Talk, talk, talk

This has been one of those days filled with talking. The Office and Eucharist are pretty word-based, though, fortunately, not conversational. The work day for me today held, in order, our Chapter meeting (a community meeting beginning and ending with prayer, containing a reading from the Rule, confession of faults, announcements of the day's appointments, agendas and needs, and intercessory prayer); choir practice; the monthly house meeting, to discuss matters pertinent to the common life; the mid-day meal, which was a talking meal because today is a feast day (James of Jerusalem); dishwashing, which can get chatty; several short conversations with the monastery bookkeeper (who is delightful); a meeting of the vocations team (three people, 75 minutes); and the novitiate class, which is mostly me talking but has dialogue as well. By Vespers at 5 I was about talked out. So many words, so much sound. Good things were said and decided and (I hope) taught, but I came away from the workday feeling inundated.

Which might sound a little strange to people who know me. I usually like to talk. But when the mouth runs pretty much all day long, even a chatty type like myself gets a little weary of it.

My spiritual reading (actually, re-reading; I love this book) at the moment is the classic (first published in 1975) The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, The Alphabetical Collection, translated by the incomparable Benedicta Ward. One of the passages (25), from the section devoted to Abba Arsenius, says this:

"One day Abba Arsenius came to a place where there were reeds blowing in the wind. The old man said to the brothers, 'What is this movement?' They said, 'Some reeds.' Then the old man said to them, 'When one who is living in silent prayer hears the song of a little sparrow, his heart no longer experiences the same peace. How much worse it is when you hear the movement of those reeds.'

So much to unpack. First of all, there is nothing here about the dangers of talking, which are so many. The Letter of James sums up a long, long scriptural wisdom tradition, doubtless shared in most traditional cultures, when he says, "Think how small a flame can set fire to a huge forest; the tongue is a flame like that" (James 3:5-6). He goes on in that vein. Benedict's Rule is constantly warning of the dangers of talking. Less talking is universally recommended by the tradition. Well, fortunately, I think I got through today's conversations without actually committing a sin, or upsetting anyone, or even gossiping much. There's something to be said for a day full of talk when nothing overtly bad has escaped one's lips. For me, such a day is like running a race with a lot of hurdles to jump. How wonderful when I haven't knocked some over, as I often do. For which I am grateful and count it a blessing.

Abba Arsenius is not talking about the damage talking can do. He is in another place altogether.

Have you ever just stopped talking -- to others and in your head, to yourself -- long enough to hear the sounds around you? I love the early mornings in New York City, before the serious noise begins, because you can hear nature as well as the ever-present machine sounds. And out here in the country, around the monastery, you can easily go outside and be still and listen. That kind of listening, to the sounds of the world, is very restorative to me. I especially like the sound of the wind when it blows through the woods that surround the monastery, rustling the branches and leaves.

Abba Arsenius, surprisingly, is not especially positive about nature's sounds. I don't know many texts where the gentle sounds of sparrow songs and reeds in the wind are held up to criticism. This may be unique in the literary canon. So deep is the silence in which he dwells that even the gentlest, loveliest natural sounds are like nature's fingernails on God's blackboard to him. He wants complete silence -- from himself, from other people, from the world around him -- so that he can listen for God.

Perhaps this saying was remembered because it holds up an ideal to the monk, whose work it is to be quiet and listen. I was both shamed and thrilled when I read this word today. Ashamed because of how often I fail even rudimentarily, giving in to talk that is profitless, or worse. Ashamed because of the time and energy I waste in talk when I could be cultivating habits of silence. But thrilled to hear the goal set up once again before me. Thrilled because I know, after 35 years at this, that I really love silence and thrive in it. Thrilled to be reminded once again that others have trod the path of silence before me.

Because this silence, the silence Arsenius loves, is not a vast emptiness, a void, a negativity. It is attentive waiting for God, for love, for joy, for that moment when your heart swells with that intense word/feeling/knowledge/urgency which is the Word speaking to you. You can't summon it. It comes to you when it will. If you want it, you need to make yourself available for it.

I am certainly not yet ready to dismiss the sparrow's sweet song or the wind in the reeds. But what bliss it would be to reach that point where the silence is so profound and so meaningful and so God-filled that even their exquisite beauty is a distraction from the joy of listening for God.