Benedictine oblates are people who are not monks but who dedicate themselves, in communion with a particular monastic community, to the service of God and neighbor according to the Rule of St. Benedict, insofar as their state in life permits.[1] Specific commitments include the practice of lectio divina, praying the Psalms through some portion of the daily liturgy of hours, and working in the world as unto God. Benedictine values are ones my own Mennonite community has shared since its beginnings in the sixteenth-century Anabaptist movement: simplicity, hospitality, and peace.[2]
To reflect on what the Rule of St. Benedict might mean for one’s busy, non-monastic juggling of family, career, service, and solitude in the midst of a highly mobile society, is to look at juggling and mobility in the mirror.