Month: July 2013

• July 8, 2013

  How can you tell how well an organization is doing?

  You’ve been brought in to suss out the state of this organization. You don’t have a notepad, a checklist, or a PowerPoint. You don’t conduct any interviews or have any employees fill out long, awful surveys. Silently, you walk around, wander here and there, then come back. ‘I’d like to tell you a story,’ you…
• July 6, 2013

  Benedict’s abbot as guide

  Benedict’s abbot is a discerning man. Different means are to be employed with the undisciplined and the disciplined.  The undisciplined monks are to be reprimanded and taught by example, less by words. The disciplined, receptive to words, are to be entreated gently ‘to do better.’ Benedict’s abbot is self-integrated. His words converge with his deeds,…
• July 5, 2013

  Taciturnitas

  In an endnote to Chapter 6 entitled ‘Silence,’ the editor Bruce L. Venarde tells us that ‘Taciturnitas traditionally means limited speech, but Benedict generally uses it to signify silence.’ The senses are not unrelated. Silence can lend its ear to limited speech, and limited speech rests and resounds more readily than it wriggles. In the Chapter…
• July 3, 2013

  ‘Inclining the ear of the heart…’

  ‘Listen carefully, my son, to the teachings of a master and incline the ear of your heart.’ So begins the Prologue of St. Benedict’s Rule. How carefully must one listen to incline the ear of the heart. To what? To the teachings. Of whom? Of the master whose words come from elsewhere, the teachings he imparts. But…
• July 2, 2013

  The quietness of the intelligent man

  Kenko does well to stress the intelligent man’s quietness in company. Nobody likes a know-it-all. Some men, out of pride or vanity or ennui, profess to be experts in some esoteric subject while not a few others add to the dullness of the evening by having an opinion about everything passed around the table. They…