He pours water, which only after a moment is still, allowing them to see their faces in its surface. “So it is with anyone who lives in a crowd; because of the turbulence, he does not see his sins: but when he has been quiet, above all in solitude, then he recognizes his own faults.” Quiet is a kind of laboratory of the spirit, in which all other variables have to be controlled—friendship, visits by strangers, even the hint of sexual attraction, desire for fame, sheer busyness. Only when the painstaking work of achieving quiet is accomplished—once the surface of our spirit is calm—can we begin to see our sins, root them from our spirits, and leave space for holiness to bloom.
Questions
I. Have you ever sought, or perhaps even achieved, the sort of quiet about which the Sayings speak here?
2. Does the misogyny of these texts make them totally unreadable, or can we filter that out and still profit from reading?
3. How do you “talk” about quiet? How does the portrait of Arsenius and others shunning fame square with the writing and widespread distribution of stories such as these?
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