NOTE TO READERS: Today’s post consists mainly of citations from diverse sources. All the citations give us food for thought, especially when read together, as I strongly  encourage readers of this post to do.

Now the workshop in which we shall diligently execute all these tasks is the enclosure of the monastery and stability in the community.

— The Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 4[1]

 Heard to its roots, the title I have given this post is redundant. So heard, stability and  resistance say the same thing. That resounds clearly between the lines of the following citations from the Online Etymology Dictionary, from which — as regular readers of this blog know well — I often take citations:

stable (adj.): mid-12c., "trustworthy, reliable;" mid-13c., "constant, steadfast; virtuous;" from Old French stable, estable "constant, steadfast, unchanging," from Latin stabilis "firm, steadfast, stable, fixed," figuratively "durable, unwavering," etymologically "able to stand" (from PIE *stedhli-, suffixed form of root *sta-  "to stand, make or be firm").

resist (v.): late 14c., resisten, of persons, "withstand (someone), oppose;" of things, "stop or hinder (a moving body);" from Old French resister "hold out against" (14c.) and directly from Latin resistere "to make a stand against, oppose; to stand back; withstand," from re- "against" (see re-) + sistere "take a stand, stand firm" (from PIE root *sta "to stand, make or be firm"). Of attacks, invasions, etc., 1530s.

            In short and in sum, to be stable is to resist, and to resist is to be stable. I ask all readers of this post to do all they can to follow the call of that thought: to hearken to that call, to hear it, and to heed it.[2]

*     *     * 

What follows are two English versions of one and the same passage from the Gospel of Matthew in the Christian Bible, commonly called the “New Testament,” the original of which was written in ancient Greek:

You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.

                                               — Matthew 5:38-39 (NIV)

Your ancestors have also been taught, 'Take an eye in exchange for an eye and a tooth in exchange for a tooth. ' However, I say to you, don't repay [ἀντιστῆναι (antistēnai)] an evil act with another evil act. But whoever insults you by slapping you on the right cheek, turn the other to him as well.          

              — Ibid. (TPT)

To follow the path along which hearkening, hearing, and heeding the deep call of the terms stability and resistance leads us, we should also give the same attention, understanding, and obedience to the following command, which is there to be read in a different Christian Gospel:

He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!” ).

                            — Mark 5:41 (NIV and various other versions)

The word koum in the above passage is the Hebrew and Aramaic קום, which means  "to stand, arise, get up." In cases of combat that term connotes standing, arising, or getting up against or in resistance to whomever or whatever one is combatting. However, such “standing/arising/getting up”  in all its uses, including that “combative” one, does not mean the same thing as “striking back.”

*     *     *

Indeed, refusing to “strike back” by slapping the slapper back in turn, and instead turning the other cheek when one is slapped in one cheek is precisely a way of “getting up” or “standing up” for oneself as oneself. It is a matter of one’s offering stable resistance to the slapper, rather than becoming just another slapper in turn!

That is clearly to be heard when one reads with deep thoughtfulness and wholly opened ears the two following citations, the first of which comes from elsewhere in the Christian Bible and the second of which comes from a recent text addressing yet another different passage from that same Bible:  

Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  

                   — James 4:7 (Revised Standard Version [amid others])

Even in his act of cleansing the temple, Jesus is nonviolent: he doesn’t harm people, and what he does represents an act of civil disobedience toward a corrupt religious system.

     — Thomas Oord and Tripp Fuller, God After Deconstruction[3]

*     *     *

Here are yet two more citations, the first from a book I wrote myself over a decade ago and the second from a different book by a different author. Both texts were published around the same time, and neither citation concerns the Christian Bible as such:

[W]e need to free ourselves from the notion that resistance is a reactive formation, dependent for its very meaning on the thing that it resists, which thing in that sense takes priority over all resistance to it. We need, instead, to recognize a peculiar priority of resistance over what it resists.

                                                                   —The Open Wound[4]

Surviving genocide, by whatever means, is resistance.

— Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States[5]  

Finally, what follows are yet two more citations, with which I will end this post. The first citation is from another recently published book, and the second from the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation during the sixteenth century of the Current Era. Both attest to the stability that resistance always requires, and the resistance that stability always manifests:

The Zionist project pushing settlers into Palestine is [. . .] responsible for the displacement of Palestinians. As of today, 1.8 million people in Gaza (close to its entire population) have been displaced just since the escalations starting October 7, 2023. [. . .] There are now approximately 7.2 million Palestinian refugees and people displaced within the borders of Israel who have not been able to return to their homes and villages. As many of us have now watched this ethnic cleansing and genocide unfold right before our eyes via social media, we are no strangers  to the faces of immense trauma and suffering. The trauma of this kind of separation from family and place lives in people’s ancestral bodies and is passed down through generations. The reverberations of this level of state violence will be felt for generations to come and, if history tells us anything, will only become fuel for further resistance.

                  — Eliana Rubin, Taking the State Out of the Body[6]

Here I stand, I can do no other.

                                    — Martin Luther[7]

[1] Line 78 of Beedict’s Rule.

[2] See my post, “Hearken, Hear, Heed,” which went up on this blog-site on May 24, 2021, where it can be accessed through the “Archive” at the top of this site.

[3] (Grasmere, ID: SacraSage Press, 2024) p. 163.

[4] The Open Wound: Trauma, Identity, Community (© Frank Seeburger, 2012), p. 80. Copies of this book are available in the ‘Store” at the top of this blog-site.

[5] (Boston:  Beacon Press, 2014), “Author’s Note.”

[6] (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2024), pp, 58-59.

[7] The last line of Luther’s collected works, which were first  issued under his supervision.