March 13: On Talkativeness and Silence
♫ Music:
Day 17 - Friday, March 13
Rung #11: ON TALKATIVENESS & SILENCE
Scriptures: Proverbs 10:8; James 3:2-12; Psalm 141:3
The wise of heart will receive commands, But a babbling fool will be ruined.
For we all stumble in many ways. If anyone does not stumble in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to bridle the whole body as well. Now if we put the bits into the horses’ mouths so that they will obey us, we direct their entire body as well. Look at the ships also, though they are so great and are driven by strong winds, are still directed by a very small rudder wherever the inclination of the pilot desires. So also the tongue is a small part of the body, and yet it boasts of great things. See how great a forest is set aflame by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity; the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on fire by hell. For every species of beasts and birds, of reptiles and creatures of the sea, is tamed and has been tamed by the human race. But no one can tame the tongue; it is a restless evil and full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God; from the same mouth come both blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not to be this way. Does a fountain send out from the same opening both fresh and bitter water? Can a fig tree, my brethren, produce olives, or a vine produce figs? Nor can salt water produce fresh.
Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth; Keep watch over the door of my lips.
Poetry:
Laying the Fire
by Andrew Motion
I am downstairs early
looking for something to do
when I find my father on his knees
at the fireplace in the sitting-room
sweeping ash
from around and beneath the grate
with the soft brown hand-brush
he keeps especially for this.
Has he been here all night
waiting to catch me out?
So far as I can tell
I have done nothing wrong.
I think so again
when he calls my name
without turning round;
he must have seen me
with the eyes in the back of his head.
‘What’s the matter old boy?
Couldn’t sleep?’
His voice is kinder than I expect,
as though he knows
we have in common a sadness
I do not feel yet.
I skate towards him in my grey socks
over the polished boards of the sitting-room,
negotiating the rugs
with their patterns of almost-dragons.
He still does not turn round.
He is concentrating now
on arranging a stack of kindling
on crumpled newspaper in the fire basket,
pressing small lumps of coal
carefully between the sticks
as though he is decorating a cake.
Then he spurts a match,
and chucks it on any old how,
before spreading a fresh sheet of newspaper
over the whole mouth of the fireplace
to make the flames take hold.
Why this fresh sheet
does not also catch alight
I cannot think.
The flames are very close.
I can see them
and hear them raging
through yesterday’s cartoon of President Kennedy
and President Khrushchev
racing towards each other in their motorcars
both shouting
I’m sure he’s going to stop first!
But there’s no need to worry.
Everything
is just as my father wants it to be,
and in due time,
when the fire is burning nicely,
he whisks the newspaper clear,
folds it under his arm,
and picks up the dustpan
with the debris of the night before.
Has he just spoken to me again?
I do not think so. I
do not know.
I was thinking how neat he is.
I was asking myself:
will I be like this? How will I manage?
After that he chooses a log
from the wicker wood-basket
to balance on the coals,
and admires his handiwork.
When the time comes to follow him,
glide, glide over the polished floor,
he leads the way to the dustbins.
A breath of ash
pours continuously over his shoulder
from the pan he carries before him
like a man bearing a gift
in a picture of a man bearing a gift.
ON TALKATIVENESS AND SILENCE
Today, we learn from James that the tongue, “defiles the entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life.” While this assuredly refers to the sinful things we say, it may also indicate the danger of a noisy spiritual culture. So often, incessant talk about our attempts to be holy enables us to hide from our fears, wounds, and sins. Like Adam and Eve, we cower in the bushes, refusing to confess our sin and shame that we might walk in peace with God as we truly are. But it is not bushes that hide us—it is foolish speech.
Having convinced us of the danger of the tongue, James stops us short: “no one can tame the tongue,” he declares. “It is a restless evil and full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse men, who have been made in the likeness of God . . .”
In Le Silence, the subject guards “the door of [his] lips” with a gesture reminiscent of the sign for peace. His face is quiet; his attention is captivated by something within and without, everywhere and nowhere, utterly silent and holy. Here, peace is the silence that guards against foolish speech.
Peace is not something we can manufacture. It is also something more than security. We must open ourselves to receive it in prayer, for it is a gift. Peace quiets our souls with assurance that God does not condemn our sin or shame, but embraces us completely. When we accept this embrace, he draws us into the sanctifying silence of his peace.
It is early when the son comes downstairs in Motion’s poem. He is uncertain of his purpose, but present and willing. His posture is much like that of prayer. When he arrives in the living room, he is surprised to find his father already sweeping the hearth.
As he draws near to watch his father lay the fire, the son finds peace that burns through the day’s noise:
The flames are very close.
I can see them
and hear them raging through yesterday’s cartoon of President Kennedy
and President Khrushchev
racing towards each other in their motorcars
both shouting
I’m sure he’s going to stop first!
But there’s no need to worry.
Everything
is just as my father wants it to be . . .
The son never speaks in the poem. Comforted by his father’s sure, quiet presence, he is moved instead to silent contemplation. In these moments of attention, speech is not needed to facilitate intimacy:
Has he just spoken to me again?
I do not think so. I
do not know.
I was thinking how neat he is.
I was asking myself:
will I be like this? How will I manage?
In Lent, silence, prayer, and fasting move us toward similar contemplation of the Father. We fast and pray so we can break through talkativeness into the silence of God, and perceive that in us which is in a state of separation from him. Once this separation has been seen, we practice confession.
A true confession is a movement of the self toward God that shatters our talkative attempts to prove that we’re just fine, we’re good, even holy—Lord, we say, I am sinful and beset with sins. I cannot tame my tongue. Be with me, quiet me. Make me holy. Set a guard over my mouth, keep watch over the door of my lips . . .
May we practice silence and find, in it, that the Lord meets us with the grace and seal of his peace.
Prayers:
The Jesus Prayer:
Breathe in slowly as you silently pray, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the living God,” and out slowly as you pray, “have mercy on me, a sinner.” Repeat for 3 to 20 minutes at a time.
A Prayer for Quiet Confidence*
O God of peace, who hast taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength; By the might of thy Spirit lift us, we pray thee, to thy presence, where we may be still and know that thou art God; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
*Taken from the Family Prayers in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer
Alea Peister
Administrative Coordinator
Department of English
Alum 2017
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, poetry, and devotional writer selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
To learn more about the themes of this year’s Lent Project, please go to:
https://ccca.biola.edu/lent/2020/#day-feb-25
About the Art:
Silence
Odilon Redon
c.1911
Oil on prepared paper
54.6 cm x 54 cm
Lillie P. Bliss Collection
Museum of Modern Art, New York
This painting depicts Harpocrates, the ancient Greek god of silence, secrecy, and confidentiality who is commonly depicted touching his finger to his lips to indicate quiet. The muted palette and downcast gaze of the figure, encircled in what feels like a portal, create a profound sense of stillness, inward focus, and deep listening. "My drawings inspire, and are not defined. They place us, as does music, on the ambiguous realm of the undetermined," wrote Redon, a pioneer of Symbolist art that was connected to the poetry of Baudelaire and Edgar Allen Poe and to the music of Claude Debussy. He said: "I have placed a little door opening on to the mysterious."
About the Artist:
Odilon Redon (1840-1916) was a French Symbolist painter who, during the 1890s, responded to the Catholic revival that emerged in France during the previous decade. An acclaimed Symbolist Artist, Redon’s visionary works concern the world of dreams, fantasy, and the imagination. He first became famous for his noirs series, monochromatic compositions that exploit the expressive and suggestive powers of the color black. Redon devoted himself to painting and pastel drawing, developing a unique palette of “powdery and pungent hues.” His sensitive floral studies and portrait heads that appear to be dreaming or lost in deep reverie are hallmarks of his work. They reflect a silence that invites calm and serenity in the viewer. Redon's use of non-naturalistic color in his late pastels and oil paintings prefigure the later development of Expressionism and abstraction.
https://www.theartstory.org/artist/redon-odilon/
About the Music:
“Be Still - Instrumental” from the album Still, Volume I
Composer:
David J. Evans, arr. by Jonathan Ogden
Composer:
David J. Evans, arr. by Jonathan Ogden
David J. Evans, PhD. is an English composer and hymn-writer who wrote "Be Still For the Presence of the Lord" about which the BBC Songs of Praise website writes: ‘this contemporary worship song, written in the 1980’s ....has become one of the most widely used songs of the last 50 years." Indeed in 2013 Songs of Praise viewers voted it as their third favorite hymn of all time. ‘Be Still’ has also been sung in churches all over the world and translated into many languages. Evans currently works as a piano teacher, both privately and at King Edward VI School in Southampton, England.
https://drdavidevans.co.uk
Performers:
Rivers and Robots (Jonathan Ogden)
Jonathan Ogden is a musician, designer, and producer from Manchester, UK. Starting out with a bedroom-recording project in 2010, he began to write and release albums as Rivers and Robots, while working full-time as a graphic designer. The project went on to become a 4-piece band in 2012, with the release of the first band album, All Things New. In 2016 he released a short EP of acoustic songs based on the psalms under his own name, called By The Streams. The following year he went on a more experimental journey with The Seasons Project: a series of four EPs based on the four seasons, each one exploring a different genre of music but keeping the core themes consistent throughout. Most recently he worked on a beat-tape called Twenty Four - another experimental project featuring 24 tracks based on the 24 hours in a day. He is passionate about telling stories through music and visual art, especially working with the combination of the two. Jonathan continues to record and tour with his band Rivers & Robots, release homemade tracks under his own name, and work as a freelance graphic designer.
https://www.jonathanogden.co.uk/
About the Poet:
Sir Andrew Motion (b. 1952) is an English poet, novelist, and biographer, who was Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom from 1999 to 2009. During the period of his laureateship, Motion founded the Poetry Archive (https://poetryarchive.org/), an online resource of poems and audio recordings of poets reading their own work. He studied at Oxford University, where he worked with poet W.H. Auden while researching the poetry of Welsh poet Edward Thomas. Motion has served as editor for the Poetry Review and as editorial director/poetry editor for Chatto & Windus. Motion’s early collections of poetry include The Pleasure Steamers; Dangerous Play: Poems 1974–1984 for which received a John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and Natural Causes for which won a Dylan Thomas Prize. Known for narrative poems that often refer to historical events, Motion’s poetry manages clarity of expression while also exploring turbulent or unresolved issues. Motion’s later collections include Coming in to Land: Selected Poems 1975-2015, The Customs House, The Cinder Path, The Mower: New & Selected Poems, and Public Property. In 2015, he moved to Baltimore, Maryland, to become the Homewood Professor of the Arts at Johns Hopkins University.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/andrew-motion
About the Devotion Writer:
Alea Peister
Administrative Coordinator
Department of English
Biola University
Alea Peister is a 2017 alumna of Biola English and the Torrey Honors Institute. When she is not administratively coordinating Biola’s English Department, she leads the small youth group at her Anglican church, seeks out good coffee with friends, and likes to read. She also writes poetry (which she shares on Instagram at @a.marie.and.poetry), tries to keep her houseplants alive, and hopes one day to undertake graduate studies in poetry, theology, or both.