Bismillahir Rahmaanir Rahiim

Although I usually post on Friday, I will be away from the computer and didn’t want to post late, so I am just going to post a little early.

The following post is actually something I wrote in my journal over a two-day span. I decided that it was a pretty good example of my taking of a “spiritual reckoning” and I hope it is worthy of posting here.

Narrated Buraydah ibn al-Hasib:
I heard the Apostle of Allah (peace be upon him) say:

In eloquence there is magic, in knowledge ignorance, in poetry wisdom, and in speech heaviness.

Sunaan Abu Dawud Book 41, Number 4994

(thanks to Yursil for posting this hadith, as it was quite timely for the post I had in mind)

Another that comes to mind:

Speech is like a medicine, a small dose of which cures but an excess of which kills.

Hadrat Ali (may Allah be pleased with him)

For a few years in a row, each spring when my allergies began I would lose my voice for about a week. My husband joked how that was his annual Week of Peace, but the truth was that it worried him. A week of no speech was so out of character for me, and not only was I silent, but it had a profound effect on my demeanor as well.

The last two or three years I haven’t lost my voice, and I missed the reprieve. I never thought much about the blessings in that week, but I’m thinking about them now. I suspect that my current laptop lifestyle would erode some of the value of such silence. My ability to speak through typing would undo whatever good deeds I may earn from a quiet tongue.

Once upon a time nuns, monks, and other ascetics from different religious traditions would take a vow of silence. I wonder if they wrote journals and what they wrote. Did they write what they could not say, or did they write highly spiritual things because their minds were freed up for deeper contemplation? How were their spiritual states changed during prolonged silence? And, it being a conscious choice, did they ever mistakenly blurt something out?

Sometimes now I wish I could lose my voice. I wish my internet connection would go out. I don’t have the strength to make the conscious choice. I do not exert proper control.

Last evening, after having written the above already, I was yet again given a perfect example of why I need a vow of silence. There is no need to go into details but suffice to say I let my fingers say things that didn’t really need to be said, in ways that were not necessary.

I hate it when I look back on something I have said or written and wish I’d kept it to myself. Or that I had simply said my piece once and been done with it. I cannot control how others respond to something I felt needed to be said, but I could choose to not continue trying to explain myself.

I recently watched Sarah Jessica Parker in The Family Stone. There is a scene around the dinner table where her character asks a question and the response from the family should serve as a warning but she continues to press her opinion. Even after everything falls to pieces, she continues to say “what I meant was…” and the damage just continues to pile up. Actually, I watched the film three times in a two-week span and every time I thought, “how stupid she is!” Every time, I wondered why she didn’t just shut up once she realized her point was antagonizing the family. (I also wondered how she could be so apparently unaware of what she was stepping into when visiting her fiancé’s family, but that’s another issue, perhaps for another discussion.) Watching it I thought the character was so terrible to press the issue so far.

But I do the same thing! I just did it last night. I dislike conflict and arguing. Truly, it makes me physically ill and afterwards I feel terribly guilty. Even trying to make amends, I feel bad and often like I don’t deserve forgiveness. All this because of my tongue and fingers. If I cannot stop myself from hurting others, perhaps the best thing is a vow of silence. Realistically though, I cannot take such a vow. I have to work and be available to family.

And does such a vow actually cure the sickness, or merely mute it while it festers deeper inside?