The Still Water
Careful by nature, and at your best when life is quiet.
- Careful
- Quiet mind
Picture: Quiet Abode, Isaac Levitan, 1890
This is your type. Your type is . See your result
You are careful by nature, and you are at your best when life is quiet. You like to know what is coming.
What you bring
- You see risks others miss.
- People trust you to be careful with them.
- You think best in quiet.
What it costs you
- You wait to be sure, and the moment can pass.
- Worry can pass for wisdom.
- A crowded week wears you down fast.
Where the trap is set
Fear
Gregory says the tempter studies each person first, then sets the trap right next door. For the cheerful it’s pleasure. For the gloomy it’s a quarrel. For the proud it’s praise. For the careful, it’s fear.
“Because the timid dread punishments, he threatens terrors to the fearful.”
St Gregory the Great, Moralia on Job
So your temptation rarely looks like temptation. It looks like worry. What if they are upset? What if it goes wrong? What if I say it, and it costs me?
The gift in it
Your care is a gift. Gregory says the fearful should not stay in fear. Fed by love, they should grow until love does what fear used to do.
“grow up by the nursing of charity to the grace of love”
St Gregory the Great, Pastoral Rule
A quiet mind
Gregory says some minds are so quiet that a sudden pile of business buries them before they start. They should not overload themselves. But quiet can hide faults as well as heal them, so they still need people.
“there are some of such inactivity of mind, that, if the labours of business fall upon them, they give way at the very beginning of their work”
St Gregory the Great, Moralia on Job
Who else was like this
St Gregory the Theologian He loved “calm and retirement” from his youth, and ran away when they made him a priest. When his best friend Basil called him lazy, he wrote back: “My greatest business always is to keep free from business.” Near the end he said, “I am weary of being charged with my gentleness.”
Oration 2; Letter 49; Oration 42
Jeremiah When God called him, he pleaded that he was too young to speak. Gregory says he held back out of love: he longed to stay close to God in quiet.
Jeremiah 1:6; Gregory, Pastoral Rule
Abba Arsenius A desert monk who fled the world to pray. In an old story he is seen sailing in silence, with the Spirit of God beside him.
The Sayings of the Desert FathersIts opposite
The Herald
Sure of yourself, and at your best when there is something to do.
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St Basil the Great The Herald - St Gregory the Theologian The Still Water
Gregory and Basil met as students in Athens. Gregory said they seemed to have “one soul, inhabiting two bodies”. Years later Basil, now an archbishop in a fight over churches, made Gregory bishop of a small town to hold the line. Basil pushed. Gregory held back. He wrote to Basil, “Give me before all things quiet.” Both are saints.
St Gregory the Theologian, Oration 43 and Letter 48
See the Herald“let all be eye or all head: will not the body perish?”
St John Chrysostom, on 1 Corinthians
All eight types
All eight types, and how St Gregory sorted them.
Picture credits
- A Luncheon: the artist, his wife and the writer Otto Benzon, Peder Severin Krøyer, 1893. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
- The Wedding Dance, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1566. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
- Rebecca and Eliezer, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, c. 1660. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
- An Iron Forge, Joseph Wright of Derby, 1772. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
- Quiet Abode, Isaac Levitan, 1890. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
- The Lookout – “All's Well”, Winslow Homer, 1896. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
- The Lonely Tree, Caspar David Friedrich, 1822. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
- St Paul Preaching in Athens, Raphael, 1515. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
- The Prophet Jeremiah, Sistine Chapel ceiling, Michelangelo, c. 1511. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
- St Arsenius the Great, fresco in the Church of the Theotokos Peribleptos, Ohrid, Michael Astrapas and Eutychios, c. 1295. Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
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