Esther de Waal writes about the Rule of St. Benedict, which has governed monastic communities since the 500s A.D. Here, she writes specifically about the vow of stability:
"For stability says there must be no evasion; instead attend to the real, to the real necessity however uncomfortable that might be. Stability brings us from a feeling of alienation, perhaps from the escape into fantasy and daydreaming, into the state of reality. It will not allow us to evade the inner truth of whatever it is that we have to do, however dreary and boring and apparently unfruitful that may seem. It involves listening (something which the vow of obedience has illuminated) to the particular demands of whatever this task and this moment in time is asking; no more and no less. This is the limitation which the artist knows when he accepts the necessity imposed upon him and turns it to good account. 'When we have discovered that a necessity is really necessary, that it is unalterable and we can do nothing to avert or change it, then our freedom consists in the acceptance of the inevitable as the medium of our creativity."
-Esther de Waal, from Seeking God: The Way of St. Benedict
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