Lenten Reflection

Lenten Gospel           Healing the Mute                  

No doubt each of us has his / her own favorite gospel and mine is the one composed by the Lucan community – the one that offers a portrait of Jesus the Healer.

And so it is with today’s portion, we come upon Jesus once again in his arduous and faithful work of healing – healing us, yesterday, today and forever.

Though the lesson of the gospel today surpasses the simple encounter with Christ the healer, I was arrested by one phrase that I wish to parse with you:  “Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute…”

It struck me as a strange turn of phrase – focusing as it did on the DEMON that was mute; or the muteness of the demon.  And this got me thinking about the particular kind of healing that was underway beneath my eyes, and this morning within our hearing.

In the ancient world, and among popular healers like Jesus, arresting conditions were thought to be not just somatic situations originating in the body or physical plane, but also psychic situations originating in forces, or disordered entities beyond the body, but perhaps from the invisible fields that we inhabit sometimes to our peril.

A demon was understood to be an autonomous entity or energy that took possession of a person from outside of themselves, but perhaps to which they were vulnerable for some reason; perhaps the demonic spirit was like a dis-ease that moved among those whose psychic immune systems were weak; perhaps demons moved in like viruses and infected persons and populations with their pathology.

Whatever their source, today we are invited to consider “the mute demon” – the demon that would make us dumb, silent, speechless, unable to speak, to answer, to respond, to object, to scream, to confirm, to sing, to say what our heart or mind or conscience intends.

As I began to sit with the problem of the mute demon, it began to shape shift, to show me its many faces, its essential pathology.

And it began to challenge me to a critical examine - an examination of my own consciousness - to see where I might be harboring the mute demon – the one who would silence my word – my word of truth, of compassion, of kindness, of care, of joy, of encouragement, of challenge, of yes when yes is what is called for, of no when no is what is called for.

It is fascinating to research the root of words: 

Mute comes from a Sanskrit vein mukah meaning dumb;

In Greek, myein - which means to have a shut mouth;

And I pondered this: when is it really dumb to keep my mouth shut – or even still, when is it demonic to keep my mouth shut?

As the word migrates to Latin it means silent or speechless, and again I am cast into examine: when has my silence been occasioned by the arresting mutation of my true self, my true voice, my word and all that implies in terms of personal integrity?

When the psalmist cries “O God Open my Lips and my mouth shall proclaim your praise,” she is awakening those spiritual anti-bodies that can begin to heal pathology of the mute demon – he is invoking the energy and the power to ever be voicing the angelic power of human speech – what a word can indeed do (as we have been thinking of what it can undo).

As it can undo confidence and hope – it can likewise encourage.  It can inspire as well as deflate; it can praise as well as curse - for we are echoes of the Eternal Word sounding for all time through this cosmos, the echo of that Word through whom all things were made.

And as Brother Jack Driscoll loved to remind us, when the psalmist prayed to have his mouth opened – to be relieved of any vulnerability to the demon of muteness – he was in fact saying “O God, remove the obstacles to my speech, in my speech; O God, open my boundaries, my borders…”

When those boundaries of the mind and heart are open to the vitality of grace, there may arise, ironically, another kind of muteness – not one socially or psychotically imposed by anxiety or depression, repression or fear or trauma or just plain mean withholdingness.

 

This other  kind of muteness – a sacred muteness - is a discrete silence because what is felt or experienced or seen is just way beyond words – this is a holy muteness, and angelic muteness.  This “mu” is the root of (and the route toward) mysticism in the Christian tradition; this “mu” is the root of (and the route toward) enlightenment in the Buddhist tradition, as any etymological word search will reveal.

Is this the homeopathic transformation of our demonic muteness – our inability to voice the goodness, beauty, truth of the moment, the situation, our holding our tongue when truly an authentic liberating word is called for?  Is this sacred silencing of “mu” the ironic and counter-intuitive therapy for dissipating the mute demon?

When we are healed of demonic withholding,  then perhaps we abide in a gracious, mindful silence.  When our muteness is angelic, it is harmless, intentionally so.  It is the gate to our own and others’ enlightenment.

So this day, this spiritual inquiry: how and when does my silence hurt or harm me or another; how does it heal and bless? - Kathleen Deignan, CND