The D Word
It's sort of depressing to read about how this blogging nun is so allergic to the word 'docile'. Docile has become a persona non grata among the family of words. And yet the dictionary definition is not so terrible: "easily managed; readily trained or taught; teachable." Lord help us, I know we don't want to be teachable or easily managed, but must we see a lack of docility as a virtue?
You see the same taste in this article about the St. Patrick's Parade in '08. Come hell or high water, the Shamrock Club wants their parade even though the bishop has asked that it not happen, at least on the 17th, since it falls during Holy Week. In fairness, Dempsey, apparently the man in charge, doesn't want to "buck the bishop."
An antidote to these articles was seeing the film Into Great Silence last night, as recommended here and as noted here on Open Book.
The filmmaker was determined to slow us down, and slow us down he did, with agonizingly long looks at monks in prayer and nature scenes (adding up to 160+ minutes of film). But by the end you got a taste of their serenity. Perhaps even a smidgeon of their docility will rub off. The rhythms of the natural world and the monks seemed the same - I watched with interest the way the Carthusians worked - neither too fast nor too slow, seemingly in sync with their Maker. Over and over a message was repeated (literally, via a subtitle) on the screen: "unless you give up everything you cannot be my disciples." In tone, a different message indeed than what was contained in the links above.
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