Kindergarten Wisdom

The theme of this year’s Novice and Director Institute is “The School of the Lord’s Learning,” with inspiration from Robert Fulghum’s book Everything I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. This theme made me think of the refrain from a John McCutcheon song, “Kindergarten Wall,” about a poster in his son’s kindergarten classroom:

Of all you learn here, remember this the best

Don't hurt each other and clean up your mess.

Take a nap every day, wash before you eat

Hold hands, stick together,

Look before you cross the street.

Remember the seed in the little paper cup,

First the root goes down and then the plant grows up!

This song includes a lot of Benedictine wisdom, as shown in the following table:

Kindergarten	Rule of St. Benedict
• Of all you learn here, remember this the best	• Listen carefully to the master’s instruc- tions and attend to them with the ear of your heart
• Don’t hurt each other	• Keep your tongue free from vicious talk
• Clean up your mess	• Whoever fails to keep the things belonging to the monastery clean or treats them carelessly should be reproved
• Take a nap every day	• After Sext and their meal, they may rest on their beds in complete silence
• Wash before you eat	• On Saturday…the brother is to wash to towels which the brothers use to wipe their hands and feet
• Hold hands	• Never give a hollow greeting of peace or turn away when someone needs your love
• Stick together	• If you have a dispute with someone, make peace with him before the sun goes down
• Look before you cross the street	• We must be vigilant
• Remember the seed in the little paper cup	• When they live by the labor of their hands…then they are really monks
• First the root goes down	• Observe stability
• And then the plant grows up	• Let us open our eyes to the light that comes from God

It appears that the wisdom of St. Benedict has been engrained in us from an early age. Instead of making the way of God complicated, perhaps all we need to do is remember what we learned in kindergarten, and then live by it!