Being Benedictine

“Lord our God, hear my prayer, the prayer of my heart. Bless the largeness inside me, no matter how I fear it. Bless my reed pens and my inks. Bless the words I write. May they be beautiful in your sight. May they be visible to eyes not yet born. When I am dust, sing these words over my bones: she was a voice.” –Ana, The Book of Longings

In The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd, Ana writes this prayer of longing on the incantation bowl her aunt Yaltha has gifted her. 

“Do you know what an incantation bowl is?” Yaltha asked. “In Alexandria we women pray with them. We write our most secret prayer inside them…Every day we sign the prayer. As we do, we turn the bowl in slow circles and the words wriggle to life and spin off toward heaven.”

On International Women’s Day, we celebrate the social, economic, cultural, and political achievements of women. We honor the women who have a “secret prayer inside them” to improve the quality of life for women, to raise awareness of discriminatory treatment, and to seek inclusiveness and equality for future generations.

In The Book of Longings, Sue Monk Kidd, one of my favorite writers, shared that she wanted “to write a story that encouraged us to follow our longings and bring forth the largeness inside ourselves…to portray how much women’s voices and stories matter.”

Ana’s prayer of longing is to have a voice, to be heard, and truly listened to. Ana lives during the time of Jesus when women’s stories were not valued or heard, often intentionally silenced and oppressed. Like Ana, we long for our authentic selves to be seen and heard. When we are listened to, we know that we are loved.

“All my life, longings lived inside me, rising up like nocturnes to wail and sing through the night. That my husband bent his heart to mine on our thin straw mat and listened was the kindness I most loved in him. What he heard was my life begging to be born.”-Ana, The Book of Longings

Listening is an important theme in The Book of Longings. St. Benedict thought it was so important to listen that it is the first word in the Rule. “Listen carefully, my son, to the master’s instructions, and attend to them with the ear of your heart.” John McQuiston II, in Always We Begin Again, The Benedictine Way of Living, paraphrases, “Listen with the heart and mind.” These instructions to listen to God extend to the many ways God may speak to us—through our daily circumstances, unique situations, the people in our lives, and in our hearts and minds through the voice of truth within us.