The Rest Is Silence by Kevin Scully

Author:Kevin Scully [Scully, Kevin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary Fiction
Publisher: Dwyer Editions
Published: 2019-09-13T16:00:00+00:00

In Thought, Word

and Deed1

Wash Me Throughly—3

Every day I say I am sorry. To God. To others: the fellow residents and workers here in Care Home; and my brothers—Fr Abbot, but also those who are no longer with us. Sometimes I even say sorry to myself. This repeated three-way practice is so ingrained that, by virtue of our move to Bethnal Green, I sometimes worry that I am spiritually beyond the pale.

That may sound extreme. But the repeated acknowledgement of one’s shortcomings and failings is liberating. Though I have had to learn that such an experience is far from universal.

At CSC there were two collective points where members of the community would resort to confession—at the beginning of the Eucharist and at the start of Compline. That these came at either end of the day gave a certain symmetry to our gatherings. To undergird the reflective importance of this discipline a period of silence would be kept.

A guest once asked me, with a seeming sense of puzzlement, about these pauses.

‘You spend most of the day in silence. Why on earth, in some of the few times you come together to speak…’

‘To pray.’

‘Okay, to pray. But you do it in words, though. Spoken words. Why on earth do you stop for another silence?’

This had never before seemed strange to me. That we should pause to consider how we might have offended God or brethren was, to me, only sensible. I have been to many churches—fortunately, the local one is not among these—where the priest says something like, ‘Let us call to mind our sins,’ only to launch straight into ‘Almighty God’ or whatever form of confession they use with hardly a pause for intake of breath, let alone calling to mind.

I responded to the guest, ‘But that is personal silence. A corporate silence…’ He looked puzzled. ‘…by that I mean one we come together to share, is different. And it has a specific purpose. Confession is at the heart of our faith. And forgiveness.’

Others, I know, worry that this practice is simply a meaningless repetitive routine by rote. Or worse, an institutional abuse, a system by which appropriate self-esteem is repeatedly undercut: each time one of us starts to enjoy the air of freedom, one’s head is plunged beneath the water of self-contempt.

It is undeniably true that some people have suffered, and probably still do, under the tyranny of the sacrament of reconciliation from put-downs that may have been too harshly interpreted. At times I fear I myself have not heard the forgiveness extended by a priest. Or maybe I hold on to some of my failings because of their badness? That part of my past is ultimately beyond the pale. Is there a healthy attitude to this admission of our shortcomings and failures? The Novice Master was adamant in this.

‘Don’t think this is just about you. When we pause to check the state of lives, we do so collectively. Our brotherhood is then coming together—yes, and there will be things on your conscience alone—to confess those sins in thought, word and deed.

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