BE NOTHING
Just over a year ago, I read a review in ‘The Tablet’ of a biography of the writer Ronald Blythe (1922-2023). He is known for his book ‘Akenfield: Portrait of an English Village’ (1969), a fictionalised amalgam of several Suffolk villages where he had resided or which were familiar to him. The book later became a film ‘Akenfield’ which was shown on BBC4 quite recently. It was a quote from another book of his, mentioned in the review, that intrigued me and has stayed with me.
Apparently, Blythe interviewed a variety of people asking for advice on how to approach growing old, which led to a collection of reflections on old age called ‘The View in Winter’ (1979). I wonder if some of the advice he received was useful to him as he lived till he was a hundred, as you can see from his dates!
One of the people he interviewed was an old monk who gave him this advice: ‘Be patient, be gentle, be nothing.’ These words reached out to me from the review and have stayed with me ever since. On a personal level, they have helped me in my own struggle with retirement which has taken quite a long time to come to terms with. However, I have come to appreciate that the old monk’s words are perhaps relevant to oblates of whatever age and in a way provide a simple guide to oblate life.
As oblates we are encouraged to be patient and gentle by St Benedict throughout the Holy Rule. In community, patience with the faults and failings of others and their physical weaknesses is essential and St Benedict appears to have been acutely aware of this. For him, developing and practicing patience is a way of following Our Lord in his own Passion, which he endured with the utmost patience and submissiveness. In the Holy Rule, gentleness means avoiding self-assertiveness in any way, which therefore follows on from obedience to and consideration of others. It also means avoiding violence and, on a deeper level, avoiding agitation within ourselves so as to ‘seek peace and pursue it’, as St Benedict urges us to do in the Prologue.
We should not only try to extend patience and gentleness to others in whatever situation, however, but also to ourselves. Then we will be able to avoid the deep agitation I have just mentioned. Practicing patience and gentleness with ourselves, with our own faults, failings and physical weaknesses can aid us in our own search for inner peace. This is particularly true when adapting to a significant life change such as retirement. Being patient and gentle within oneself can help us be at peace with our new circumstances, the new landscape a significant life change can create.
In our oblate lives we must also bear in mind that St Benedict tells us in the final paragraph, that his Rule is ‘for beginners’, which is a great encouragement. The Rule nurtures a gradual spiritual development and transformation within us and that development and transformation are in God’s hands not ours. So, as the old monk says ‘Be patient, be gentle.’
It is the monk’s encouragement to ‘Be nothing’ that I found most intriguing when I first read it. The monk doesn’t instruct Ronald Blythe to do nothing but to be nothing in his old age. As oblates we are obliged to do some kind of active service for others, whether we are working or retired as far as our personal circumstances allow. I think that the monk was suggesting that in retirement we have no need to be something anymore. This can be difficult to accept if retirement means losing status. The monk is saying there is no need to look for status elsewhere or to strive for it. ‘Be nothing’ therefore means to put aside personal ambition, the drive that makes us want to be something, to be someone. This can be difficult as it can be a deep rooted urge in some and to ‘be nothing’ is counter-cultural in our success-driven society.
Perhaps the monk also means that as we grow older we should take more time to relax, to just be. To just be with God. For the monastic, this is what leisure means: time out to read and to be with God. Just to be nothing with God in the silence of contemplation. For we are nothing anyway compared with his infinite majesty. To be nothing, to be empty, to allow the Holy Spirit to fill us. For in the loving and merciful presence of God we are something. We are his child whom he loves.
Neil Zoladkiewicz
Oblate of Ealing Abbey
Chair of the UK Oblates Team
Neil writes a regular blog: ‘Oblate: A Benedictine in the World’ which can be found at www.oblateblog.wordpress.com/blog
