Who does not remember Cernobil? It was a terrifying event. They spoke of hecatombs, of a cosmic disaster. But, perhaps, more disquieting were certain "continuations" of the same news, which exploded some years ago.

I was struck by a page of a newspaper, which spoke about the danger of atomic clinkers and debris. Because of some negligence in the execution of some measures, in an Eastern zone, within a few years time they discovered that a polluting radiation had infested the land.

Slowly, slowly, without knowing why, life started to etiolate. Vegetables, animals, children and elderly people where gripped by death.

This is a picture that perfectly gives the idea of an evil, not soon evident, but very much diffused and pernicious: murmuring.

Yes, our words are like the atomic energy. You can use them to do good or evil, to enlighten, to cure and even to heal. Or to pollute and destroy, not soon,  but slowly, slowly.

The word: light or darkness?

 Cardinal Martini, with his wise lucidity, writes, "In the word our deep being manifests itself, our freedom frees our active capacities: our humanity seeks the humanity of others, a contact with it, generates consensus, builds human communities, participates in the things of the world. But the human word is also poor (…). How often, instead of revealing the love of life, light, truth and communion, it produces hatred, lie and discord".

It is a fatal pollution, which slowly, slowly paralyses, deforms and destroys every form of life. This is what murmuring is. A reality in its larva stage, but very much  present in our religious communities.

I know, we object that it is calumny that kills. Namely, inventing evil and attaching it to persons who are absent, creating with malevolence heavy suspicions, starting from light hints.  Then it is added: Isn't the bringing to focus of a negative situation, and rightly  censoring it to expose the evil, when it is evil, about such and such person, a good thing to be done? By consecrating ourselves to God, we have not thrown our brain into a heap! To use a critical sense is only an exercise of the intelligence, of the capacity to judge. Isn't it somehow a service to the truth? Somebody adds, " What is wrong if I say things as they are and pour out the anger within me, when things do not go as they should? Do I have the right of being spontaneous, of manifesting my opinions, yes or not?"

There is something true in this kind of objection: the truth is to be said. Like a small silver blade in plenty of sand. Silver is this: the truth is to be said! The uncritical quiescence of the "Yes, Mother, thank you!", is a cutting the truth with a knife, when this happens for the fear of risking responsibly, paying the price of exposing oneself. There is a sneaky and hypocrite silence which weighs negatively on the scales, like the speaking along the corridors or the staircases about all that is or seems to be evil. Attention! Just because it is a chattering of choices or  words or events about people who are absent, murmuring is, above all, a wastage of words in the rubbish of what is substantially negative. Polluted debris.

The persons who murmur do not derive any advantage from this wrong "pouring out" but, on the long run they pollute and extinguish precious energies of truth and of life, first of all in their heart, then also in the community which they belong to. They are of the opinion that what can't be approved is to be said. Yes, but in front of the concerned persons, not at their back. If you speak to the concerned person in good manners, your word becomes a light of truth. If you speak at its back, then it is the fear of compromising yourself that pushes you.  Or it is the superficial, instinctive and presumptuous "outpouring". It is always a handful of mud, which soils you and the milieu in which you live.

 Some therapy line: watch over your heart

At this point it is positive to ask ourselves: Is there any therapy against this evil which is polluting without seeming to?

A biblical text says, "The tongue speaks out of the abundance of the heart". It is, therefore, very important, first of all, to be aware of our heart, of that deep and intimate part of ourselves which, if truly wedded to the Lord, is expected to perceive itself solid in Him.

"Wedded to God" actually does not mean to go hunting for spiritualistic emotions, but to live deeply the "espousal" spirituality, supported and nourished by the Holy Scripture, mainly by Ct 6,3, Hos 2,16, Is 54,4, Ezk 16,1-49. These are texts  which we should learn by heart, which we should whisper in the intimacy of our room, in the secrecy of the heart. The long ruminated sacred Word reveals itself as an injection that gives strength, a founded motivation of peace and radiation (within and around us) of untouchable optimism.

No, it is not the matter of getting along and changing one's own sensitivity into the skin of the hippopotamus, which prevents us from being sorry and bewildered even if the world, around and in us, falls on us. Let us be scared of such an arid egoism. It is the matter, instead, of pursuing with the strength of the Spirit (that is one with the sacred Word) our personal interior peace, as a presupposition of our seeing and judging. Above all, as a state of deep balance that satisfies the heart and the person.

But what has this to do with a right use of the tongue to heal the bad habit of murmuring (=speaking negatively of people who are absent)?

Not only it has a lot to do with it, but it is also of capital importance. Psychology itself makes us aware of how much we "colour" our way of looking at things and understanding them in the "colours" (of light or darkness, of optimism or pessimism) which pervade our heart.

How many times it happens that we could project, without being aware of it, a generic but deep malaise, which is within us. But if the intimate room is not inhabited by our God-Spouse of love,  it reveals itself as the existential void which shouts up the most anguished uneasiness. How often, then, the truth is distorted, persons and their acting are led astray by that "sick" way of looking outside us. It can, therefore, happen that, within the play of our psyche, without our being aware of it, we project on others the sense of void, the confused uneasiness, the bitterness we shelter within us.

In this case, the heart acts like the "cracked cistern" which the Bible speaks of.  It has no water to quench our thirst. The going on murmuring becomes like a false, freeing quenching of our thirst. It solves nothing,  neither within nor without us. Rather it pollutes, it produces dissatisfaction, a drying up of the deepest and truest life.

The therapy is, therefore, radically the biblical imperative: "Watch over your heart". Allow yourself to be pacified in your depth by Him who has wedded you and lives in you.

The therapy of thoughts

Grün, a German monk, author of many very actual books, has a precious pamphlet¹ in which he realizes a work of spiritual wisdom. Conjugating the best acquisitions of contemporary psychology with the literature of the apophthegms and sayings of the fathers of the desert, he helps us to individuate a most concrete track in which to substitute the negative thoughts, which multiply themselves in our mind, with positive thoughts of life and peace.

With reference to our subject matter, it is a question of clarifying things. Murmuring has its roots in our thoughts. Watching over our heart and our mind is, therefore, the unavoidable premise to break off with murmuring, rather to become responsible of our words and to see that they may become "salt" and "light" in the environment where we live.

Our mind, in fact, is like a "mill-wheel": if you put in it good wheat, what comes out of it is the superfine Flour, if you put junks in it, it gives out chaff, or even worse things.

The good wheat of the mind is, first of all, the meditation of the Word, the reading of "savoury" books, spiritually invigorating books. When a sister says to me, "I cannot absolutely find any time to read", I feel pity on her. I can perceive that her life (therefore her mind) is jeopardised by activism, that it is destined to remain and weak void. It is an uncultivated field in the mercy of all sorts of negativity.

The author I have just quoted, in line with the old Fathers, advises us to have a repertory of sentences in the box-room of the memory. The strategy consists in substituting the negative and often obsessive thoughts, with verses from the Psalms, sentences from the Ecclesiasticus or the Proverbs, above all from the words of Jesus. They are to be brief, like the shootings of arrows, like the kindling of a lamp. These sacred words put in order the interior chaos. If we use them courageously, with perseverance and determination, we learn to face our mental and innermost situations.

There is something important to be underlined to the end of preventing ourselves from falling into a kind of simple-mindedness,  that sounds of "magic". What is to be kept in mind is always the precise way of living our faith. For the old Father it is not so much the believing in dogmas and revealed truths, but a thinking, a living, an "acting as if…" What do we mean by this? We mean that the Word of God expresses and actually works the truth of God.

If, for instance, I am the prey of discouragement, I start repeating, "Blessed is he who finds in you his strength and decides in his heart to set on the holy journey" Psalm 83). But this is not enough. I must firmly believe that this beatitude will be given to my heart; to rest assured that a new vigour is granted to me by Him who has inspired the Word and has always made it efficacious, creative, dense with life and positive sides.

Conclusion

I may probably state that it is urgent to make up our mind to sift our thoughts and, even before it, to keep a watchful custody over our heart, crying to God that he may help us. This will prevent us from running into the pollution of murmuring. By doing this, we shall be "glad in hope" and we shall grow gradually in the human-evangelical newness. We shall become capable of understanding, without expecting others to understand us, capable of loving, without pivoting around our greedy ego, without pretending of being loved and of enjoying the optimal conditions of possessing and donating peace.

Here is the flower of a poem by our friendly poet: Marco Guzzi. I quote it for myself and for those who read it:

"Do not ask peace from the world.
Do not presume to be loved by anyone.
You, yourself, are to give peace,
with your own hands, every day.
Give your love.
Be still, give up yourself, radiate.
Rejoice! It is by giving love that we receive it
in abundance.

* A sister of the "Figlie di Maria Ausiliatrice", animator in the House of prayer and shelter at Subiaco (Roma).

1. A. Grün, Terapia dei pensieri (a therapy of thoughts), Queriniana 2004.