Study for Obedience

by Sarah Bernstein

I had observed that nobody ever did seem any better off for my intervention. I felt this had to do with the vagaries of human suffering, and yet at times I wondered what this might say about me, some spiritual poverty of mine, no doubt, a failure of attention, even though it was my attention, or more precisely and usually my presence at the point of a reckless and personal disclosure, that seemed to be the problem. I said so little and yet it was too much. Much too much. I vowed to make myself smaller and smaller, on numerous occasions throughout my life I had made this same vow, after speaking too rashly in the primary school lunch room or in the high school corridors, I would sit in my bedroom telling myself over and over again, hour after hour, that I would not speak a single word the following day, that I would limit myself in all ways, that I would take up less space. I