On silence (again)

  • Well, since the quote from yes­ter­day opted to show up as a post and not just go straight into “A Word” on the right col­umn (oh goody! Another thing I don’t under­stand about how to work my own blog!), I’ll take the oppor­tu­nity to fill in a lit­tle bit more.

    Here’s the entire quote, which I knew would’ve been to long to fit into “A Word”s strin­gent requirement:

    A man may seem to be silent, but if he con­demns oth­ers in his heart he is bab­bling cease­lessly. But there may be another per­son who talks from morn­ing until night, and yet he is truly silent; that is, he says noth­ing that is not prof­itable.
    – Poe­men the Shepherd

    There are many words from wise Ortho­dox sources about keep­ing silence, but this is the only one I’ve ever heard that added on that ele­ment of prof­itabil­ity of silence or of speech.

    I talk too much. I hear it much too often to deny that it’s true. And I work at fix­ing it — I really do, in spite of lapses.

    But the prob­lem with try­ing to fix it is that I’ve never met any good role mod­els. I have seen peo­ple at work and church who hardly utter a word. No mat­ter what’s going on around them — ani­mated chat­ter, idle gos­sip, light con­ver­sa­tion, exchanged wit­ti­cisms, low-level bab­bling — they are close to silent. At their desk, in meet­ings, at cof­fee hour, they have nearly noth­ing to say. I have wanted to con­sider them my men­tors and learn from them, think­ing them at peace. But then at some point they open their mouth and destroy the illu­sion. They turn out to be silent not because they are in a state of humil­ity, but because, as Poe­men says, they are “con­demn­ing in their heart.” It turns out that they’re stew­ing over things, and the result when they do give voice is much worse for the fact that they were fes­ter­ing away in silence. I always want to tell those peo­ple to speak their mind much more often, if only so they can get real­ity checks on a more reg­u­lar basis. There’s a lot of lunacy that each one of us can cook up if we never let it see the light of day.

    So I no longer think of the goal as silence for the sake of silence. The goal is prof­itable speech, and if there isn’t any prof­itable speech to be had, then be silent. Appar­ently, keep­ing silent isn’t always the same as hold­ing your peace.

    I sup­pose the test is roughly the same as my test for fast­ing strict­ness (if you are refrain­ing from all kinds of foods and yet couldn’t stand to see a brother or sis­ter eat­ing them, then you’ve gone into Phar­iseeism and you’re bet­ter off hav­ing a cheese­burger). Namely, if you can keep silence and be at peace with oth­ers that don’t, then you’re com­ing closer to the Spirit of God. If not, for God’s sake, say some­thing and spare your­self the delu­sion of your own holiness.


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    September 29th, 2005 | Grace | 1 Comment |

One Response and Counting...

  • Gretchen­Joanna 09.29.2005

    I’ve never heard this phe­nom­e­non dis­cussed so help­fully, by your quote and your own comments…I think about this a lot, because I am one of the often quiet ones — out­wardly — and as you note, often stew­ing inside. I have an introvert’s nature, a gift I have wasted, in a way, by fret­ting about var­i­ous things in my heart, so that indeed, what I feel is the bab­bling. I will save and think on — hope­fully pray on — this quote!

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