Ora et Labora-Part 4

Lately I've been writing about a Benedictine Abbey I've been privileged to visit for personal retreats. So, just who was Benedict?

Benedict was born in Italy around 480. A Benedictine nun who wrote Wisdom Distilled From the Daily, states,

"He went to school in Rome when the Empire was in a state of material prosperity but moral decline... He decided that life lived in that fashion was not the fullness of life at all. He left Rome and went to a rural area south of the city to contemplate the meaning of life, to simplify its demands, and to refashion his own attitudes and life-style.

"It wasn't long until he was sought after by multitudes of other people who were also uneasy with the secular climate of the day but unsure as well of what ought to be its spiritual character. Out of this came what we know today as Western monasticism, the pursuit of the spiritual life in community, rather than in the secluded cells of the solitaries, which was the form of religious life that had been prevalent in the deserts of Egypt and in the East... As time passed, Benedictine monasteries became the anchor points and centerpieces of whole villages in Europe. From the monastics... the people learned to live and to work and to pray. As a result, the Benedictine Order has often been credited with having saved Western Europe after the barbarian invasions, and Benedict himself was named the patron of Europe."

From this brief history of Benedict and his time, I see many parallels to today's Christian agrarian movement. America is certainly in a state of seemingly material prosperity, coupled with extreme moral decline. Many agrarians are pursuing a spiritual life in community. Sometimes the community is an actual geographic place where several like-minded families settle to farm and worship. Sometimes it is a community that exists in cyberspace. Nonetheless, people are leaving the secluded cells of the solitaries to become part of this new spiritual community. These secluded cells range from cubicles in corporate America to postage stamp sized suburban backyards fenced in by six foot tall privacy fences. Some folks are instead tangling with barbed wire fences and modest farmhouses situated on a few acres they can call their own.

While an agrarian lifestyle doesn't work for everyone, I am impressed with the ingenuity, hard work, honest convictions, desire to please God, and committment to providing for future generations that I see in the agrarian blogs I read. My maternal grandfather passed down to me a love of gardening and an appreciation of God's creation. If I never get my farm, may I pass along to my children the desire to pursue a more agrarian lifestyle.