“STFU!”
†
When asked about the secret of her happiness, one Benedictine sister said her “serenity came when she realized she didn’t have to have an opinion on everything” (Sutera, 89).
I’m not sure how she managed that, this wise old nun, but I’m impressed, and a bit envious. Aren’t we humans hard-wired to have opinions? To make judgments about and between things trivial and serious?
I prefer pie to cake, coffee to tea, beer to wine, peace to war, compassion to coldness, love to hate.
Don’t you want to listen to me tell you, in exacting detail, exactly why? My opinions, after all – because they’re mine – are worth sharing with the world.
Perhaps what the sister meant was that she didn’t have to give voice to every opinion she had. To chime in on every conversation and every controversy. There is serenity to be found in occasionally sitting back; keeping one’s own counsel; and being freed from the exhausting work of speaking one’s mind, in every situation, because everybody else does.
There is, the ancient teacher wrote in the Book of Ecclesiastes, “a time to speak, and a time to keep silence” (3:7b).
Our Benedictine sister took this wisdom to heart and found peace.
How might the selective sharing of our opinions help to fulfill the mission of the Church, which, our catechism teaches, “is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” (BCP 855)?
Restoring unity suggests that unity does not exist, or that unity is at least incomplete, fragmentary, a work-in-progress. Jefferson might have called this a self-evident truth.
Look around you. We are a people fractured and broken. A Mister Potato-Head doll with lips on the side of the head and a mustache for a hat.
God, of course, didn’t assemble us this way. We came out of the box very good, our noses and eyebrows and feet in all the right places. Then sin entered the world.
“You can do as well as God,” the serpent – who never could keep an opinion to himself – hissed. “Give it a try.”
And just like that, Mister and Missus Potato-Head found they needed a bit of flora with which to accessorize: fig leaves.
One facial feature that hasn’t shifted from its original spot is the tongue – an “untamed, restless evil, full of deadly poison,” our Lord’s brother Saint James wrote (3:8). The tongue is an “arsonist’s match that sets forests on fire” (3:5b-6).
The tongue, this “iniquitous member,” blesses when inspired by God, and curses when it listens to the devil.
And the people whose tongues wag by voicing every thought and every opinion? Odds are that they’ll curse as much as they bless. Maybe more.
Most of us, our wise Benedictine sister knew, are as charmed by the sounds of our own voices as Satan is of his.
This nun faced the same temptation, but she found God’s grace, and the grit inside of her, to master the adversary.
We humans are hard-wired to have opinions, to make judgements. The first Potato-Heads were entrusted by their Maker to evaluate the trees of the garden and to weigh the words of the serpent.
In terms of natural selection and evolution, we learned the hard way the harm that comes after the snake’s rattle, and the tummy-rattle that surprises us after eating forbidden fruit.
This evaluative capacity God gives us, this free will, goes beyond that of every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature – for these, too, know how to avoid predators and bad food.
Free will and the tongue are God’s gifts to humanity. All creatures of our God and King bless the Lord and Father simply by being what they are created to be. Humans have the added laudatory capacity to think up prayers and praises, and to speak and sing them.
With our tongues, we – led by Christ and guided by the Holy Spirit – we can restore all people to unity. It is our mission, after all. God wouldn’t assign us an impossible task. God doesn’t want us to fail. God wishes for us life, and life abundant.
I think our serene Benedictine sister, in her judicious use of silence, has this much figured out.
How about the rest of us – you and me?
How will we build up the good and subvert the bad? How will we bless, and not curse, by restraining our tongues? How will we find the serenity we seek – say between now and, oh, I don’t know, Inauguration Day 2025 – as tensions get higher and tempers shorter?
I’ll give the last word to Saint Thomas à Kempis, who wrote before the invention of the printing press, much less television and Twitter and Tik Tok. His Imitation of Christ is second only to the Bible in copies produced. Here’s what he wrote, early in his masterpiece – I hope it helps you as it helps me:
“We should not believe every word or impulse, but we should carefully and patiently examine whether they are in accordance with the will of God. Human nature is so weak that evil, rather than good, is more often believed and spoken about others. But the wise do not willingly believe every tale that is told, for they know that people love gossip and that words can be careless.
“It is much better to avoid being precipitate in our actions, or clinging strongly to our own opinions. We should not believe all that we hear, nor gossip about what we hear of others. Listen to wise and sensible advice and be guided by someone who is better than you, rather than following your own opinions. Experienced people understand what they are talking about. The more humble and pleasing we are to God, the more we are at peace in all that we are doing” (I.iv).
†
Fr. Daniel S.J. Scheid, SCP
17th after Pentecost, Proper 19: September 15, 2024
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, San Francisco
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