TRANSCRIPT

I’m Major Jackson and this is The Slowdown.

I am contemplating going on a silent retreat this spring. Many of my friends have done it. They return to their daily lives de-stressed. The idea came to me in the produce section of the grocery store. Just as I reached to squeeze an avocado, I recalled a meeting I missed earlier that day. The Zoom call was listed on all my calendars, but I reached my saturation point. I plumb forgot. In my head, I suddenly envisioned a retreat with rolling hills, yoga mats, windchimes, and a breeze beneath my peaceful calm. I shopped the produce section in a longing daze. I need to reconnect with myself. 

Today’s uproarious poem makes me want to abandon our life of chatter. To throw off our overly scheduled existence. I want to wake up to truths that can only be gleaned when I fade-out sequentially every duty that impresses upon me as needing to get done.

Desert Sayings
by Donovan McAbee

          “We have, indeed, to fashion our own desert where we can withdraw.”
           —Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart


Abba Jehoshaphat told Abba Eli that all creation cannot contain silence.
                                                                
                                                                                    *

A saying of Abba Stephen: Each word is jealous
of the silence it intrudes upon.

                                                                                    *

Amma Lydia often recalled that the sound of her heart’s truest prayer
was the echo of silence.

                                                                                    *

A certain monk was walking through the Negev when he had a vision
of a devil holding three leather whips, two in his left hand and the third
in his right. The first was woven with wooden beads in the leather,
the next with beads of glass, and the last with shards of rusted metal.
The devil told the monk that each whip was meant for the punishment
of souls in hell–the first, of wooden beads, for those who in this life
spoke ill of their enemies, the second, of glass beads, for those who in this life
never spoke up on behalf of the poor, and the third whip, of rusted metal shards,
the most severe, was for those who in this life talked too much at dinner parties.

                                                                                      *

Amma Constantia, of Blessed Memory, often told her friends: The best words
are the ones that like needle and thread sew a seam across the tear in silence.

                                                                                      *

A saying of Amma Josephina: Each word secretly knows
that it is impossible to improve upon silence.

                                                                                      *

Abba Yusuf used to say to his monks, “Go into your cell, and listen through
to the wordless place beyond the reach of all your knowing, and there, 
in the silence, abide.”

                                                                                      *

“Not angry silence,” says Abba John the Leper, “nor fearful silence, nor even
lonely silence, though that is often the door–but silence to be held, to behold.”

                                                                                      *

Abba Moe smacked Abba Larry with a glance. Abba Larry smacked Abba Curly
with a scowl. Abba Curly turned to the Silence and uttered the sacred syllables,
“Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk.”

                                                                                      *

Amma Synesthesia, blind with old age, claimed that
the color of silence is lavender.

                                                                                      *

Amma Florentia insisted that listening silence is the midwife of love.

                                                                                      * 

Abba Patmos said to the Silence, “Speak!”
And the Silence replied

“Desert Sayings” by Donovan McAbee from HOLY THE BODY. “Desert Sayings” first appeared in Harvard Divinity Bulletin. Copyright © 2025 by Donovan McAbee. Used by permission of TRP: The University Press of SHSU, texasreviewpress.org.