A Rule of Life: “Is ye all ‘narder, m’luv?”
December 2016
The church season is now in Advent, but my reflection from earlier this year during the church season of Lent seems equally appropriate.
One learns that the monastic effort to follow a “rule” of life, as in The Rule of St. Benedict, is not a “rule” in the manner exercised by our American understanding of the English language. After all, our colonial ancestors waged a successful revolutionary war against the tyranny of the British “Ruler” and his exploitation of the colony.
In a more pedestrian sense, we all certainly should apply or attempt to apply the carpenter’s admonition to “measure twice, cut once.” In that instance, we welcome and praise the simple tool we call a ruler (although, any carpenter knows better the companion tool that is attached to a work belt is a “rule”).
Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary (1) lists seventeen separate definitions for this word, but the one the monastics typically apply is listed first: “a prescribed, suggested, or self-imposed guide for conduct or action.” I particularly like the phrase “self-imposed guide for conduct or action” to describe what any Lenten or Advent exercise seems to be encouraging.
German culture, known for its order and precision, often uses the expression “alles im Ordnung” meaning, everything is in order, or everything is as it should be. The agent who stamps a passport at a German port of entry uses the expression repeatedly and emphatically as he or she brings the ink stamp down on the page. A more pedestrian usage of the phrase is to express the English equivalent of “everything’s in its place,” or “everything’s OK.”
The immigrant subculture of native Newfoundlanders into which I was born and nurtured in New York, uses a common expression of this “self-imposed guide” in the words “all ‘narder.” It asks “Are you all in order?”
The mother or father of a family about to lead the children out of their home, be it for a visit to a relative for a cup of tea, a walk to church, a drive in the countryside, or a fishing trip, might ask in Newfie dialect, “Is we all ‘narder, m’luvs?”
The captain of a fishing schooner in Newfoundland, the profession of both my grandfathers, assuredly greeted every sailor who came aboard his ship to embark on the seasonal voyage for codfish with the question, “Is ye all ‘narder, me son?”
As I embarked on last year’s Lenten exercise encouraged by the members of the Society of St. John the Evangelist (SSJE) “Growing a Rule of Life“(2), I saw it less an application of a regulation for spiritual growth and more a question of my self-imposed guide for my life in Christ: am I “all ‘narder”?
REFERENCES:
(1) “Rule.” Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. 2016.
(2) http://ssje.org/ssje/growrule/ Society of St. John the Evangelist–Growing a Rule of Life.
