Consider the silence of a living tree; it neither speaks nor hears.Out of the uncounted aeons, inexorable, ever-changing forces have erected it, to a purpose beyond our understanding.It needs no words, yet its presence is no less actual than ours.
Consider the value of silence in community.Our ability to listen should be our gift to those around us.Too much talk is a sign of self-centeredness and insecurity.
If you hear yourself talking excessively, take care.
from "The Rule of Saint Benedict"
interpreted by John McQuiston III in
Always We Begin Again
Wednesday, June 23, 2004
The sound of silence.
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3 comments:
Q-
Glad to see the comment. I am at camps this summer. (I am the volunteer coordinator here which means that last night I went to bed at three am.) Mycurrent plan is to take a few classes at Harding over the next year or so. I just finished my MA at ACU and will be working in Kansas with a college ministry there but want to be working on an MDiv. (What woman? MDiv?). The only blog that I don't directly have mutual links to is my ministry blog that I use to update my ministry supporters. (I enjoy the freedom to say different things that do not need to be directly linked to those that sponsor me).
I discovered your blog a week ago and have enjoyed it very much. Here is a poem I discovered many years ago while on a mission trip to Germany when I was a Harding student.
Steve A.
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TREES
Hermann Hesse
Trees have always been the most effective preachers for me. I revere them when they live in nations and families, in forests and groves. And I revere them even more when they stand singly. They are like solitaries. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, isolated men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. The world murmurs in their tops, their roots rest in the infinite; however, they do not lose themselves in it but, with all the energy of their lives, aspire to only one thing: to fulfill their own innate law, to enlarge their own form, to represent themselves.
Nothing is more sacred, nothing is more exemplary than a beautiful, strong tree. When a tree has been sawed off and shows its naked mortal wound to the sun, one can read its whole history on the bright disc of its stump and tombstone; in its annual rings and cicatrizations are faithfully recorded all struggle, all suffering, all sickness, all fortune and prosperity, meager years and luxuriant years, attacks withstood, storms survived. And every farm boy knows that the hardest and noblest wood has the narrowest rings, that, high in the mountains and in ever-present danger, the most indestructible, most powerful, most exemplary tree trunks grow.
Trees are santuaries. He who knows how to speak to them, to listen to them, learns the truth. They do not preach doctrines and recipes, they preach the basic law of life, heedless of details.
A tree speaks: In me is hidden a core, a spark, a thought, I am life of eternal life. The experiment and throw (of the dice) that the eternal mother ventured on me is unique, unique is my shape and the system of veins in my skin, unique are the slightest play of foliage at my top and the smallest scar in my bark. It is my office to shape and show the Eternal in the distinctively unique.
A tree speaks: My strength is trust. I know nothing of my fathers, I know nothing of the thousand children which come out of me every year. I live the mystery of my seed to the end, nothing else is my concern. I trust that God is within me. I trust that my task is sacred. In this trust I live.
When we are sad and can no longer endure life well, a tree can speak to us: Be calm! Look at me! Life is not easy, life is hard. These are childish thoughts. Let God talk within you and they will grow silent. You are anxious because your road leads you away from your mother and your home. But every step and day lead you anew to your mother. Home is neither here nor there. Home is inside you or nowhere.*
A yearning to wander tears at my heart when I hear trees rustling in the wind in the evening. If one listens quietly and long, the wanderlust too shows its core and meaning. It is not a wish to run away from suffering, as it seemed. It is a yearning for home, for the memory of one’s mother, for new symbols of life. It leads homeward. Every road leads homeward, every step is birth, every step is death, every grave is the mother.
Thus the tree rustles in the evening when we are afraid of our own childish thoughts. Trees have long thoughts, long in breath and calm, as they have a longer life than we. They are wiser than we, as long as we do not listen to them. But when we have learned to listen to trees, the very brevity and swiftness and childish haste of our thoughts acquire an incomparable joy. He who has learned to listen to trees no longer desires to be a tree. He does not desire to be anything but that which he is. That is home. That is happiness.
From First German Reader edited by Harry Steinhauer, Bantam Books, pp. 12-17, 1964. In that book acknowledgment is made to Suhrkamp Verlag and Miss Joan Daves for “Baume” (Trees) from Wanderung by Hermann Hesse, Copyright 1963 by SuhrkampVerlag, Berlin.
Steve:
I really like that. I enjoy Hess, normally, but I hadn't come across that before. Thanks for posting it.
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