No Grumbling
If everyone could just stop complaining...
My boys had pulled out the metal rod that controls our fireplace’s rotary damper.
Again.
When they tried to fix it on their own by shoving it back in with all their might, they managed to wedge it into the other parts and got it stuck. So I got my high-powered LED flashlight and folded my body awkwardly and craned my neck to see what was going on up there. As I tinkered with it, some ash fell on my face and my almost-two-year-old stole the flashlight, shone it here and there and directly into my eyes, then he tripped and fell over my legs. I couldn’t get the pieces of metal unstuck and the combination of the cramp forming in my back, the ash in my eye, and my almost-two-year-old’s light show caused a little bit of frustration to form somewhere deep inside.
Not surprisingly, little bit of frustration quickly grew to anger. I was angry with the boys that they messed the thing up again. I was angry that my attempted quick-fix wasn’t working. And I was angry because my body hurt.
After a brief time of complaining to my wife, I went back into the pit, groaning and trying to further contort my body to better reach the damper thing. This resulted in such bad neck pain I had to extricate myself quickly to stretch. As I was unfolding my body to get out, my almost-two-year-old knocked a wooden block on my head. I knew exactly what it was when it hit me. It was our “no grumbling” sign, a sign we made on an old hunk of wood during COVID-time. It still sits in our family room above the fireplace today. It sits there as a reminder that grumbling is bad for individuals and it’s bad for communities.
In his Rule, a rather short book, St. Benedict discourages grumbling eight times! Constant whining is destructive in the life of a community. It’s cancerous. Commenting on St. Benedict’s disdain for grumbling, Benedictine monk J. Augustine Wetta explains that “if you think about it, an outright fight is easier on a community than that ceaseless, cowardly, whining gossip that comes from a grumbler who ‘spreads strife’ and ‘separates close friends’ (Prov 16:28)...Grumbling makes everyone restless and angry—including the grumbler himself.”1
I need this constant “no grumbling” reminder, because, as a pessimist, I am prone to grumbling. And I can’t begin tell you how much my grumbling needs to stop.
Wetta, Humility Rules, 68–69.