Eileen was a talker

A number of years ago I went on an 8-day silent meditation retreat for the first time. I was excited and nervous. 8 days is a long time to be quiet.

What I know now but didn’t know then is that on these long silent retreats God often registers someone to attend who talks the whole time. I think he even sends them on a full scholarship. Because I can be selfish and self-centered, I usually take it personally when someone talks a lot on a silent retreat. But in hindsight I can see that God seems to send the talker to the silent retreat in order to teach the rest of us patience, humility, and how to love unconditionally.

Eileen came over the mountains from North Carolina a few weeks shy of her 70th birthday.  She was talking when she walked in the door. “I gave myself the gift of this retreat for my birthday.” That’s what she told us with her arms outstretched when she arrived at the silent retreat.

She was tiny, maybe 5 feet tall, but she carried something inside her that was big. Best I could figure on first meeting her was that life had been hard for her for a long time and all the hardship had made her big-hearted. She carried a big heart inside her little frame, and out of her big heart poured lots of words…at our silent retreat.

Eileen talked a lot and skipped many of the meditation sessions. All our meals were held in silence, but before each meal Eileen had long talks with the chef in a not-so-quiet voice right by the buffet line. In spite of my best intentions I grew increasingly judgmental of her and wondered why she’d come.

One night it stormed really bad. I slept right through it, didn’t even know it happened.  Eileen did not sleep through it. The next morning on our silent retreat she talked with the group about how terribly the storm had frightened her. “Truth be told, she said, I was afraid.”  

After she said, “I was afraid,” she looked around to see if she could tell if it was okay to have admitted her fear out loud. The kind, old priest leading the retreat smiled at her, so she continued.  “I woke up in the middle of the night with the wind howling and the rain beating down on that metal roof so loud I thought the end had come. I thought Jesus was on his way right to us. So, I packed all my things in my backpack in the dark in case we had to go. I put my backpack right beside the door, and sat in the little chair in my room while that old storm kicked and screamed and hollered. Do you all have chairs by the door in your rooms?”

“Susan, she said to one our leaders, I almost came next door and knocked on your door 

to ask if this place ever flooded to where you had to up and leave.”  

Susan smiled and said,  “You could have.”

“I almost did,” said Eileen, “then I thought, well I could pray. That’s what we’re all here for anyway, so I prayed. Lord, Jesus come be with all my friends on this silent retreat in this terrible storm. I trust you, Jesus. And you know it helped just to pray. Just to say, Jesus I trust you.”

“Can I share one more thing?” said Eileen.  She looked around at us all.  

The soft spoken priest said, “Sure, please do.”  

“I just want to say the chef here is really wonderful. I have to be on this kind of crazy diet and he has been so kind and understanding. He pulls me aside before each meal and tells me what I can eat and what not to eat so I don’t get sick on this silent retreat. He’s trying to help me get something to eat, and that means a lot to me, just his kindness.”  

There was something in Eileen’s voice and in her weathered face when she said, “just his kindness” that broke me open. I could feel her fear and her sincerity, and they were as real and penetrating as a parable. I felt her fear as if it were my own. I felt so disoriented. I was growing to love the talker on our silent retreat.

Her simple, verbose way broke my heart open and made it larger. She enlarged my heart, so that there was room for her in it. It was like God was saying to me if your heart’s not big enough for Eileen then your heart's not big enough. Then I suddenly realized that I had been talking just as much as she had. It’s just that my conversation was going on inside my own head. At that - All my judgments about her vanished into thin air. I wanted quiet. Eileen needed to talk. That’s all.

When I saw Eileen I could finally see myself too. What I saw was two children of God struggling through the storms of life, a son and a daughter, both cherished by our infinitely trustworthy God. It’s pretty simple.

Eileen talked for the rest of the retreat, and I thought those days couldn’t have been more quiet.