Letting Silence Speak

"It may be that now is no longer the time for statements" – The Rt. Rev. Robert Hirschfeld

With gratitude to Rumi (“When words fail, let silence speak”) I’m standing down for a little while, because I’m not able to make sense of anything at the moment, given the fresh hell unleashed by the dark forces at work at home and abroad (I can no longer definitively say which is which).

Instead, I’m going to encourage you to read my friend Nicholas Busselman’s post about storms, storms here and elsewhere and how we measure ourselves alongside them. Nick is also here in Libreville and I’ve come back to this piece about four times already, because of lines like this:

“From inside the house, buffered by walls and glass and infrastructure, the danger felt abstract, almost theoretical, certainly theatrical. The violence translated as spectacle. Power without consequence. It thrilled, unsettled, but it did not worry me that somehow we might be in danger.

And yet the same force that filled me with wonder carried a different weight beyond these boundaries—this was a dangerous storm.”

Read the rest here and consider subscribing to Nick’s Substack:

Awe and Shock

Photo by Camille Orgel on Unsplash

When I try and fail to write well, I write badly for a while, following my own advice, and then I read, going back to Rule 1 of the Six Rules for Writers (1. Read 2. Read 3. Read 4. Write 5. Write 6. Write). Right now I’m reading various campus novels, the only genre that is allowed to break the “revenge writing” rule (why is it always English departments? Why are English professors so often just ungodly assholes?); E.B. White’s One Man’s Meat, and the New Yorkers that come two at a time. And the holiday cards and letters that people sent in mid-December, which just arrived last week (thank you; we didn’t send anything out, but thank you).

I’ll check in when I can, but I’m not going to publish just for the sake of it. I do try to stand by what I’ve written, even though I’ve gone back sometimes and cringed a bit, thinking “Ok, that was maybe kind of bitchy” or “hm, wow, I was mad” or notice that while I thought I was writing to understand something, I was actually writing to be understood, and those are two wildly disparate things. I’m not saying wanting to be understood is wrong to have as a motivation, but it’s important for me to know what my motivations really are. For me, wanting to be understood is too closely related to wanting to be loved, approved of, embraced. When I write to understand, I help myself move through the rest of my life clearer-eyed, if possible, not at the mercy of others, but at my own.

Before I go, here’s something that got my attention this week: the Rt. Rev. Rob Hirschfeld, Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire, asking his clergy to get their affairs in order because the political situation in the U.S. is that bad:

Bishop Robert Hirschfeld of the Episcopal Church of New Hampshire was one of several faith leaders who spoke at a recent State House vigil honoring Renee Good, who was killed by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis last week.

At the vigil, Hirschfeld invoked instances throughout history when clergy members put their lives at risk to protect the vulnerable — including New Hampshire seminary student Jonathan Daniels, who was killed by a sheriff’s deputy in Alabama during the civil rights movement.

“I have told the clergy of the Episcopal diocese of New Hampshire that we may be entering into that same witness,” Hirschfeld said. “And I’ve asked them to get their affairs in order, to make sure they have their wills written, because it may be that now is no longer the time for statements, but for us with our bodies, to stand between the powers of this world and the most vulnerable.”

I knew Bishop Hirschfeld when he was a priest in the Diocese of Connecticut and later, when he was rector of Grace Church in Amherst, Massachusetts; these words track with the person I remember. This isn’t just talk; this is how it’s done.

Finally, this morning, while I was writing this, the daughter of the caretaker here came by in her school uniform. I gave her coffee and a croissant and she sat on the other couch and used the wifi while I wrote. She asked for some sanitary pads before she left; I didn’t have any, but I said I’d buy her some (yes, a menstrual cup might be an option, but clean running water isn’t always accessible). Your “Buy Me a Coffee” donations continue to help make help like this possible. Thank you.

You can listen to me read this post here: