Rules, Rules, Rules!!

I met up with Ray this Wednesday to chat about where we both were in our thinking about the pub monastery vision. We met in the leafy area of Clifton, Bristol and mused together while admiring the breathtaking view from Clifton Downs (Who knew that was there? I always said the Bristol wasn't too bad for an English city). The conversation soon settled on discussing the monastic concept of 'rule of life'.

The idea of a rule of life is simple: it is a basic set of ideas and concepts that define a monastic community and provide a framework within which its members must conduct their lives. The classic Benedictine rule of life, established by the legendary Saint Benedict himself in the sixth century, consists of three vows that the initiate monk must make: the vow of obedience, the vow of poverty and the vow of chastity. Most traditional monstic orders follow a similar rule of life, but some of the new monsatic communities are coming up with their own innovative rules, based on what is appropriate for their own contexts (a great example is the Northumbria Community's rule of 'availability and vulnerability' - see  http://www.northumbriacommunity.org/who-we-are/the-rule-briefly)

So, Ray and I were stood there overlooking this dramatic vista, silently hoping that decades of weather erosion weren't going to finally catch up on the precarious cliff ledge we were perched on, and began thinking about what a rule of life might look like for a community of faith - or a network or communities of faith - that met in a bar (or bars). After much deliberation, we came up with the following three aspects:

1 - Love wins. This is the bottom line of all understanding of God and how he acts in the world. Jesus came to show that when all is said and done, love does and will ultimately win. Our imitation of Christ must be understood in this light.

2 - Jesus can and does change lives. This is the source of all our hope and is why no one and no situation is ever written off.

3 - Incarnation. We are called to be 'out there' blessing the world in any and every way, not stuck behind church walls in our little cliques of holiness.

 Hmm...definitely room for further extrapolation, exploration, exaggeration and examination, but it's a start!