The Violence of Words

February 13, 2002

Hello everyone,

I mentioned in a previous issue that, at least for the time, I was being called to a life of celibacy, or as some have defined it, “the greater gift.” I mentioned that I often experienced loneliness and that I, like everyone else, often feel a longing for (female) companionship. I also mentioned that there were certain things about the celibate lifestyle that I felt reluctant to give up. Today I wish to take a look at what a few of those things are, things that many people—especially contemporary Americans—will find somewhat unusual, just as they puzzle over thinking of celibacy as being “the greater gift”: how could celibacy, of all things, possibly be the greater gift, or for that matter, even a gift at all?

I suppose I could answer most succinctly that this lifestyle enables one to live a life of unprecedented simplicity, to a degree that those who are involved in relationships cannot. But many of the aspects of simplicity and other factors I will endeavor to describe today do not seem so appealing to many, particularly with the American ideal of capitalism and instant gratification. I will let the words of Richard J. Foster, an author we will be hearing much from today and Friday, set the stage for the American climate. He writes in Freedom of Simplicity:

The idea of unlimited growth and expansion is deeply imbedded in the American psyche. William Ophuls says, “Growth is the secular religion of American society.” For us, expansion is always desirable, more is always good, bigger is always better. It pervades all of our thought from our view of the gross national product to the size of our homes.

Economically, the concept of expansion as necessarily desirable has its roots in the philosophic work of Adam Smith and especially his Wealth of Nations, published in 1776. For Smith, the purpose of economics was a constantly expanding market, hence anything that would stimulate growth was welcome. In effect, this removed any notion of ethics or morality from economics and replaced it with the concept of an “invisible hand,” which would guarantee that the good of the whole was insured if all people would pursue their own self-interest. In Christian theology, of course, the only “invisible hand” is God’s, and once we grasp it we discover that it leads away from self-interest to justice and compassion for the poor and oppressed.

The expansionist economy that has grown out of this foundation has four crucial assumptions about the world. First, it is assumed that the pursuit of self-interest will necessarily lead to ultimate social good. Purpose and values should be defined in terms of economic growth. Second, there is hardly any limit to nature’s generosity. If the economic balloon is to get bigger and bigger, the good earth must constantly yield the needed amounts of new wealth for expansion to continue. Third, the pursuit of economic self-interest of necessity places a higher priority upon those who are alive than it does on generations yet to be born. Besides, if by its very nature economic expansion is good, then future generations will benefit from our continued growth. Fourth, since constant economic expansion is by definition good, then any negative side effect is a mere externality. Massive industrial pollution is only an unhappy side effect; it does not call into question the economic theory itself.

The effect of all this has been to define success in terms of an ever increasing gross national product and to react negatively to anything that would retard growth. It has also predisposed us to look favorably upon any growth producing incentive. For example, planned obsolescence has become a way of life in American society, because we have found that it produces economic growth. We are a throw-away culture. Industrial designer Brooks Stevens says, “Our whole economy is based on planned obsolescence.”

Vance Packard’s The Waste Makers makes it indisputably clear that deliberate and calculated waste is a central ingredient in our economy. Many products are “death-dated,” that is, they are designed to fall apart or become unrepairable at a specific time. In 1960 the average life expectancy of an American car was about ten years, or roughly half the expected life of a Volkswagen. A major steel company has made available a lead-coated steel which, at an increased cost of eight cents per muffler, would give a product which would last the lifetime of the automobile. Instead, automakers continue to install mufflers that will need to replaced in two years. At one point a major light bulb producer made a calculated decision to reduce the life span of one of its bulbs from 1000 to 750 hours.

Where planned obsolescence fails, psychological obsolescence takes over. This has been done with unusual success in the clothing and automobile industry, but is also used with many other products. The sole purpose of psychological obsolescence is to make us want to get a product before the old one has ended its usefulness. Back in 1929, General Motors executive Floyd Allen said, “Advertising is in the business of making people helpfully dissatisfied with what they have in favor of something better. The old factors of wear and tear can no longer be depended upon to create a demand. They are too slow.” In the 1920s, Detroit began pioneering in the concept of the annual model change and has not stopped since. Added to this is the endless variety of products that are virtually the same. We can buy 551 brands of coffee, 177 brands of salad dressing, and 249 brands of soap.

From here, Foster furthers develops his thesis, delving into the environmental taxation such a mentality exacts, as well as numerous other ramifications of a capitalist economy. Given that this is in reference to the country in which I live, and this same country is an integral shaper for the world over, should it come as any surprise that a life of simplicity would be utterly foreign to most American minds? But fostering an inward response to Christ—fostering an inward spiritual life—has never been an easy task.

Richard Foster quite fittingly entitled his best known book Celebration of Discipline, for discipline is a key word in such a life. Any worthwhile pursuit requires discipline, anything of substance takes time and care to cultivate. And in an age of unprecedented commercialism and self-aggrandizement, fostering the flame of genuine Christianity is no easy feat.

As Americans, while we feel sympathy for those in other countries who have so little, many of those same individuals feel sorry for us because we have so much. We live in a state of excess, all the noise and clamor drowning out the things that matter most in life. In such an environment, listening to that still small voice is doubly difficult. Richard Foster has this to say in Celebration of Discipline:

Our fear of being alone drives us to noise and crowds. We keep up a constant stream of words even if they are inane. We buy radios that strap to our wrists or fit over our ears so that, if no one else is around, at least we are not condemned to silence. T. S. Eliot analyzes our culture well when he writes, “Where shall the world be found, where will the word resound? Not here, there is not enough silence.”

But loneliness or clatter are not our only alternatives. We can cultivate an inner solitude and silence that sets us free from loneliness and fear. Loneliness is inner emptiness. Solitude is inner fulfillment.

Solitude is more a state of mind and heart than it is a place. There is a solitude of the heart that can be maintained at all times. Crowds, or the lack of them, have little to do with this inward attentiveness. It is quite possible to be a desert hermit and never experience solitude. But if we possess inward solitude we do not fear being alone, for we know that we are not alone. Neither do we fear being with others, for they do not control us. In the midst of noise and confusion we are settled into a deep inner silence. Whether alone or among people, we always carry with us a portable sanctuary of the heart.

Or perhaps, we can refer to Paul Simon’s Sounds of Silence, as John Powell does in Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am? Speaking of “cliché conversation,” he writes:

This is the conversation, the non-communication, of the cocktail party, the club meeting, the neighborhood laundromat, etc. There is no sharing of persons at all. Everyone remains safely in the isolation of his pretense, sham, sophistication. The whole group seems to gather to be lonely together. [All alone in a crowd?] It is well summarized in the lyrics of Paul Simon in Sounds of Silence used so effectively in the movie, The Graduate:

And in the naked night I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more,
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never shared.
No one dared
Disturb the sounds of silence.

Richard Foster picks up a still further parallel vein of thought in Freedom of Simplicity:

Anthony, the “father of monks” (A.D. 251–356), was about eighteen years old when he heard the Gospel words, “Go, sell what you possess and give to the poor . . . and come, follow me” (Matt. 19:21). Going out from the church, he immediately gave away his inherited land, sold all his possessions, and distributed the proceeds among the poor, saving only enough to care for his sister. After living at the edge of his village for a time, he retreated into the desert, where for twenty years he lived in complete solitude. In the solitude he was forced to face his false, empty self. He learned to die to the opinions of others. He came out of a bondage to human beings. Violent and many were the temptations he faced.

When he emerged from the solitude of the desert, he was marked with graciousness, love, kindness, endurance, freedom from anger, and the practice of prayer. People recognized in him a unique compassion and power. Many sought him out for spiritual guidance and healing prayer. Even the Emperor Constantine sought his advice . . .

When we become quiet enough to let go of people, we learn compassion for them. We can be with people in their hurt and need. We can speak a word out of our inner silence that will set them free. Anthony knew the true test of spirituality was in the freedom to live among people compassionately: “With our neighbor there is life and death: for if we do good to our brother, we shall do good to God: but if we scandalize our brother, we sin against Christ.”

Last night as I lay down to sleep, I was seized by a terrible loneliness. Lately, in fact, I have been experiencing these episodes quite frequently, feeling a hollowness that burns deep inside. I am changing and I know it. Several weeks ago I finally reached a point of total abandon to God, something I have been struggling with for months. My sheer determination alone, at times, seems the only anchor I have to keep my feet on the path to peace. So what is so joyful about all this, and celibacy—the so-called “greatest gift”—on top of it all?

Much. In an interesting paradox, the more I am seized by sorrow and loneliness and my own inner poverty, the more I change into the man I so long to be. It is as though my consciousness is being altered, stretched out, reshaped, transformed: slow, painful increments at a time. I often feel like I am being torn in two. But I know that the changes are all quite positive, the changes are taking me from a life of shallow selfishness to a life of redemption and grace.

I suspect at this point in time some of you are thinking to yourself that this is not at all what you have in mind when it comes to a spiritual life. Can I say that I too often feel this way, that I feel this way even now, and that I too was once a person just like yourself, offended and shocked by such suggestions? Would you believe me if I told you it was true?

But you see, my friend, I am learning a deeper way, a way that is beyond words. As I lay there last night, feeling a deep and aching loneliness, an emptiness down to the core of my being, many things began to settle into perspective for me. My loneliness is my friend, for it speaks the truth, painful as it is to hear. I am not anyone special. My life is not worth any more than anyone else’s. My time is not more valuable. I have no unique claims to anything. I don’t even have any legitimate rights to a say in the matter for my own life. Just as I didn’t ask to be born, so too I cannot ask to live, nor do I have a right to dictate that I be comfortable: so much less at the expense of another!

You do realize what is happening to me, don’t you? I am realizing that I am a nobody. And the only way to truly become a “somebody” is to first fully face the fact that you are a nobody. To realize deep within yourself that you have nothing to offer, you are not special, unique, or better than anyone else. It is only when you realize and learn to accept this painful truth that you are ready to be transformed into a bright, shining somebody. Gratitude for any kindness, however slight, naturally wells in your soul then, because you know that you deserve nothing. You don’t expect anything from anyone. You are not always clamoring for your rights. You are not quick to defend yourself. You no longer exist for yourself. Nay, you exist for the sake of others. And this is a most interesting paradox, for here is the only path to lasting fulfillment, which transcends ordinary happiness “any old day.” As Dr. Leslie Parrott, Sr. writes, “Why settle for fun when you can be happy, and why settle for happiness when you can be fulfilled?”

The irony of ironies is that everyone is searching for the secret in life. When you learn that you are really nobody, you are only accepting the truth, which frees you to be a somebody, frees you to really live. You will have learned a secret that many will never learn. People will be naturally drawn to you now, because you know something they don’t, you have something they don’t, and they can sense it; they can see it in the freedom and simplicity with which you move. There is a subtle mystique about you now. Mysterious. Unexplainable. Perplexing. You are learning how to be really real. It no longer matters so much what people think about you. You know that you are a nobody, so you don’t have to bother with trying to gather a group of people around you to reassure you that you are a somebody. What difference does it make? It’s only a useless pack of lies anyway. The only goodness that you have within you was given to you as a gift: it is not your own.

But being a nobody isn’t so bad, after all. For once in your life you are free. It doesn’t matter what people think. You know the truth. You have looked reality squarely in the face. You have reached that point of being broken, of recognizing that your greatest fear is actually true, that you are indeed nothing, a nobody; this is when, and only when, the light of redemption breaks and a sense of peace envelops you. You have faced your greatest fear and it’s okay. And now you are free to begin to truly love people, for you have learned that your life is really nothing: only so much useless refuse to be swept up and discarded. Other people are so much more interesting anyway. And there is no greater happiness than giving the gift of joy, no greater happiness than giving of yourself: gut-wrenching, poured out, broken, bleeding.

Now let us inverse the equation briefly, transferring our variables to the other side to see what we may find. Ah yes. What is it that people most seek in life? To be wanted? To be accepted? To be popular? And when you put other people ahead of yourself, are you not giving them the very thing it is that they seek? And will you not gain for yourself popularity and acceptance and people desiring to have you around? But you see, such things only come with a price. Love is selfless, and if these things are motivated by anything other than selflessness—if these things are motivated by self-serving interests—ah, well . . . you see, they are not truly real. So you will not find when you seek, if you seek for yourself alone. And people ultimately admire and respect those who are really real and despise and scorn those they feel live in false worlds, who swagger when they walk and wink when they talk, and whose flattering words are smooth as silk and bitter as gall—or loud and boisterous, polluting the air with their own self-inflated pretense of importance. Such people have little to say, though much is said behind their backs.

So why do my words sting so? Why do I cry out in agony even as I plead for more of this kind of mercy, as Sheldon Vanauken would say, a severe mercy? Why do I will to be torn in two? Why do I rejoice in my times of trial and suffering, my loneliness and my pain?

Why? Because I am learning to be me, learning to accept what is, not what is not and never could be. And the hope of a brighter tomorrow burns in my breast. It will not always be like this: the loneliness, the inner poverty. But it must be like this now. There is no other way. This is merely the truth, nothing more. And I would a thousand times rather be really real than live a lie. Yes, day after painful day I die: I am being retooled, reshaped, transformed, perfected. I am not there yet. I may never arrive. Not here. Maybe not even there. But I press ever onward, a song on my lips, joy in my heart, hope blazing higher each day, watching as the old, rotten self slowly burns away, for love is a fire and my soul’s aflame, alight.

God bless you, my friends. May you ever grow in grace and mercy.

Bon Soir,
Eric

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