THE READINGS · X
Create, teach, repair, and protect. Give the next person something useful to inherit. The Order’s purpose must find expression in what its members actually do for one another and for people beyond its circle.
READING A · Rabbinic Judaism
William Davidson Talmud, English text presented by Sefaria.
Honi encounters a man planting for descendants as his ancestors planted for him. Read the episode within its surrounding narrative. It is an inherited teaching story, not an event this collection claims to verify.
Read Babylonian Talmud, Ta'anit 23a: the carob-tree narrative in the source edition · new tabREADING B · Greco-Roman Stoic philosophy
Richard M. Gummere's English translation.
Seneca describes writing for later generations and sharing counsel he has found useful in his own difficulties. The selected sections concern leaving knowledge that can assist people the writer may never meet.
Read Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 8, sections 1–3 in the source edition · new tabWITHIN THE ORDER
Compare planting something others will use with preserving something others may learn. Consider what a member's work might leave available after he has gone.
What could we leave useful to someone we may never meet?