This week, I had some time in San Diego to slow down and enjoy the cool weather. By slow down, I mean read as much as I want and get inspired for the ministry God has given me at Saints Simon and Jude Cathedral.
I brought along a book that my parishioner Annie B. gave to me called Living the Gospel as a Way of Life by James R. Jones and Gabriel Meyer. Jones and Meyer are part of the charismatic covenant community City of the Lord and write about their experience of living in community. A covenant community, in my understanding, is a group of people who commit to walk together on their Christian journey, where “commit” means that the members offer themselves to the community in a sacrificial way. The community both gives something and demands something from those who join. The most famous member of a covenant community in the United States right now would probably be Justice Amy Coney Barrett of the US Supreme Court.
But I don’t want to write about covenant communities, even though I belong to the Fraternity of Communion and Liberation, which is somewhat similar as a community of people committed to a common life within the Catholic Church.
In Part 1 of this little series, I want to reflect on the first building block of a spiritual culture as outlined in Jones and Meyer’s book. The first building block for building a Christian community is “right speech.”
One way for us to think about the importance of right speech is to recognize the great damage that sinful speech can have on the life of a community. Sinful speech? “Blasphemy, lying, and arrogant or boastful speech are not part of the culture of God’s kingdom.” To speak about the Lord or the things of the Lord in an irreverent or flippant manner can obscure the meaning of those words. To lead others astray with our speech, especially those who have the right to hear the truth from us, damages relationships. To puff ourselves up with speech does not build up, as Saint Paul (1 Corinthians 8:1).
The number one way that sinful speech damages a community is through gossip, and similar things like slander or detraction. Gossip tears at the fabric of community and destroys trust. I struggle with this one. Oftentimes, I think that I just need to vent or to bounce something that is bothering me off someone else in the community. I am learning to call friends in Texas or California to talk about situations in Arizona, just to make sure I am not involving people within the community in gossip.
Now, of course, we can just update people on the news of what is going on in someone’s life. There is no problem here, unless we are sharing something, even a good thing, that someone else does not need to know, or in place of the person telling the news for him or herself. In church world, this often gets masks as “Please pray for…” “Please pray for Joanie’s husband. He’s in rehab again.” Oops! Practices like this can make true openness and sharing impossible. I may not want to tell so-and-so about something that is truly important because I know that he or she will share it with others. Gossip and other sins of speech break communion.
Normally, I like to start with the positive and then outline things that we should avoid because of that positive thing. All of us, I’m sure, have many more experiences of negative, sinful speech than positive, life-giving speech. With those bad experiences in our minds, then, we can look at the vision that God gives for right speech in a community.
Our speech is meant to be a source of life. Just think of the way God uses speech in the very first scene of the Bible. “God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” God’s speech does not just convey information; He creates and establishes things in existence through means of speech. Likewise, we can create and establish life-giving community through the way we use our speech. This does not just mean to avoid saying negative things. It means saying the good things people really need to hear (Cf. Ephesian 4:39).
Just like the best thing we can do with our freedom is to love another, so the best thing we can say with our words is “I love you.” “I love you” means I affirm you in your being; it is good that you exist; I want you and I want the good for you; you are not me and that is a good thing.
After “I love you”, another amazing thing we can say with our words is “I forgive you.” And we forgive people face to face, one on one, at least at first. When someone hurts us, we can go to that person and tell him or her that what they did is wrong and that we forgive them for hurting us. Both things are necessary. Jones and Meyer will talk later in the book about the power of forgiveness in community, but for now let us just notice the importance of going directly to the person, not to everybody but the person, telling the truth, and offering forgiveness for the healing of the relationship.
Right speech produces trust, respect, and love. We can take stock of our words at the end of the day and see how they have produced trust, respect, and love, or not. Have I brought more kindness and more goodness in the world through my speech. Now, kindness and goodness does not preclude telling the truth about a situation. We have to say what happened and how it made us feel. But we always can affirm that someone’s “being” is bigger than someone’s “doing.” I can affirm the goodness of another person in his or her being without approving of everything that person does. I know in my life how difficult it is to be honest about what another person did or said. Again, there will be more on this in the chapter on forgiveness.
I love how Jones and Meyer speak about the “schizophrenia” that often exists in our communities: “the earnest quest for unity and brotherhood coupled with relational habits that render this impossible.” We have all picked up these habits and need to be educated in right speech. As in most things, the best way to be educated in this way is to spend time with people who speak well. If I wanted to learn how to speak Italian, I would immerse myself with people who speak Italian. Likewise, I can immerse myself with people who speak well and beautiful, in ways that really build up and serve as instruments of God’s love in my life.
One quibble: Jones and Meyer speak about negative humor as something that can tear communities apart. I agree. But, they seem to include in this teasing and making fun of people or situations. I for one take myself way too seriously and have been incredibly helped (after the initial pain) by those who don’t take me as seriously, which can often be expressed as teasing or making fun. I am sure there are limits to this. Let me tell a quick story.
When I had lived in Italy only a month, I was invited to the Communion and Liberation family vacation with the Siena community. I did not speak great Italian and had only said Mass a couple of times in Italian. At the end of CL vacations there is a tradition of what they call “frizzi” or skits that point out funny things that happened on the vacation. Let’s just say that in Italy the frizzi can be brutal at times. A young kid got up to start the fun and behold the first skit was of me saying Mass in broken Italian! I was embarrassed. I was laughing. And in the midst of it all I felt loved by people who had shown me over the whole weekend that they love me even if I didn’t speak great Italian yet. I have seen the frizzi go too far, certainly, but I am also refreshed by the light-hearted fun that focuses our attention once again on the fact that we are loved first of all because we “are” before we ever “do” anything.
God’s first act of speech in the Bible is to give existence: “Let there be…” How helpful it is for me to separate being from doing and make sure my speech always returns to the good, God-willed being of the other. As I once said to one of my cousin’s daughters on her birthday: “I am so happy you exist!” I’m sure this little one had no idea what I was saying, but I hope that, at some level, this act of right speech did something to build up God’s kingdom of truth and love.
Very good commentary. I'll hang on to this!