"There are times when good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence. For all the more reason then should evil speech be curbed...[Rule of St Benedict]
One of the ironies of the contemplative life is that you can’t talk or write about silence, or for that matter about what St Benedict calls Restraint of Speech, without using words. Presumably the teacher gives the teaching and then, as it were, pulls the ladder up. Maintaining a blog is perhaps hard to reconcile with Restraint of Speech.
Chapter 6 of the Rule of St Benedict, like all the rest of it, was intended for the monastery situation, so oblates and others who do not live in a monastery have to adapt and interpret. Certainly, in a monastery, few things could be less edifying than raucous laughter echoing down the corridor (see 6:8). But Benedict goes on to condemn in all places any vulgarity and gossip – a somewhat forlorn hope, one would think.
His primary purpose is what he calls esteem for silence, and the Rule has some pretty strict instructions about silence in the monastery. Silence is the space where listening and response become possible, and in which the voracious ego is always going to find it hard to thrive. So most of our contemporary culture regards silence as an enemy. It is immediately uncomfortable and threatening. You have to fill it up with some kind of noise.
But I think we can interpret Benedict more intelligently than just a noise/silence option. Restraint of Speech, it seems to me, has implications in many directions. Oblate discipline inclines us to listen rather than to speak, in company – even when we may have something to say. The prevailing culture thinks it terrible to have some unexpressed thought. Radio talkback is perhaps the ultimate horror product of this. Benedictines on the other hand typically choose not to articulate what they may have thought. Just as well, sometimes. It may be partly a reaction to the mindless conversation that passes for communication in so many settings today – a stream of clichés and off-the-cuff opinions and declarations, often lubricated by alcohol or something else, which structures time and functions as a kind of verbal dance of social inclusion and acceptability. I recently heard a “panel discussion” of some topic on National Radio; three women all talked simultaneously, over the top of each other, for 15 minutes.
The content also of much contemporary communication appals me. Vulgarity, profanity, relentless sexual references, violent attitudes, thinly concealed racism, wilful ignorance – and that’s just in polite company -- all thrive these days, on TV and radio, in the stuff we read, in the conversations you hear. This is by no stretch of the imagination restraint of speech!
News reports thrive on over-worked words. Fantastic, incredible, iconic, awesome, unique, freaked-out... and I could add 100 others. And that horror of horrors, unbeknownst, a silly archaic past participle, unnecessary, embarrassing, simply trendy. We are losing respect for the language, and have long since lost sight of simplicity and accuracy of expression, what one of my former teachers called economy of words. Invite is not a noun. I personally. Right now. For free. From here on in. Closure. Sexy. Funky. O my God.
So I am a fan of Restraint of Speech. It’s a worthwhile discipline.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Three score years and fifteen
Yesterday Mary went to Stephen’s first birthday party, and came home laughing at the memory of five one-year-olds and their mums, and the impossibility of getting any kind of overall order for a photo. It should be easier with me. I was born 75 years ago today, at Devonport, and the tribal memory is that my father fled to the top of Mt Victoria to await the all clear. Typical. This evening we have a select dinner here with my sister Marilyn and her husband Lionel, and also David and Alison Grant, friends who live nearby at Algies Bay.
Mary is now fully retired – that is, from medicine – but she threatens to fill up the space with all manner of activism. Perhaps my role is to redress the balance around here. Anyway, I have too many books to read. They form orderly queues in my study. I simply don’t have time for ill health or deteriorating eyesight, or pointless activity, or anything that might render me unable to read and ponder what I want. Last week some time, when I was otherwise occupied, in a manner of speaking, there was a knock at the door downstairs... but no way was I going to rise up and rush downstairs to answer the door. Then on Sunday, Mary came home to report that a certain activistic old humbug at the church, who had made a previous attempt to visit me but had been headed off on that occasion by Mary and by Marilyn, had been the caller on this occasion. He was determined to invite me to a new Men’s Group. This group sounds totally toxic. The agenda for their inaugural meeting is fish and chips, a committee meeting, and indoor bowls. No women! What’s the point of that? No young people. Just all these old blokes. I would rather have teeth pulled. Mary and Marilyn are on the alert to protect me from this elderly zealot.
Last time I lent myself to anything like that was in 1963, in Whitehill, Lanarkshire, Scotland. There was a men’s group on Friday evenings at which they sat around a trestle table and played dominoes. It remains in my memory as an early prototype of hell. On the first evening I couldn’t understand much at all of their dialect, and rapidly discovered that there was no way they could cope with me there anyway – I simply hindered normal conversation among these locals – and I ceased going. It was that same evening that we learned of the assassination of John F Kennedy.
It is difficult for me to express how fortunate I am. Living here, looking out over the bay, granted this time of leisure and quiet and reasonable health, married to Mary since 1961, two wonderful sons and one lovely daughter, all happily married, five grand children... The disasters of the past gone with the dew and the mist. And this morning Mary gave me a handsome pure merino jersey and a warm shirt, and an autobiography by Barack Obama, all with a card which reminded me that I “deserve” her. You bet.
Mary is now fully retired – that is, from medicine – but she threatens to fill up the space with all manner of activism. Perhaps my role is to redress the balance around here. Anyway, I have too many books to read. They form orderly queues in my study. I simply don’t have time for ill health or deteriorating eyesight, or pointless activity, or anything that might render me unable to read and ponder what I want. Last week some time, when I was otherwise occupied, in a manner of speaking, there was a knock at the door downstairs... but no way was I going to rise up and rush downstairs to answer the door. Then on Sunday, Mary came home to report that a certain activistic old humbug at the church, who had made a previous attempt to visit me but had been headed off on that occasion by Mary and by Marilyn, had been the caller on this occasion. He was determined to invite me to a new Men’s Group. This group sounds totally toxic. The agenda for their inaugural meeting is fish and chips, a committee meeting, and indoor bowls. No women! What’s the point of that? No young people. Just all these old blokes. I would rather have teeth pulled. Mary and Marilyn are on the alert to protect me from this elderly zealot.
Last time I lent myself to anything like that was in 1963, in Whitehill, Lanarkshire, Scotland. There was a men’s group on Friday evenings at which they sat around a trestle table and played dominoes. It remains in my memory as an early prototype of hell. On the first evening I couldn’t understand much at all of their dialect, and rapidly discovered that there was no way they could cope with me there anyway – I simply hindered normal conversation among these locals – and I ceased going. It was that same evening that we learned of the assassination of John F Kennedy.
It is difficult for me to express how fortunate I am. Living here, looking out over the bay, granted this time of leisure and quiet and reasonable health, married to Mary since 1961, two wonderful sons and one lovely daughter, all happily married, five grand children... The disasters of the past gone with the dew and the mist. And this morning Mary gave me a handsome pure merino jersey and a warm shirt, and an autobiography by Barack Obama, all with a card which reminded me that I “deserve” her. You bet.
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