:: Edgeliving: Master Jim and slave marsha ::

:: Thursday, August 28, 2003 ::

Looking for Help With Obedience?

i often say that i have found help and comfort from the writings of men and women who enter into religious service, in any number of faiths. Like them, i have vowed to obey and serve in a way that the society i live in does not understand or accept. Here is an example of the wisdom and help i have found -- if you are searching to understand what it means to obey as a slave, i hope it helps you, too.

"Even after all of her years in the cloister, Sister Elizabeth didn't have a subservient bone in her body. That didn't mean that she took her vow of obedience lightly. She had found that many religious hid behind the vow of obedience. It gave them an excuse to take the path of least resistance, to glide through their lives on automatic pilot, confident that someone else would make all of the important decisions for them. There was a saying in religious life: Keep the rule and the rule will keep you. Oh, how wonderful if it were that simple. It never was, of course. Sister Elizabeth understood that obedience was a multilayered virtue. True obedience required far more than simple submission to man-made (or woman-made) rules. You must be obedient to the rule -- the master rubric that defined the human calling to God. And that required a strength of will, and intellect."

From "The Calling: A Year in the Life of an Order of Nuns" by Catherine Whitney, p. 123

From time to time, i've seen websites that offer the "128 Basic Slave Rules," or someone who offers "slave training" in only 30 days. Anyone can learn the "rules" -- anyone can be "trained" to follow them. But to come to an understanding and acceptance of who you are and what you are meant to be in this life... and to learn to obey as a way of making that calling real for you and for the world around you...

That requires more. So much more.

--slave marsha

:: 4:48 PM [+] ::
...