Benedict now turns his attention to what many might consider the mundane matters of life and living. We saw something of this in his discussion of the cellarer and the care of the community's resources. Now he turns to the tools, clothing, and everyday objects scattered throughout the monastery.
We should not be surprised.
Benedict has been teaching us from the beginning that we become who we are bit by bit. The life of the spirit is formed incrementally, through seemingly small actions that by themselves appear to have little effect on the world. A tool is misplaced. A garment is carelessly mended. Something is used and not returned. A small item entrusted to us is neglected.
Hardly the stuff of great moral crisis.
And yet Benedict notices.
He understands that every small act of carelessness, every failure to attend, every casual disregard for something placed in our hands reveals, however faintly, something about the person we are becoming.
The great artisans of the ages seem to have understood this.
Imagine the anonymous monk bending over an illuminated manuscript, laying a nearly weightless piece of gold leaf upon a single letter. Think of the stone carver high on a medieval cathedral, shaping some small figure that few people standing hundreds of feet below would ever see clearly. Fra Angelico painted for prayer. Michelangelo filled page after page with preparatory drawings before the marble or the ceiling revealed what he was seeking. Vermeer looked at a woman pouring milk and decided that this utterly ordinary act was worthy of his complete attention.
William Morris would later insist that the artist is, at heart, a workman determined that the work shall be excellent.
What did all these people know?
Perhaps simply this: the whole is somehow present in the smallest part.
Once we begin with the simple command to love God and to love all that God has made, where exactly would we draw the line beyond which our care no longer matters?
The cup?
The book?
The garden?
The earth?
The stranger?
Perhaps this is why those among us who truly understand the discipline of care and service move through the world leaving behind beautiful letters, exquisite essays, profound novels, carefully tended gardens, well-used tools returned to their proper place, and people who somehow feel more fully human because they leave the world even just a little better than when they arrived.
They have learned to pay attention.
And attention, offered with love, may be one of the purest forms of reverence.
The way we care for the least of things is so very often an acute reflection of our concern for the greatest. Does that sound familiar?
Benedict knew it.
The great artisans knew it.
Benedict invites us to accept a very simple idea. We leave a mark on everything we touch. What do we want God to think about that mark, regardless of how small?
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