We all have limits. It is an undeniable truth for every member of humankind. Whether we understand them to be the end of our capacities or the boundaries of our identities, we know the discomfort that accompanies the attempt to exceed them. Were discomfort the only outcome, we would simply discount them as inconveniences and pretend to avoid them. That would, however, dismiss the potential appreciation for limits that Benedict has been encouraging since the sixth century. In Ch. 4 of the Rule he urges the reader, “Day by day remind yourself that you are going to die” (43).

Benedict purposefully ushers us into close proximity with our mortality, the ultimate of limits, because he trusts that limits do more than simply disquiet us. Ultimately, they set us free. Befriending our genuine limits helps us continuously refine and clarify the perspective we need to live fully and with focus. The daily reminder of death sharpens our commitment to discern well and wisely. Victor Klimoski, in a poem called “A Lesson About Death,” echoes this theme:

When asked, the ancients said

To live each day

As though it were the last,

The end a way to measure

What’s worth the worry,

What’s just a waste of time.

Measuring might be easy if it were only a matter of slamming into a limit and then picking out the lessons. Unfortunately, we can creep up on limits so slowly that we begin to tolerate the incremental increases in pain and are then caught by surprise when the ground itself moves out from beneath us. More frequently still, we bump into limits over and over, searching for ways to regain our bearings before we reach the next one.

This repeating pattern provides the most helpful structure for reflecting upon own limits and the freedom that an encounter with them can inspire. As we find them, we practice acknowledging our limits and processing what we learn as a result. We pray through whatever response we discover in ourselves, entrusting ourselves to the Divine Healer. Then we live and repeat. This rhythm enables us to be increasingly honest about our genuine, real-life limits. Throughout our lives, we reach them, reflect, grow, and prepare to encounter them again. All the while, God continues doing something new in us.

Consider taking some time with one or more of the following exercises as a way of practicing that rhythm of reaching your limits and praying through them toward the freedom God desires for you. Reflect upon what you yourself continue to learn about your limits. Pay close attention to what stirs your heart and watch for the faint hints of new or expanding freedom that are beginning to emerge.

Unpacking Your Own Sense Of Limits(not those imposed upon us by others, but those which at naturally and uniquely ours)

What limits do you know?

What limits do you fear?

What limits do you want?

Opening Spiritual Possibility

In what way does the following quote relate to your own experience?

“As we grow older, we find repeated affronts to our sense of self, our capacity to control outcomes, and our presumptions of omnipotence. . . . so the person in the second half of life is obliged to come to a more sober wisdom based on a humbled sense of personal limitations and the inscrutability of the world."

James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life (New York: Gotham Books, 2005), 85

Changing the StoryI

n a recent interview about what can be done in the face of our life-threatening environmental crisis, Mary Evelyn Tucker posed this essential question: “What can be done to tip the scales toward a resilient and flourishing future?”(Adapted from “A Roaring Force from One Unknowable Moment” in Orion Magazine May/June 2015, 33).

Tucker implores:

Stop damaging your life-supporting systems.

Imagine new and better ways to live.

Change the story about who you are, not lord of all creation, but one life woven into a beautiful and complex system that is still unfolding.

        What stopping, imagining and changing do you need today?

A Wedge of Freedom

Click here to read The Journey, a poem by David Whyte. In the context of the limits you are now experiencing, what “wedge of freedom” are you discovering?