“When the door of the steam bath is continually left open, the heat inside rapidly escalates through it; likewise the soul, in its desire to say many things, dissipates its remembrance of God through the door of speech, even though everything it says may be good. Thereafter the intellect, though lacking appropriate ideas, pours out a welter of confused thoughts to anyone it meets, as it no longer has the Holy Spirit to keep its understanding free from fantasy. Ideas of value always shun verbosity, being foreign to confusion and fantasy. Timely silence, then, is precious, for it is nothing less that the mother of the wisest thoughts.”
Those are the words of Diadochus of Photiki, one of the Church’s “Desert Fathers” of the fourth and fifth centuries, CE. Henri Nouwen quotes them in his little book, “The Way of the Heart: Desert Spirituality and Contemporary Ministry” (1981).
I recently came upon them and was startled to read them. Nouwen was concerned about the over-abundance of words in his world…in 1981! It is difficult to fathom his level of concern if he were alive in today.
As a retired preacher and amateur writer/author, words are my business. So I am mightily tempted to comment upon Diadochus, which would no doubt do little more than demonstrate that I had missed his point.
No comments:
Post a Comment