Ruthless Trust, loc. 488-489
The antithesis of giving thanks is grumbling. The grumblers live in a state of self-induced stress. Like the crew of vineyard workers who had labored from dawn to dusk and felt cheated when latecomers received the same wage (Matt. 20:1-16), they bellyache about the unfairness of life, the paucity of their gifts, the insensitivity of their spouse, and employer, the liberals who are destroying the church and the conservatives who have deserted their post, the hot weather and the cold pizza, the greedy rich and shiftless poor, and their victimization at the hands of the IRS, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and the manufacturers of Viagra. (Small wonder that the stressed-out grumblers are two and a half times more susceptible to colds than grateful people, according to Ohio State virologist Ronald Glaser.)
In his Rule for monasteries, St. Benedict considered grumbling a serious offense against community life. … In my mind, the most wonderful line in Benedict’s Rule describes the appropriate response to a “contumacious monk” who is creating discord in the monastic community. “Let Father Abbot send two stout monks to explain the matter to him” (chapter 20, italics mine). The saintly founder of Western monasticism implies that a left jab to the solar plexus and a right hook to the jaw would swiftly clear the grousing brother’s mind. — Brennan Manning
November 24, 2011