What kind of power do you want to be known for?
There were two old monks who lived together for many years and they had never quarreled. Now one of them said: “Let us try to quarrel once just like other people do.” And the other replied, “I don’t know how a quarrel happens.” Then the first one said: “Look, I put a brick between us and I say, ‘This is mine,’ and you say, ‘No, it’s mine,’ and after that the quarrel begins.” So they placed a brick between them, and one of them said: “This is mine,” and the other said, “No, it’s mine.” And he replied: “Indeed, it’s all yours, so take it away with you!” And they were unable to fight with each other.
In this story of the experience of two Desert Monastics, four simple and basic spiritual principles emerge in an attempt to teach what it takes to become a pacifist presence in the life of the early Christian community.
In the first scene, the situation is clear: Peace must be taught. The two old men, wisdom figures of the monastic community, after having lived years together, simply do not know how to argue. Having lived together where the character of the environment around them had been peaceful did not prepare them to use either force or litigation. They simply did not know how to engage in verbal sparring, let alone domination, interruption, shrieking, roaring, or caterwauling. They had not seen it done. They had no models of how to do it. They had not absorbed the fine art of emotional manipulation.
In the second scene, what history has proved as the essence of most arguments is defused. One old man simply refuses to lay claim to what is not his. He does not claim his right to something that no more belonged to him than it did to his brother. He knew that he himself had no right to contend for the brick. And he didn’t. Whether or not there might be someone else with a just claim was now irrelevant. The disagreement, at least, was baseless. And so, he had nothing to fight about. The learning is obvious. To refuse to argue, to refuse to pick sides—no matter who tries to fan the fire or wants to make a case where no case exists—disarms the world.
In the third scene, the science of warfare is embarrassingly obvious: conflict is not necessary if no one wants to fight. Fighting is something we choose to do; it is not something we must do. We can, of course, walk away from struggles that will only lose more than they gain.
Finally, the old men teach, struggle can be stopped. In the very midst of the situation, we can just turn the stakes over to the other who claims them and choose another way to pursue the matter. In quiet, secret ways, the powerless have another kind of power.
The Desert Monastics are strikingly strong here. What is certain is that violence is not necessary and that nonviolence is never really powerless. The question is: What kind of world do you want to build? What kind of power do you want to be known for? What kind of power will you yield?
—excerpted from In God’s Holy Light, by Joan Chittister
