Day 60: 3/1/13- St. David's Day Failed Vow of Silence & Women's Lenten Retreat Day One

Day 60: 3/1/13- St. David's Day Failed Vow of Silence & Women's Lenten Retreat Day One
New Thing- St. David's Day Failed Vow of Silence & Women's Lenten Retreat Day One
Inspiration: The Feast of St. David, St. David's Women's Ministry

Time: About as long as it took for my family to wake up

Bottom Line: St. David would NOT be amused 

"Verily, she could not kepest her mouth shut."

Reflection: As you will recall from yesterday's post, today is St. David's Day! One of the things that David was noted to have required of his monks was to remain silent, except in prayer and emergencies. It struck me that if a person was to follow this admonition, they would be imitating God and his capacity to listen to us all the time. Thus, I thought I would give a version of this a go--like a talking fast. I knew that I would need to do some talking, but I would try to keep it only to the essentials.

It proved to be impossible even from the moment I walked out of my bedroom and tripped over the cat--the expletives that I uttered we anything but necessary. And when my family woke up, it became even harder. David's monks were all livening together with a shared expectation that they would not greet each other with, say, a large kiss and a sing-song "good-morning" followed by a made up song about "Pajama Friday" at their pre-k. How do you not give a loving conversation back to that?!

So, then I thought about some other ways that I might cut out extemporaneous chatter since verbal communication was proving to hard to cut off. Abstaining from social media seemed like a good choice, so I stayed clear of that. I also turned my prayer time into sitting quietly, forgoing the spoken prayers that I normally add. Those things helped, but I still feel like this was not fully accomplishing the ideal. I will say, however, that I was much more aware of what I was saying and the kinds of things I was using my words for. Was I about to tell a lie? Was I about to offer unsolicited advice? Could I hold my questions at the retreat until later so that others may have theirs answered first? It was a deep exercise, even if it was impossible for the way it made me strive for an economy of words. How wonderful then that our Women's Lenten Retreat started to night and one of the first things we are looking at is the Ignition Examine?! God smiles.