Listening at Mile Marker 45

“Listen” is the most familiar word in the Rule. However, Benedict does not simply exhort us to listen. He tells us how to do it: “Listen carefully [...] with the ear of your heart. This is advice from a father who loves you [...]” (Prol. 1). In other words, receive with love what is offered with love. As always, Benedict is echoing Scripture, where many passages speak of God’s love and our proper response. John teaches, “No one has ever seen God, but if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is made complete in us” (1 Jn. 4:12).

On July 19, 2023 my wife and I, and our two cats, were returning home from a camping trip in Minnesota. I was driving south on MNTH 60 in our Jeep, towing a 20-foot travel trailer. Just north of mile marker 45, I lost control of the camper and rolled both the camper and Jeep. The camper ended up in the center dividing culvert, and the Jeep landed on its wheels in the passing lane facing perpendicular to the flow of traffic. I remember the Jeep rolling and the glass shattering between the pavement and my left shoulder. I don’t remember being upside down. My wife does. She was sitting in the backseat with our cats. We were both wearing our seatbelts and we both walked away from the accident — me with cuts, bruises, and a very sore back, my wife with a considerable bump on the head and a hairline fracture of her first lumbar vertebra. The cats were scared and shaken, but well. It was quite a spectacle.

Yet, what happened next was truly remarkable. Strangers descended upon us. A truck driver positioned his rig to protect us from passing traffic and immediately attended to my wife. Another man found a first aid kit and began bandaging my cuts. A woman came running from the northbound lanes across the center culvert to see how she could help. My wife had taken off her shoes, and others looked for them so she could step out onto the glass-covered roadway. First responders arrived and hurried us into an ambulance. Before towing away the wreckage, a group gathered what they could of our belongings and loaded them into our Jeep for me to reclaim the next day. I called a friend from the hospital and, without hesitation, he drove three hours to come get us. The next day another friend spent seven hours with me so I could return to the site to salvage what we could.

We don’t always respond to love with love. It’s like we’re not listening. We can miss it, ignore it, misinterpret it, reject it, abuse it. We can even see God’s love as a burden. But in extreme circumstances, we can offer and receive God’s love readily. Why we so often fail to do so in our ordinary circumstances is a mystery.

My wife and I do not take lightly the divine love we received through the healthcare workers and our friends who have helped us recover. But we were startled by those strangers who, with no connection or compensation, offered God’s love to us in our dire need. It was our privilege to receive it, to listen to it with our hearts.

ABOUT DR. PAUL ANDERS

Paul Anders has his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is an Associate Professor of Philosophy. His research interests lie at the intersection of science, religion, and ethics.