Paul's deep gift of silence is reflected in a story about one of the great Desert Fathers. A bishop from Alexandria traveled out to the desert to receive wisdom from the great Desert Father, Abbot Pambo. When Pambo's spiritual brothers heard about the bishop's visit, they urged him to share some wise words. He replied "if he is not edified by my silence, there is no hope that he will be edified by my words."55
Paul was the closest I am ever likely to come to knowing a person like the Desert Fathers and Mothers.
In the last chapter I wrote that when I was going through my time of trial, I was strengthened by the realization that my life was hidden in Christ. The experience of being safe in another person's silence allows the self that is hidden in Christ, like a bunny in the bushes, to slowly, tentatively emerge so it can be seen and known. A lover of silence not only shows to the world the image of God in herself but also creates the possibility for those around her to reveal their image too.
One practice for this eleventh step, then, is to seek people who know how to hold others in loving silence. The quality of silence that heals us and builds us up is better caught than taught. It is like music. There is only so much we can know of music by reading words on a page. To understand the power of sound we must experience it live. The same is true of good silence.
We are probably more familiar with the ways silence excludes and hurts than with the ways silence heals and strengthens. We fear being given the "silent treatment." Yet in the hands of a master like Paul, a treatment of silence is often just the right course for us to follow if our desire is to express truth and genuine love to others. Surveys have shown that only three things have consistently been able to raise people's level of happiness: drugs, meditation, and extended therapy. Therapy is, at its core, nothing other than two people having a conversation where one person is markedly less anxious than the other. By returning to our homeland of silence, anxiety melts away. In step eleven, we are not only healed but also can become healers of others, whom we invite to be safe in our silence.
As an example, consider my friend Carolyn, a leader at St. Paul's. If Paul was my teacher in silence, Carolyn has become my partner in silence. She is the chief financial officer for a large fund that supports non-profits, and she is nearing retirement. She has been on a serious spiritual quest for most of her life but only found her way to church in the last decade. She returned after reading a book called Living Buddha, Living Christ by the Buddhist wise man, Thich Nhat Hanh, who teaches that if you yearn for spiritual depth, you must return to the religion in which you grew up and dedicate yourself to it. Carolyn followed that advice and found St. Paul's. Within a year of arriving at our church, her oldest daughter received a diagnosis of virulent cancer, and within weeks, she was dead. The people of St. Paul's held Carolyn and her family in love and prayer and helped her through the horrifying process of losing a child.
Carolyn has told me that the last stage of her life is going to be primarily spiritual. There are at least two connected ways she expresses her desire to grow; she prays and she serves. First, building on her experience of exploring Buddhism and the discipline of meditation, she practices Centering Prayer and so has the capacity, in almost all circumstances, to be calm, attentive, and truthful. Second, she has joined me in helping to host a group of teenage moms and their children every week at our church. We share a love of order. The lives of these moms are often chaotic and uncertain. What we offer on our Friday afternoons is regularity, reliability, and some support for them when life goes seriously awry.
Carolyn and I believe that we do our best work when we faithfully show up as attentive, non-anxious people. The moms and their children have slowly learned to love and trust us just as we have learned to love and trust them. Now, if they happen to see one of us at the shopping mall, they run up to us and embrace us. One of the most important developments in our relationship happened one week when Carolyn, on an impulse, invited the moms to a moment of silence. She knew that I always have my cell phone with me and that one of my favorite apps is a meditation timer. I set the timer for whatever length of time seems appropriate. I hit start and then 30 seconds later it chimes. Some minutes after that, it chimes a second time to indicate that the time of silence has come to a close. She asked me to set the timer for a minute.
The effect was surprising and profound. The moms, who so often were distracted and disruptive, embraced the silence. They were still and quiet. Even more, the conversation that followed about the importance of the habit of reading to your children was the most mature, honest, and productive we had had up until that point. Since that week, a moment or two of silence has become a regular part of our ritual. Often, it is the moms themselves who request the time. Carolyn and I, together, by simply being who we are and by showing up faithfully, are able to share a deep and simple connection with these teen moms. Carolyn's desire for spiritual growth has borne fruit not just in her own life, but in the lives of these teen moms. We are all safe together in our shared silence.
Step Twelve:
Being Vigilant
always manifests humility in his bearing
no less than in his heart...
— THE RULE OF SAINT BENEDICT, 7:62
If we go to a department store, we can be certain that we are being watched. Most likely, the cameras trained on us are there for security. However, there are also organizations that record and observe our behavior in order to help the store sell more products. One thing these organizations have discovered is that when we enter a store, we tend to look down and to the right. They've also found that if we touch something, we are more likely to buy it. So, corporate stores have learned to put the things they most want to sell at waist level and slightly to the right when we first walk into a store. The objects are arranged so that we are likely to first touch and then buy them. The habits of our eyes lead directly to our behavior.
In the last three steps, we have been attending to our ears and our mouths. Now, in this final step, we shift attention to attention to our eyes. In his eleventh-century book on the Twelve Steps of Humility, Bernard of Clairvaux claimed to know little of humility but much about pride, so he presents the steps in reverse order, starting with number twelve. This step, for Bernard, is the last one before paradise and so in it we experience the very moment of the Fall, when Adam and Eve first saw the fruit and wondered. Curiosity, beginning with the eyes, was the beginning of pride and the fall.
Benedict and Bernard are both extraordinarily rigorous in their stewardship of the eyes. Benedict writes that whether a monk "sits, walks or stands, his head must be lowered and his eyes cast down."56 Bernard characteristically looks to scripture and writes that there are only two reasons we should ever look up. One is to follow Psalm 121 where David looks to the hills for help, and the other is to follow Jesus who, in the sixth chapter of John's Gospel, looks up to the approaching crowd so that he can help them. Bernard writes, "The one did it in wretchedness, the other in mercy. Both acted blamelessly."57
Most of us can't be quite so rigorous. I don't know how we would drive a car or shop for food if we never looked up. Nonetheless, as with silence, we can make the beginnings of a practice. Solely on the advice of these ancient monks, I've begun trying to look to the ground more frequently. It runs against much of what I have been taught, which is to have good posture and hold my head up high. I began with brief experiments. There's a great coffee shop about two blocks from my office, and it was often my custom to take a mid-morning break to get a cup. I began my practice by trying to keep my eyes fixed on the ground for the duration of the walk there. I found it hard to do. If I didn't pay attention, my eyes would soon be up and wandering, looking at people and at whatever.
But slowly—and it has taken years—it has become more natural. More recently, I've gotten in the habit of walking to work, which takes about half an hour. I find that I naturally want to look at the ground and have lost my feeling of self-consciousness about my appearance. The benefit is that I feel lik
e I am able to preserve a sort of gentle attentiveness to God's presence. "Where will you go when you leave yourself, O Curious one?" writes Bernard.58
If I am in this zone, there is a repetitive prayer I can naturally slip into. Ordinarily, I have a prayer rope, which is a bracelet-sized loop of knots with one wooden bead. My custom is to say the Jesus Prayer for each knot and the Lord's Prayer for the bead. Standard stuff.
More recently, I discovered a prayer out of the English tradition. It is from a writer named Walter Hilton who was a contemporary of both Julian of Norwich and the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing. Hilton is less well-known than either of them but I have found him more useful. He asks that his readers imagine they are on the way to Jerusalem, which is their happy home. They can expect temptations, rough landscapes, and bandits along the way. However, they are to keep saying one thing in their hearts: "I am nothing, I have nothing, I desire one thing." In this way, the pilgrim will rapidly come to Jerusalem.59
For myself, I can only say these words if I have been led to a place of depth, stillness, and attention. They are too intense to be used lightly or when I am distracted with other things. If I am feeling insecure and uncertain, they sound in my mind's ear too much like sinful self-loathing. But when the times and conditions are right, the words emerge clear and strong. They hold my attention and increase in me an unselfconscious desire for God. They give me permission to release desire for or attention to anything else, focusing instead on the one thing needful. It is a taste of heaven.
The first step and the last are similar. Step one is keeping watch and step twelve is being vigilant. In both, we are called to be attentive to the truth that is before us. The difference is the depth of the truth we are able to perceive and embrace. In step one, we are beginning to allow an awareness of God to slowly seep into our lives by being serious and attentive, not flippant and withdrawn. By step twelve, the habit of attentiveness has become so ingrained that without effort and by grace we know and embrace the eternal truth of God's love, justice, mercy, and forgiveness. The journey has come full circle.
CHAPTER 7
Face to Face
At the end of the process of restoring The Last Supper, Barcilon optimistically wrote that "in many cases, the cleaning recaptured the volume and expressive intensity of the figures, believed to be irretrievably lost."60 Furthermore, "the faces, burdened with grotesque features from so many restorations, again manifest a genuine expressiveness... now the faces of the apostles seem to genuinely participate in the drama of the moment, and evoke the gamut of emotional responses intended by Leonardo to Christ's revelation"61 that one of them would betray him. On my visit, I was anxious to see if Barcilon's optimism held true for me.
As soon as I emerged from the second of the sealed chambers and into the refectory, I was struck with an intensely physical response to the figures in the painting. They were movingly and recognizably human. Their faces each registered profoundly felt emotions. These faces weren't at all like the remote faces of a Byzantine icon. In the room, they loomed like recognizable human figures capable of containing divine blessing and, in the case of Judas, hellish curse. They were ordinary people and yet, at the same time, in their dignity and in the intensity and clarity of their emotions, great human souls.
To my eyes, the restoration had freed the painting to be itself with all of the dramatic force that was still possible. With some charitable imagination, well formed from my hours of study and reflection, I could imagine what the painting must have been like originally. We will never see that painting. But what we can see is enough. For all its flaws, the painting is still a masterpiece. The twenty-two years of labor released the painting to once again be itself.
When I was standing in the room, which was originally a dining hall, it became clear to me that the painting offered a great spiritual lesson. I saw that Jesus, in his serene and sad expression and the perfect triangle of his gestures, anchors not just the field of the painting but the entire long space of the refectory. Standing there, I felt myself drawn into the drama, as though I were at the table with him. As I gazed, it was impossible to feel like an innocent bystander. I am a part of this story.
All of us who are baptized in Christ are invited to be a part of God's story. Further, when we share communion, we are invited to imagine that we, in a mysterious way, are at the table with Jesus. From God's eternal perspective, the Last Supper is a meal that has never ended. Even from a worldly perspective, it never has. Since the day that Jesus instituted the Eucharistic feast, not a week has gone by without some community, somewhere, breaking bread in his name. Now, with billions of Christians, we can be certain that in every moment of our lives people somewhere in the world are being given bread and wine with the assurance they are receiving the body and blood of Jesus.
In my tradition of The Episcopal Church, we are invited to say a prayer together after everyone in the community has had communion. We say, in part, "Send us now into the world in peace, and grant us strength and courage to love and serve you with gladness and singleness of heart" (The Book of Common Prayer, p. 365). Here, at the end of our journey, we can stop and reflect upon how Benedict's Twelve Steps of Humility can help us take our place in God's story and to do our work with gladness and singleness of heart.
We are human beings who are active in the world, always changing things and being changed. We are not paintings. We are truthfully even more beautiful and dignified than The Mona Lisa or the figures of The Last Supper, even when the paintings were new. As great an artist as Leonardo was, God is still greater.
We were created by God as dynamic beings and so our true image and likeness is revealed as we act. More precisely, the image of God is found in us human beings when we quietly follow the unique call that God has for us—not just in the long arc of our lives, but in the small moments and encounters that fill our days. A mature follower of Jesus is always alert and obedient to God's call in every moment. We are part of an unfolding story, and God, in God's mercy and generosity, has chosen to include us. We are not the authors; God is. Humility is precisely the virtue that allows each of us to take our assigned place in God's redemption of the whole world.
One of the most poignant stories in scripture is the account of the rich young man who comes up to Jesus, kneels before him, and asks what he must do to inherit eternal life. Jesus recites many of the Ten Commandments, which the young man claims to have followed. Mark's version continues:
Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, 'You lack one thing; go, sell what you own and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come follow me.' When he heard this he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions (Mark 10:21-22).
The rich young man received a call from God that was clearer than what most of us are likely to receive. Jesus looked him in the eyes, loved him, and invited him to follow. As far as we know, he did not. I wonder what would have happened if he had? Jesus promises that if we follow him, we will receive abundant life (John 10:10). So if the young man had listened to the call and obeyed, we can be certain he would have received gifts greater than all the pleasure and security given by his possessions.
One who has climbed the twelve steps of humility is unencumbered by fear or reluctance and so is radically available to the call of the present moment. She is impervious to the seductions of fame, power, and dominance. Humility enables her to say, with total freedom, "Here I am, send me." When Jesus looks her in the eye, loves her, and says, "Follow me," she goes.
The half-joking wisdom of the Benedictine tradition is that young monks are fervent but not holy, old monks are holy but not fervent, and middle-aged monks are neither holy nor fervent. A person who has climbed these twelve steps of humility, for whom the image and likeness of God are apparent to the world, is both fervent and holy. They are fervent because they are passionately pursuing the thing that God created them to do. They are holy because they are ever mindful of the peace that passes all
understanding and have learned the art of praying without ceasing.
So much of this work of climbing the Steps of Humility depends on faith. We live in a culture with so many voices competing for our attention that it is easy to rest in beliefs that are pragmatic, commercial, sentimental, and agnostic toward any claims of ultimate truth with a capital T. But we are free to choose a better way.
Benedict left words on a page almost 1500 years ago to help those he lived with choose the better way each day of their lives. His words survive because generations of men and women have found that by inwardly digesting the words and images of his Rule, in particular these Twelve Steps, their faith was deepened, their hope strengthened, and their love expanded. Many thousands of men and women through the centuries have verified with their lives that these Twelve Steps work to produce mature followers of Jesus. Benedict's promise in the prologue was true. By following his simple Rule for beginners, hearts overflow with love. By taking these steps seriously ourselves and making them our own, we aren't joining a spiritual elite but a large band of spiritual pilgrims dedicated to devoting their lives to God and the service of others.
God is love, and followers of these Twelve Steps understand that the steps are nothing less than a School of Love. John teaches that perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). So does perfect humility. By faithfully following this way of humility, we draw closer to God and so learn to love God, neighbor, and self. In this life, neither our love nor our humility will ever be perfect. But by faith and hope, we can continue on this reliable path toward a love greater than any we have ever asked for or imagined. Now we see in a mirror dimly. Then, we will see face to face.
The Restoration Project Page 11