Taciturnitas rules – 9 November 2012

Silence is not always a good thing.  As the writer in the Book of Ecclesiastes knew, there is a time to speak and a time to be silent.  When St Benedict taught his brothers about restraint of speech he did not use the Latin word silentium, which means silence, but taciturnitas, a much richer word, and it has more to do with restraint, and thoughtfulness.  This is a silence which somehow begins to be planted within us, as we practise the contemplative disciplines week by week and year by year.  I think this is usually a surprise to us -- we begin to realize that these days we are preferring restraint and thoughtfulness, to noise and chatter.  They are not mutually exclusive – but Benedict’s brothers and sisters very soon found that in noise and chatter they seldom actually heard anything accurately, let alone understood.  Inner silence is certainly the way to hear things.

So taciturnitas is also about attention and mindfulness.  In the community of Jesus’s disciples it is vital that we know how to listen.  Martha’s busyness was commendable and indeed valuable – they all had to eat.  But Jesus still said that Mary had chosen the “better part”.  What Benedict requires in his Rule is that there must be a balance.  His brothers and sisters are equally acquainted with prayer and work – and taciturnitas rules over all.  This is what he calls restraint of speech, not prohibition of speech.

I do find myself recoiling from the noise and compulsory joy that signals much contemporary worship.  On Sunday mornings a very energetic (and assuredly very admirable) church occupies the hall right next to the Mahurangi East Public Library.  For a start, everything in their worship evidently needs to be greatly amplified with microphones and much electronics.  In our culture you can’t speak to an audience except through a hand-held microphone up under your nose.  Perhaps they are all slightly deaf – perhaps I can suggest why.  What I do know is the effect on the pagans next door in the library.  They are unlikely to rush off to church.  Then, there slowly crept upon my awareness that we now have some phenomenon called Messy Church.  I think it was invented in the Church of England, where of course it would have been civilized, decent and in order.  But now it seems to be a form of worship in which everyone is talking simultaneously, with heavy admixtures of food and drink.  We are a long way from the Gregorian Chant here.  I do not understand it, so it’s wrong to be critical.  But I do wonder if God really does get worshipped, or whether it’s more another mode of occupational therapy.  Samuel in the Hebrew scriptures, as a boy in the temple, said, “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.” We have to take care that our prayer hasn’t become “Listen, Lord, for your servant is speaking.”

I am sorry if I have gone too far about this, but in our silence here this morning we are turning off the sheer racket of our culture, and what goes on in many homes and churches.  Perhaps next week we can say a bit more about the content of taciturnitas, about its richness and texture in our lives.