How to Live: What the rule of St. Benedict Teaches Us About Happiness, Meaning, and Community. Judith Valente
know what happens to us after death, we just believe.” I think their equanimity comes from the confidence that each one of them has lived a meaningful life. In the same chapter of The Rule in which Benedict asks us to daily remind ourselves we are going to die, he also gives us a blueprint for how to live:
Pray for your enemies out of love for Christ. If you have a dispute with someone, make peace before the sun goes down. And finally, never lose hope in God’s mercy.
—FROM CHAPTER 4, “THE TOOLS FOR GOOD WORKS”
These are things we probably should have been taught in kindergarten.
I once interviewed a member of the Freedom from Religion Foundation, an association of nonbelievers. She happened to be a cancer survivor. She said death is what gives meaning to life. Believing that nothing awaits us beyond this life spurs us to make the most of this life. I think she got it wrong. I believe it is life that gives meaning to death. As Joan Chittister writes, “The fundamental question for a Christian isn’t whether there’s life after death, but whether there’s life before death.”
These days, as I hurtle toward middle age, I’m inspired by the artist Candy Chang. In cities across America, Chang creates interactive art installations that consist of a chalkboard, often placed on the side of a building next to a bucket of colored chalk. Stenciled on the chalkboard is the sentence, “Before I die I want to …” Chang leaves space for people passing by to fill in their response. These are some of the responses people have written:
Before I die I want to:
And one wish that catches in my throat every time I read it:
The philosopher Steve Cave gave a talk a few years ago on National Public Radio’s Ted Radio Hour. His topic was, “Why Are Human Beings Afraid To Die?” Cave spoke of his own fear of death from an early age. It sounded very similar to mine. He said he eventually discovered a new way of thinking about death that helped him with his fear.
“I find it helps to see life as being like a book,” Cave said. “A book is bound by its covers … so our lives are bounded by birth and death.” He continued by saying that the characters in a book know no horizons. They are not afraid of reaching the last chapter, because they only know the moments that make up their story. We humans who are characters in life “need not worry how long our story is, if it’s a comic strip or an epic,” Cave said. “The only thing that matters is that it’s a good story.”
The only thing that matters is that it’s a good story. That is why we keep death daily before our eyes.
There is a beautiful dedication that comes at the beginning of John Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden. Steinbeck wrote it for his editor. He likens his book to an exquisitely carved box. What he says about his box, I’d like to say about my life at the end:
“Here is your box. Nearly everything I have is in it … Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad, and evil thoughts and good thoughts … the pleasure of design and some despair … and the indescribable joy of creation. And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you. And still the box is not full.”
This is what the living do. We put everything we have into our life. And on top of it all the gratitude and love we have for one another. May our boxes never empty.
For Reflection:
Your way of acting should be different from the world’s way; the love of Christ must come before all else. You are not to act in anger or nurse a grudge. Rid your heart of all deceit. Never give a hollow greeting of peace or turn away when someone needs your love. Bind yourself to no oath lest it prove false, but speak the truth with heart and tongue.
—FROM CHAPTER 4 “THE TOOLS FOR GOOD WORKS”
We live in a world awash in fear.
My friends who live in Paris don’t take the Metro anymore for fear of a terrorist attack. Others I know, who have undocumented family members living in the US, worry they will receive a phone call one day saying their relatives have been taken to an undisclosed detention center. Muslim women friends say they look around carefully when they go to the supermarket wearing a head scarf. Whenever I am in crowded place, a train station, or a theater, the thought crosses my mind that some mentally disturbed person who has been allowed to purchase a semiautomatic rifle might suddenly open fire. It is as if the toxic fumes of fear and anxiety pollute the very air we breathe.
Fortunately, when I am feeling despondent about the state of our world, I can visit my mother’s ninety-plus-year-old cousins in Brooklyn. Their Dyker Heights neighborhood is a mix of longtime Italian American residents like my relatives, Chinese immigrants and their American-born children, and Egyptian newcomers drawn to the neighborhood by the presence of a Coptic Christian church.
After visiting my cousins one day, my husband and I drove to see a friend of his who lives in another Brooklyn neighborhood. We passed blocks of synagogues, Hebrew schools, and kosher groceries. Men with long beards and side curls in black fedoras and long dark coats ambled along the sidewalks. Women in maxi skirts with covered heads pushed strollers. Their young sons wore yarmulkes decorated with cartoon characters. This is Borough Park, a neighborhood where many of New York’s Hasidic Jews live.
As we approached our friend’s neighborhood, shop signs changed from Hebrew to a mix of Spanish and Arabic. Our friend, who is American, had worked for USAID in Egypt. He says Brooklyn reminds him of Cairo. In this mini-United Nations of a borough, diverse people manage to live peaceably day after day on a cramped piece of real estate—tinier even than that other crossroads of culture, the city of Jerusalem. In contrast, there, conflict rages daily. Looking out on Brooklyn, I thought: this