Day Nine – The Messiness of Money

Question: Br. Curtis, your nine years as Superior gave you the access of a surgeon to the Community and its life lived under this Rule. Can you comment on the vows as they are presented in the Rule?

Br. Curtis Almquist: Gladly. I’ll do this in three parts, beginning with an integral aspect of our vow of poverty. I’d say I do not think we reflected as deeply as we might have on the subject of money. I think many of us were/are embarrassed by it, embarrassed by our need for it, embarrassed by our dependence on our benefactors for it, and I think if we were to approach those chapters today, we’d think and write about it very differently. Part of that—I hope—is just a function of our maturing and growing, but part of it is a franker awareness that we are not self-sufficient, nor have we ever been.