, changed by their encounter with Jesus.

And what about us? After our annual encounter with the child in the manger, do we leave different? Are we more filled with wonder? With more compassion for families who have no place to lay their heads? Are our eyes opened to see the holy in unexpected places? Do you and I come back from Bethlehem different, uneasy with the way things have been, open to new possibilities?

“After meeting God, we have to go home another way.” So writes Maren C. Tirabassi, in an insightful and challenging recent blog post titled, “Awkward Lessons from Epiphany.” “It is a very different journey,” she writes, “and yet we end up home.”

May your journey into this new year be different. Because we have encountered the Christ anew, may we be changed, ready to begin again.

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