The Taste of Silence by Bieke Vandekerckhove

Author:Bieke Vandekerckhove
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Liturgical Press
Published: 2015-07-29T00:00:00+00:00

tsimtsum

We did not inherit

the earth from our forebears,

we only borrowed it

from our children.

Native American wisdom saying

This sentence of Native American origin is displayed above the exit door of the A. S. Adventure store in our neighborhood. Every time I pass the cash register, I feel these words staring at me. My thoughts catch. With our way of life, how far removed are we from this wisdom? Do we behave as people who received the earth only on loan? Or, rather, are we not consuming the earth as if it were our supper?

Along these same lines, I recently read in the paper a news item that shocked me: “September 25, 2009, is Overshoot Day.” The article continued: “The earth increasingly fails to keep up with the speed of human consumption. Our urge to consume makes that today, September 25, we have already used up all raw materials that the earth can produce in one year. At this moment, demand surpasses supply by 40%. Thus we live as if we disposed of 1.4 planets.” It appears that Overshoot Day comes earlier every year. The first Overshoot Day was December 31, 1986. Ten years later, people already used 15 percent more than the earth could deliver. At that time Overshoot Day fell in November. This year, just over twenty years after the first time, Overshoot Day moved up to September 25.

Every time I recite the First Vow of the Bodhisattva, the earth issue flashes through my mind. “No matter how numerous the living beings may be, I commit to liberate them all.” But will there be an earth left for the living beings after we are gone? For me this question is gradually starting to resemble a koan. The Jewish-French philosopher Levinas says that an appeal is being lodged by “the face of the other.” When I met him at his home in Paris, in the context of a seminar on his philosophy, he said that this face of the other also refers to future generations. Hence, we must take care of the environment. These words made an impression on me. They are a call to action. Today more than ever.

I never realized this more clearly than during a five-day retreat with Benoît Standaert, a Benedictine from Bruges. We spent the days considering his book Spirituality or the Art of Living [Spiritualiteit als levenskunst], in which he offers an alphabet of monastic practices. These are practices that work transformations, and they have to do with the art of living. They have been tested for years within the walls of abbeys but are certainly equally applicable outside. With the force of lived experience, the monk succeeded in warming us to the tradition in which he lives, and in surprising ways he linked it to the stories, proverbs, and practices of other traditions. Everything can become an exercise in the art of living, including confrontation with the questions of our time, and even ordinary, daily things like eating and drinking.

One morning, Benoît Standaert dropped the word tsimtsum.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.