Confession of a Quietist

At the age of 75 I am finally acknowledging and accepting what I have always been...I am out of the closet...I am a Quietest.

Quietism was condemned by the Catholic Church just before 1700 as an unbalanced preference for contemplation over meditation, for the prayer of quiet over vocal prayer, and an excessive passivity in neglect of acts of piety and charity. It may have been something of a strawman as no serious Catholic thinker was so excessive in advocating passivity. But it can be understood as a tendency in spirituality and seen in opposition to activism. We might imagine a scale in which the 0 is the passivity of a rock and 10 a workaholic mania of hyperactivity. I am probably a 3. 

I am far from a certifiably heretical quietist. My contemplative dimension is real but not nearly as deep as I would like. I am drawn to meditation, theological reflection-conversation-argument, the performance of the corporal and spiritual works of mercy, and fierce loyalty to institutions of family, Church, school, and other. 

But I am not an activist. More than that: I am an anti-activist. I detest social justice campaigns in their messianic pretensions:  end war, inequality, hunger, racism, bullying, tribal hatreds. I dislike do-gooders, crusaders, and reformers in their traits of indignation, righteousness, and moral superiority.

Philosophically I believe evil and suffering are intractably constructive of reality after the Fall. Yes we must renounce it, resist it, overcome it with good...but we also must endure it. We cannot remove it. Christ will do that when he returns. Until then our greatest weapon is not human agency but prayer, trust, endurance, patience, forgiveness, and deep serenity. "Only the dead have seen the end of war." I too believe that the dividing line between good and evil goes through every human heart.

Psychologically I have always had a relatively low sense of agency. When graduation speakers tell the young they can do whatever they want and become whatever they desire I want to vomit. As a teacher I often felt out of control in the classroom. In my personal life I have an entire thought and emotion world I have never fully controlled. In my management career I developed the "Laracy Law of Inverse Consequences": the greater your effort, the worse the consequences; the better the consequence, the less was your effort," I was not until midlife that I really discovered the 12 steps and I was elated with the very first: "Admitted I was powerless over my -------." For me the first step into sanity and sobriety is the acknowledgment of powerlessness and the need for help from Higher Power and the brothers and sisters.

Temperamentally I am inclined to reception, waiting and trust more than to action. We hear much of the "fight or flight" responses. I am different, I am an opossum: faced with danger, crisis, confusion and violence I do not fly and I do not fight! Rather, by instinct rather than deliberation, I become internally quiet, still, sober, attentive, reflective. I have actually surprised myself, especially in my work career: "This is weird: things are SO chaotic and I am so calm." This has served me well but I do not recommend it to others, especially when swift action is required.

A jogger in the Rockies was attacked by a ferocious grizzly bear. He was being slashed brutally and decided to strike at the bea'rs nose as he understood that might shock him. But it aroused the bear all the more. He than decided to go passive and inert, like an opossum, and fall to the ground. As he hit the ground there was a noise in the nearby bushes. The bear was startled and ran away. The jogger, an evangelical, believed the noise was angelic activity. I agree. I also agreed with his second strategy.

Action, agency, achievement, effort...OVERRATED!

 Reception, gratitude, surrender, trust...UNDERRATED!

Many agree with the adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I go further:  "If it is broke, don't fix it. Leave it alone and it will probably fix itself." I have found that an old water pipe that is leaking will, if left alone for a while, fix itself somehow. Yes, this does work, if not all the time.

In my work with women in our residences I may receive 10 complaints a day: Karen is off her meds; Jane walked on the wet floor; Mary took my sub sandwich; someone is getting into my room and rearranging my underwear; we are out of milk; the dishwasher is broken; and so forth. My approach: I systemically ignore them all. I look the complainant kindly in the eyes; slowly nod my head; sincerely affirm their feelings and concern; and assure them I will address it. And then I forget about it. Like the priest forgets your sins after you leave the confessional. My experience: at least 9 of the 10 go away on their own. When I get the same complaint a third time, I decide to address it...the next day.

This works very well. You conserve your energy and attention. You maintain a serenity that becomes contagious. Nine of the ten self-resolve and you eventually get to that tenth with enough time to avert disaster.

You can see why I have an aversion to the entirely of modernity as technological control, as social engineering, as public policy, as bureaucracy. In my 25 years in supervision at UPS, the "brown machine", the very epitome of industrial engineering, I was a complete misfit. It was a miracle I survived. A co-worker once described me as the most undervalued supervisor.

 I was and I am a stranger in a strange land. Being a quietest in the world of activists is worse than being an introvert in a world of extroverts, or a Catholic among pagans. You are an outlier, an reject, a pariah. You are the most undervalued, ignored and marginalized of victims.

In "confessing" my quietism I am acknowledging a weakness, a disinclination to swift action, an inordinate passivity, often enough, in the face of challenges. But honestly, I am not really ashamed. Among my very favorite spiritual guides  are St Francis de Sales and de Caussade, who lean heavily in the direction of quietism. I am more emphatically "confessing" my belief in the salvific efficacy of God's action, the primacy of receptivity and contemplation, of trust and abandonment, and the more modest and humble role of human agency.