I thank St. Benedict for his ancient formula on spirituality. It changed my life in a completely different world over a thousand years later. Monastic Catcholics have been following the rules of St. Benedict for 15 centuries. So have the genuinely spiritual. It holds up, at least for me.

I’ve been caught in this spiritual dilemma for all of my life.

I always wanted a purpose and a mission for my life, which is what spirituality is, and I could never quite put it together. I  haven’t yet. I’m just not yet as good a person as I wish to be.

But I am farther along than expected to be or perhaps even deserve, and I owe thinkers and spiritualists like St. Benedict for that.

The most progress I’ve ever had in seeking a spiritual way to lie has been following one of St. Benedict’s rules: seek Wisdom Figures.

While I am not a monk or a practicing Catholic, I’ve read and re-read St. Benedict’s small document of seventy-three short chapters on how to live a loving life and how humility is about understanding and realizing the truth of the self: Look for “Wisdom Figures” and learn from them.

I can’t do it myself; I don’t know anyone who could. I’m always looking for help. And I always found some. Help helps. We look for kernels of truth and wisdom and pass them along to others.

This idea turned my life upside down and came to the point that how I see myself determines how I see and interact with others.

This lesson was hard for me – facing the truth about myself and understanding humility’s power and value. I learned you dont need to be a saint to go good.

I never had really considered who I was, and when I finally did, I didn’t care for myself. But I could do better; I let the past go and moved into the now.  I decided never to speak darkly of my life and look for the light in me and the world around me. And I found it right away – Maria, our farm, my photography, our beautiful animals.

This is tough going. It’s not just something to wish for; it’s something I have to do.

Humility in the Rule Of Benedict, the founder of the Benedictine Order, is, say, religious scholars, the hinge on which a spiritual life depends. The whole truth of what it means to be spiritual, Benedict, is to be “of God” and a force in the world for spirituality, justice, compassion, and human dignity.

To try to leave the world a little better than you found it.

In a world ravaged by greed, violence, and a social and political system built on the pursuit of more and more money (rather than a spiritual life or a life of compassion), humility is the glue that can unbind us from ourselves. Benedict’s message is not the message of today.

Truth and compassion have been pushed aside to make room for billionaires and corporations no one can control. We are all paying for that.

To my surprise, Benedict’s message to the world was clear and spoke to me in a powerful, personal, and relevant way.

It’s about facing the truth about ourselves. I can’t change the world, but I can change myself.

Each of us has something to confront, something that is scarring our souls, something for which we have never been forgiven or cannot forgive ourselves, something we have not encountered or are trapped with, even when alone.

This speaks to the time we live in when lies become truth, and cruelty replaces empathy as the currency of the time.

There is in each of us, Benedict wrote, a gaping hole, a rupture of the fullness and peace of mind we all want. It can be a lapse of integrity or courage, a broken relationship, a wound of no healing, a compulsion that distracts or holds us captive, or an unforgivable act of cruelty or cowardice.

There is something we haven’t shared, confronted, or come to terms with. It lives in all of us, says Benedict. It needs to be seen, faced and acknowledged to heal ourselves. It takes time; it takes silence; it takes solitude. It takes commitment.

The answer, suggested Benedict, is an emotional catharsis, a spiritual insight, a vision, a reckoning that comes from following the pain to its source through silence, thought, or meditation. Humility comes from admitting the breach of the soul, whatever it is,  being willing to change and speak the truth to ourselves and others, and reforming the narratives that shape our lives.

We confess this to someone we love and then, free, move on to the life we really want.

More than anything else, humility and revelation come from facing the hurt I carry –  deep inside me, which eats away at the heart. It means taking responsibility for myself and undertaking the hard and painful work of change.

The call is to commit myself to making life new again, to love and do good. This isn’t about an unpaid traffic ticket or snatching a candy bar from the corner store. It’s big.

It is a beautiful moment in the spiritual world, the start of a new beginning.

Whenever I find myself in a dark place, I imagine the light waiting for me downstairs, outside, in the morning. It was always there. I think that’s where a spiritual life has taken me.

The truth really did set me free.