Shutting Up in Burlap in 2016

Sunday morning at our "Faith Formation Class" (a.k.a. Sunday school with a less boring title) we were studying James 3. It's one of the most searing passages of all of Scripture, talking about the destructive and deceitful nature of our tongues. Consider this:

...no one can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God's likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.

Ouch. I have absolutely no idea what he's talking about here, but I'm sure some of you might.

Last week I finished Henri Nouwen's book The Genesee Diary. Nouwen spent seven months on sabbatical at a Trappist monastery from his teaching post. The book is a diary of his experience. It has been extremely helpful for me--especially last week as I read about his last month and the "P.S." that he wrote six months afterwards about his re-entry into normal life.

The Trappists are famous for having a fairly strict rule of silence--particularly on the grounds of the monastery. They mostly use sign language to communicate. If they must speak they often will retreat to a room away from common areas in order to maintain the general quiet of the place.

Nouwen says that the rule of silence had a couple of profound affects on him:

1. He realized how much he used words to manipulate the people around him into liking him. Words were his key tool for enduring himself to people, for building himself up and getting people to appreciate him.

2. But it wasn't just his own silence that was disorienting for him. The people around him were neither critical nor approving of him. He couldn't find his place in the pecking order. He was left stranded by the lack of feedback from the people around him--exposing another (unhealthy) prop in his emotional and relational world.

All of this had the effect of leaving him to deal with the people around him and with the Lord as he really was. He was just a person, along with everyone else--naked, exposed, without his primary tool for advancing himself or navigating his way into privileged or affirmed places.

Since I am, after all, a flaming extroverted people-pleasing external (verbal and written) processor, this whole idea of living a life of silence scares me to death. I wonder if I could do it for longer than a couple days without spontaneously combusting.

But I also wonder if the experience (of silence, not spontaneous combustion) might ultimately bring some much-needed freedom and life and joy.

Next sabbatical, 2016: get me to a monastery. I hope that the burlap doesn't itch too much.