Day Twelve – Noise and Haste

Question: Were there things that got left on the “cutting room floor” that you regret, turns of phrase, subjects, passages of Scripture that you wish had found their way into the finished text?

Br. David Allen: I’m very happy with the Rule as it stands, of course, but I will say that I wish we had included a phrase from the previous Rule that spoke to me quite deeply, from the chapter we had on demeanor: “Haste and noise are to be always avoided.” I suppose we addressed the subject of noise in the chapter on silence, but I think we could have done more with haste. It’s possible, you see, to move very quickly and even silently, and still create a disturbance or disrupt another person’s silence. It’s probably too soon to think about a revision—we haven’t given this one twenty years yet—but I’d like to see haste, or rather a prohibition of haste, included in the next version of the Rule, perhaps in a chapter like the one on Mutual Support and Encouragement (43) or the one on Silence (27).