Don’t Change Me

Those who regularly read these pieces know I like Joan Chittister.  Sister Joan is a Benedictine monk who lives in a fairly large monastery for women in Erie, PA.  I have had the pleasure of speaking to that group of remarkable women and to spend a little time there.  Like all monasteries in the US, this one is an aging population.  But there is a good smattering of younger women there.  And when I spend time there, I feel a vibrancy that makes me choose to be there over a place with younger folks who are spiritually dead.  I have no question that the Spirit spends a great deal of time there.

Sister Joan recently wrote an article with an intriguing title: “When people stop listening: Keep it up.”  Reading that title left me unsure what she is wanting to tell me.  Knowing Chittister, I knew it would be both interesting and challenging.  I was not disappointed.  There is much in the whole article that I would enjoy sharing, but I was caught in the very beginning of her work.  She tells the story from the monastic tradition.  I knew the story, but it is better when it comes from a monk herself.

Straightaway, she confesses, “I find myself entangled in the echo an old monastic story.”  I love those old stories, so I was already delighted.  Sister Joan continues, “The ancients tell us that once upon a time a monastic ran from one end of the city to the other crying: "Pride, greed and corruption … pride, greed and corruption …"  I know that monks at times did what many of us would say are crazy things.  But that is not just a monastic thing.  Many religious traditions have stories---particularly of the early generation people---who also did crazy things they felt God called them to do.  My own Quaker tradition has stories of early Quakers feeling called to parade through the streets naked as a witness to some important issue.  

Sr Joan’s story tells of a monastic running around in the city with three key words: pride, greed, and corruption.  We easily know these three are not good things.  In religious language we can call them sins.  In the Catholic tradition a couple of them are deadly sins.  It is clear that most of us figure we are against all three.  And on some days, we might even be sure we have never had problems with any of the three.  If I am honest, however, I confess that I have dallied with all three at different times.  

The easiest one for me to feel, as if I have never really done, is corruption.  Corruption is what seedy business folks and crooked politicians do.  I have been neither of these.  I can claim to have avoided pride because I work on my self-esteem.  And I have never had enough self-esteem to have to deal with pride.  So again, I am off the hook.  Finally, if I can see myself as poor enough, there is no way I can be accused of being greedy.  If I can keep greed in the economic realm, then smugly I can say I have never experienced it.

I suspect that is similar to what the folks in the town where the monastic was running around thought.  The monk might be crazy, but I am not guilty.  So I don’t have to listen.  And apparently, they did not listen.  The title tells us as much: when people stop listening.  I can only imagine the folks in the town hoped the crazy monk would quit or go away to some other town.  But that is not what happened.

At first, they listened.  But this is how Sr. Joan tells it: “People stopped in shock to listen to her concerns.”  They were shocked.  This is so different than being open.  In shock there was only a couple ways to go.  Leave or ignore.  Here is how they did it. “…But, after a while, tired of the repetition, they went, one at a time, slowly back to work.”  Ignore and then forget.  All but one person chose to ignore and forget.

Sr. Joan goes on: “Only a small child remained, transfixed but puzzled. ‘Old Lady,’ he called, ‘nobody is listening to you.’”  I smile at the monastic’s response: “And the old monastic shouted back, "I know that, child."  Not surprised and remaining nonplussed.  This amazes the child.  This leads the child to question, "Then, if you know that no one is listening to you, why do you keep on shouting?"

That is the key question.  Why do you keep it up?  Are you crazy?   You can imagine the punch line is coming and, indeed, it is.  “This time, the old town crier slowed down a bit and answered clearly: ‘You see, child, I don't shout in order to change them. I shout so that they can't change me.’”  That is so powerful.  This is the lesson Sr. Joan wants us to learn.  “The values that propel us we are required to protect.”  

We protect those values by knowing them and expressing them.  It may mean shouting.  It may mean simply living a life that squares with our values.  I am going to keep this story close to me.  I don’t want the external world to change me.