August 2011

The Sisters of the Good Samaritan offer you a simple reflection starter on a current book that reflects Good Samaritan Benedictine spirituality.

Each month we will offer some questions based on a chapter of the book. These questions may help you to reflect and pray. They can also be used for small group sharing. Currently it is:

St Benedict on the Freeway: A Rule of Life for the 21st Century by Corinne Ware, Abingdon Press, USA, 2001.

Chapter 2 – “What is a rule?”

The reflection starters below may help you plumb the depths of the text and explore more deeply what the text is saying to you in your daily life.

As you read chapter 2, “What is a Rule?” notice any words or phrases that connect with your experience, surprised you or raised a question for you?

• When you hear the word ‘rule’, what comes to mind? What is your understanding and experience of the word?
• Corinne speaks of a “Rule as a chosen daily pattern of life” (p. 43). Identify and reflect on what are some of the particular moments that mark your daily pattern of life.
• Have you experienced any particular rules that “limit your freedom, your right to express yourself and choose what you do” (p. 44)? What effect does this have on you?
• What in your personal rule for daily life helps you grow in “recollection, in companionship with God” (p.46)?
• Reflect on what daily supports your “connection with God while at the same time allowing for the random and unexpected events that make up each of the twenty four hours” (p.50)?
• Make a list of some things that might help you personally to “gradually and naturally incorporate reminders of God’s presence into the life you already live” (p. 53). Choose an item from your list and explore ways in which this can gradually and naturally become part of your daily rule for life.
• As you review this chapter, name one thing that you will try to take into your own life to enable you to redeem the daily and help you become more recollected and so be drawn into closer companionship with God. Write it down and put it where you will read it often.