In Praise of Modesty

This is the Tell All Age, when we celebrate, as much as we dread, the end of privacy.

Confusing Truth with self-exposure, we dare each other to reveal everything, and imagine that "spirituality" means tearing away the veil. We mistake modesty for shame, then wonder why we cannot be intimate.

I mutilate what is subtle and fragrant when I force the flower open. And that flower may be myself, as well as another. This compulsion to expose leads to a naked, unlayered literalism that cannot discern what is fine, savor the paradox, or taste the bouquet of ambiguity.

Impatient exposure is not Nature's way. She nourishes through concealment, storing sweetest fruit beneath the bitter rind, wrapping rainbows in the grizzled cocoon, protecting her miracle in nests, eggs, wombs.

Silence is our mother tongue. Whole journeys end and begin there. In ancient times, the deepest Truth was a divine secret, the scent of ecstasy exquisitely veiled in the language of symbols, the wisdom of the master conveyed in the breath of the Wordless. But now the witless and desperate, who do not know the Self, need to say everything.

Those who cannot keep a Mystery in the heart may find that they have lost the soul. For a soul, like honey, is brewed in private chambers, stored in golden darkness.

Leave the inside inside. If you want a seed to sprout, keep it buried in the crystal loam of Winter's garden. You cannot taste the nectar in the vine; it must wait until the harvest. Hold the fragrance in your rose until it opens by itself, through the grace of dawn. Age your love-wine in the cask of the unspoken. Whisper what is intimate, but only to the Beloved. That which is not revealed can make your face shine.