Talking Tuesday: More Benedict Option

It is Theophany today, so I'm off to church with the kids in a minute.  I just finished reading How Dante Can Save Your Life, and want to discuss that in a separate post.  For today, I wanted to share two excellent posts from Rod Dreher in the last few days on the Benedict Option--a shorthand term for a strategic cultural retreat by Christians in order to preserve the faith and pass it on to the next generation, while still being salt and light in the present.

In "There and Back Again", Dreher summarizes a recent interview with David Brooks, whose career has moved away from writing about politics to writing about morality and spirituality.  My husband read and enjoyed Brooks' latest book last year.  It is on my list.

Writes Dreher:

"In his interview, Brooks says when he talks about things like this in places like suburban Connecticut, the women in the audience love it, but the men get antsy, tell him that he’s making them uncomfortable, and that they would rather talk about Chris Christie’s prospects. There’s something important in that response. We are a people, broadly speaking, aware of our deep lack, but we are also unwilling to sacrifice the time and the liberty to invest in the ways of thinking and living that could deliver us from our decadence."

~Rod Dreher, "There And Back Again" The American Conservative Blog, January 13, 2015.

In "Gardeners, Knights, and The Benedict Option", Dreher summarizes a talk given by James Lewis III, a Catholic BenOp living on a suburban farm in Witchita, KS.  

Lewis spoke at the Eighth Day Books conference there this weekend, and talked about how the Benedict Option means self-restraint and making counter-cultural choices in the pursuit of holiness.

"A knight, he says, exemplifies courage, self-restraint, and perseverance in service of a higher end. This makes the knight a “witness” to the world. To be a true knight, he said, you have to be willing to be unusual. Even something as simple as having no TV in the house is enough to make you stand out as a freak in today’s world.

“People will ask, ‘How do you live that way? You ask back, ‘Well, how do you live that way?’ We live in different worlds.”"

~Rod Dreher, "Gardeners, Knights, And the Benedict Option" American Conservative Blog, January 19, 2015

Dreher notes in How Dante Can Save Your Life that the root of sin is the failure to love rightly.  I think it is worth exploring how we should love, and how we teach our children to love as Christ loved.  We must walk the path to theosis ourselves, but also teach our children to walk the path as well.  One foot at a time, sometimes with great strides, other times with mincing steps.  It is a daunting but necessary task.