03/18/2025
“When the going gets tough, the tough get going”—so the saying goes. But I have a confession to make. My instinct is to get going AWAY from the conflict rather than TOWARD it. In other words, during tough times, I’m more of a “flight risk” than a “fight risk.”
However, now that my family and I have been rooted in the same place for almost thirteen years, I’m beginning to see the healthy impact of remaining more than running. When a married couple chooses to work through their overwhelmingly difficult circumstances, they have greater potential to reap long-term rewards. When a church member chooses to work through deep conflict rather than moving on to supposed greener pastures, he or she receives a blessing of community as a pathway to spiritual maturity.
In Saint Benedict’s (AD 480-547) monastic order, the very first commitment, which was entirely original and found in no other monastic writings of its time, was a vow of stability— “a radical commitment to live a rooted life, in a fixed place, among an imperfect people. It was a vow to take the good with the bad in one community over the long haul” (Staton, The Familiar Stranger, 204).
Benedict writes about a group of monks he calls gyrovagues, a combination of two Latin words, gyro meaning “circle” and vagues meaning “wander.” Gyrovagues were those “wandering in circles” (Shigematsu, 180).
For too long, I believe I’ve been wandering in circles, chasing the latest thrill, the next challenge, always believing that what’s beyond the horizon is better than the here and now. As Tyler Staton puts it, “The modern-day gyrovague is the sincerely committed Jesus follower who finds himself or herself bouncing from church to church. The vow of stability isn’t a critique of transience. It’s a pathway to spiritual maturity” (idem.).
Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5, ESV). We do not grow abstractly. The fruit of the Spirit grows when we are abiding in the Vine, and that happens best in the fertile soil of a particular place and people.
We grow in patience by bearing with difficult people rather than running from them. We grow in goodness by staying committed to relationships with people through conflict. Self-control grows in the soil of temptation toward anger or gossip. The pathway to spiritual maturity is relational and particular.
Over the years I’ve discovered the truth of the words of Thomas à Kempis, “Wherever you go, there you are” (The Imitation of Christ, 153).
Sometimes, God does call us to other places to serve among other people. But let’s do our best not to wander in circles. In the words of my wise mother-in-law, “Learn to grow where you’re planted,” because “people who stay grow” (Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family, 1).
