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Running With Expanding Heart: Meeting God in Everyday Life

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Just in time for Lent: here is a wonderful new addition to the literature of Benedictine wisdom.

Running with Expanding Heart (the title comes from a phrase in the prologue to the Rule of Saint Benedict) offers a vision of how Benedictine spirituality can provide inspiration and guidance for twenty-first century Christians--including the laity. Sister Mary Reuter, a member of Saint Benedict's Monastery in St. Joseph, Minnesota and a theology professor at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University, understands just how down-to-earth and practical Benedictine wisdom is, and uses storytelling, personal reflection, and thought-provoking, open-ended questions to illustrate just how relevant Benedict's Rule continues to be. Beginning with an homage to her father whom she describes as an "extraordinary ordinary man," the author goes on to show, in a variety of ways, how Benedictine wisdom can help Christians to find the extraordinary in all of life's ordinary moments.

The chapters of the book cover the key elements of Benedictine wisdom, including hospitality, stability, obedience, the beauty of the ordinary, the spirituality of place, and the recognition that everything is holy. Although the book does not promote any sort of method or technique of prayer, the overall message will support all who seek to nurture a contemplative dimension within even the most down-to-earth corners of their lives.

This book can serve as an introduction to Benedictine spirituality for beginners, but also as a bouquet of new insights for those who have walked with Benedict for some time. It's a slender little book (100 pages plus notes), making it ideal to read as part of an overall discipline of daily devotion. St. Benedict expected his monks to read a book for Lent; if you want to make Benedictine wisdom more integrally part of your life, this would be an ideal selection for your Lenten reading.

It is not uncommon to hear advice to "slow down and live in the moment." But no one tells you how you are supposed to do this or how would you know that you are living in the moment.

Mary Reuter has revealed how life at any moment can reveal the messages of insight, gratitude, and revelation by simply looking, listening and re-interpreting a situation, a happening, an incident...simply because you say so.

The ease of taking any moment and making it a "God-speak" moment seems obvious in reading Reuter's stories of her own journey and allows the reader to relish and re-engage in those times when things seemed to be too traumatic, too painful or insignificant to dwell on. Her stories trigger reminders in our usual and normal day that tell us the power of a smile, a thank you, a frown, or a lost conversation. The wishing that I should have or could have opens the doors of committing to being conscious to any moment as one that reveals, teaches and gifts us with opportunities to make a difference in our lives as well as the life of another. It all lives in our interpretation and declarations. The power is in the choosing to make any moment special, conscious and meaningful from washing the dishes to taking a walk to holding someone in pain.

I found myself reviewing and re-interprting stories in my life and promising to maximize those frequent opportunities in any and every day to learn, to listen and to gift the moment with meaning.