silence

Language

Dear Benedict

In chapter 6 of your Rule you commend silence and even go as far as to say that ‘good words are to be left unsaid out of esteem for silence.’

I’ve made it clear before that there are many kinds of silence. As a speech therapist I’m familiar with some. Imposed silence, silence that seeks to silence others with whom we disagree or that we have abused is not the kind of silence anyone should commend. Of course you were probably not doing that in chapter 6. You, and many other monastics, think that silence freely chosen and followed with care and joy, is at the heart of the life of a faithful community. It was probably a valuable idea when you advanced it and many in such orders value it now.

That was before enforced silence became the trademark of domination and abuse in many denominations and in secular contexts too numerous to list. That was before language chosen by dominant groups to silence some and divide communities became such sharp weapons.

This week we are once again faced with the use of divisive and corrosive language. Once again it is in respect of immigration, an area in which language has played a crucial dividing role for a century of more. An area, in which I would argue, any Good-enough Benedictine cannot be silent.

One of the other hallmarks of Benedictine spirituality is hospitality. All are welcome. I wonder what you think we should do when two parts of the Rule come into conflict with each other. Is there are order of precedence?

If we, as a society, are to be welcoming to the most vulnerable should we keep silent about the language used to demonise such people? The answer surely has to be no. Whatever our role in a community, from the least well known to the celebratory we need to register our opposition to lies and exaggeration that lead to negativity and hate being directed towards those who seek refuge. The roles of ‘teacher’ and ‘disciple’ do not work in such a context.

Listening remains vital. We must listen especially to the weakest and quietest voices. We must understand the unspoken hierarchy of silencing. When a person sees their role as the silencing of others, that’s a dangerous route. Anyone who needs to tell someone else to ‘be quiet’ or to ‘give them a good talking to’ in order to keep them quiet should be questioned. Why does the breaking of silence seem threatening?

When a disabled person first gets a voice through an electronic communication aid they should not be told to ‘stop playing with your toy.’ When an abused person finally gets enough courage to name their abuser they should not find their testimony tied up in red tape. When a survivor finds the words to sing of their salvation we should all cry Magnificat!

And when politicians show sings of forgetting the pattern of history by which people were ‘othered’, demonised, segregated and taken away only half a continent from here, they should listen not to their own voices but to the voices of those raised on behalf of the weakest and most vulnerable. It is not Benedictine to keep silent in the face of oppression.

From my remembered bible: Your speech has the power to cut people dead or give them life. Use it wisely.

May my voice be used to support the most vulnerable.

Written in Longdendale by a Friend of Scholastica. 10.03.2023

Weak

Dear Benedict,

After a week of Covid19, I’m gradually feeling better: tiredness continues. What with other folks I know also testing positive it made me think a bit differently about Holy Week.

It’s hard enough being holy for a week without being wholly weak. But every week includes weakness. You allowed for Alleluias ‘except in Lent’ (chapter 15) and evidently that meant you were more generous with this practice than some instructors. So I’ll just fit in a quick Alleluia for weakness while I’m here.

It’s hard to celebrate weakness in a culture that hard on the soft aspects of being human. Even in this week of weeks the bits that could be seen as weak are edited to distance us from too much weakness.

A man arrived at the city gate on a donkey, like many did every week. Rather than see this as ordinary, let alone weak, a great cheering crowd is heard making a fuss about a king coming, however unlikely the beast. Some say the donkey knew: they are knowing creatures.

Tired, weary and as weak as you or me, Jesus climbs off the donkey and disappears into the underbelly of Jerusalem. When he reappears he’s sitting down, not standing, in the temple. Just watching, just waiting, just breathing, he notices ordinary things. There’s an ordinary woman who makes an ordinary offering. Easy to overlook that.

Easy to overlook the poor today even though they are still with us. To overlook the ones on pre-payment meters queuing at local foodbanks for food that doesn’t need cooking. The message seems to be weakness should be ignored. But not by Jesus who remarks that it’s ‘All she had to live on’. It’s still up to us to determine if it’s enough to provide pot noodles or whether we should entice anyone into making a greater fuss alongside the weak.

It’s a week in which weakness continued to surface in all kinds of ways. Coming to the end of his temper with things as they were: a fig tree with no fruit, a temple market place with no justice, who wouldn’t loose it, and let it loose to echo down history as weakness or what? I’ll add a quick Alleluia for that too.

In a weak moment he takes the towel and tries to show them what it’s really like being part of a squabbling community in a place of political turmoil. Alleluia for clean feet.

In a weak moment he takes bread, ordinary stuff, and tries to say something about the yeast infused stuff that feeds them and the fermented juice that runs in their veins over hundreds of years of running away. They miss a lot of it, as do we, unhappy about too much weakness. We squabble about who was and who wasn’t there, what was and wasn’t said, what it did or didn’t mean, instead of taking the stuff and sharing it. ‘This is my body’: Alleluia for that.

The Mount of Olives at night would have been a dark and isolated place. Not a place for sleeping or for lover’s to meet and kiss. Giving all his strength away, as he has been throughout his ministry, he is taken away in weakness. Alleluia for that.

From there on, everything tumbles away until stripped and bleeding, nailed and tormented, all that’s left is weakness. And perhaps that why we want to edit the weak bits, busy concentrating on getting the right ending rather than what it takes to get there. Who wants a weak leader, one with mental health challenges or physical limitations, a mistake-maker, giver-upper? No mask or put on face here. Only the agonised admission: it is finished. Alleluia for that.

My week will have weak bits, tired bits, uncertain and unconvincing bits. The answer will be ‘I don’t know’ several times a day. I’ll step away, avert my eyes, deny and prevaricate. And from time to time, I may just glimpse some holiness in all this and raise my feeble Alleluia.

From my remembered bible: There was silence

Alleluia!

From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay community of St Benedict.

Dear Benedict,

This week we saw the death toll of those people in UK who have died from COVID19 go above 100,000. To this news there is only, initially at least, silence. There may also be weeping, anger, denial, and many other things, but respectful silence at this loss of life is fundamental, whatever we do next.

Indeed there are many kinds of silence. Even if we are silent that doesn’t mean other things are not happening around and within the silence. Your Rule recognised this in chapter 42. Silence has many important functions: to rest, to listen, to affirm, to show respect, to indicate agreement or awe for example. And of course silence may be our only response if our voice has been taken away.

It is partly because of the complexity of silence that we must examine it again and again. It is too simple to say we live in a noisy world and therefore we all need silence. What kind of silence we might need and what kinds of silence are unhelpful need to be considered.

It is now well known that the silence that follows abuse of different kinds (but which are essentially different aspects of the misuse of power one over another) is a damaging kind of silence. Unfortunately no institution, not least the Church, can claim indemnity to this kind of abuse. Some of that silence has included the silence of unquestioning loyalty or fence sitting as well as the silence of cover up, threat and complicity. These may not have been the kinds of silence you were writing about but they have crept poisonously into many communities and we have to be alert to them. Many have been damaged by them and that damage is still causing havoc in people’s lives. A traumatised person said :’Every time I retell my story I am traumatised again’. Thus the breaking of silence also creates its own traumas.

It was my work as a speech therapist that first bought me face to face with many layers of silence and was one to the things I bought into ministry. However, it has never been a comfortable gift. Even this week, considering when to keep silent and when to speak have been once again on my mind when faced with evidence of the effects of unhealthy silences on people in different places. It can be a heavy thing to carry, which is why the Great Silence is so important: a time and place to put even silence down.

It is like that action a cook takes when folding flour into beaten eggs and sugar to make a cake. The dry mixture is folded, not beaten, into the wet and you can see them meeting each other, one gradually becoming the other, as they are folded together. Try it and see what you make of it.

And as you do, in this week of all weeks, let your silence take up the unspoken names of those affected by the current Pandemic and in other ways, in memory of those caught up in the holocaust and other genocides, those survivors of abuse and any who are unable to break out of unhealthy forms of silence. May the silence we enjoy be true silence of the embrace of the Holy One. May it be the ground of our being and the strength from which we emerge to serve the world.

From the remembered bible: Be still and know God.

I crawl into your silence.

From a Friend of Scholastica and a Member of the Lay Community of St Benedict.