Wednesday, July 8, 2015

The Benedict Option fully and finally explained

Here.

Rod Dreher going full Benedict Option

The circular waterfall of emotive exposition I linked above, overflowing with illustrations, is probably the most cogent exegesis of the Benedict Option to date, but because, as its creator continues to stress time after time, "everything is connected", it would be impossible for me to excerpt any single part of it as representative without thereby unraveling the whole thing into an incoherent mess. To grasp it in all its fullness, therefore, you must read the whole thing, but, because it illuminates the Benedict Option like nothing which has ever come before, I believe the serious seeker after the Benedict Option will find it well worth the effort.

Now the overriding element of the Benedict Option everyone has been clear about from the outset is that, unlike an oil change or a haircut, the Benedict Option is a wholesale and transcendentally transformative lifestyle - otherwise we would simply be calling it the Status Quo Option. The Benedict Option is not a task on a honey-do list; having chosen it, it is one's life as one now lives it.

Because Rod Dreher has spun the whole cloth of the Benedict Option out of a single, slender thread from Alasdair MacIntyre, no one doubts that Rod and Rod alone is its creator and champion. And, because it would be the apotheosis of hypocrisy for that creator not to adopt and practice that wholesale lifestyle himself, what Rod Dreher does therefore is the Benedict Option. The life you see Rod Dreher living at any given moment is the Benedict Option in practice.


The lettuces
But perhaps at this point you have now read the whole thing I linked initially, the unfurling scroll of a latter day Jack Kerouac blessedly hooked on lettuces rather than amphetamine, and somehow, perversely, you still don't get it. You still cannot see how to achieve the transcendence of our dark, ruined culture as Rod Dreher is doing every day with every fiber of his being, demonstrably living the true Benedict Option to its fullest.

Well, my friend, I'm afraid you must simply address your failures honestly and just try harder. It's your only hope, and the very future of your children and their children in turn depends on it.

Perhaps you should meditate more deeply upon the lettuces. Maybe that will help.

5 comments:

  1. Models and movie-stars go to court against tabloids and paparazzi for snapping embarrassing shots of them with long lenses. But here is an example of someone with absolutely no self-awareness at all willingly posting an illustration of himself eating eggs while ostensibly straining to produce one.

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  2. The caption should read, Rod Dreher going full Bowel Movement.

    Anthony

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    Replies
    1. "more lettuce... (grunt, grunt)... more lettuce..."

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  3. Rod Dreher has the self-awareness of a head of lettuce.

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  4. Imagine what he could do if he devoted half the time he spends on various foods to say the plight of the unborn or the Persecuted church? Too much squandered talent! Jonathan Carpenter

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