Stored Trash

I sat down next to a friend at a large gathering of extended family and friends and she said, “There’s something I think you should know.”

It’s been a long time since she said this to me and I still think about that moment. If a friend says something like that in a similar tone now, it gives me goosebumps.

“Oh, yeah?” I replied at that time. No goosebumps, just curiosity coursing through me.

“Yes, but you have to promise not to tell your husband before I tell you.”

I did pause then for a moment. I do give myself credit for that, though I now regret a lot about how this whole situation played out. I did question within myself if this was an appropriate thing for her to ask of me.

In a situation that seemed like a gray area to me, with a family friend who I trusted to advise me well and with the juicy gossip right at my fingertips, I quickly quieted all my internal hesitations and said, “Ok.”

The knowledge that I agreed to have, which I never should have possessed, shook me to my core. I learned about a series of poor choices that had happened right under my nose that my family had decided not to reveal to me.

Told to me to under the guise of protecting my children, the information put me in a quandary. I knew that someone else was doing wrong. I knew that they shouldn’t be doing what they were doing. And I knew that this person and others were deliberately lying to my husband and to me to keep us from knowing this information that I now knew. But I wasn’t supposed to know and the person who told me didn’t want anyone to know that she had told me. It was a mess and the whole disgusting heap of it was then mine to stockpile.

Unsure of the best course of action, I decided to say nothing to anyone and to pretend that I didn’t know. I figured that over time the knowledge of what had happened would become known anyway. It was too big of a secret to be kept quiet forever.

So, I held my tongue. Even after Chris began to question the situation and to wonder if there was something going on, I didn’t tell him what I knew.

I kept this terrible secret for a year. I never broke my promise to the person who told me. I held the weight of it while I saw all the relationships around me in a completely different light.

This is hard to write about. First because now, so many years later, I have no interest in tarnishing the reputation of anyone involved. I know now the price of gossip and it’s one that I try pretty consciously to avoid. So, I’m purposely vague as I write this.

It’s also hard to write about because of how that stored gossip tarnished me. After my initial horror at the gossip, I decided to take on the burden of the secret as a kind of penance. I had promised my friend I wouldn’t reveal the secret and I decided to keep that promise at the highest cost. I should never have known what I knew and I refused to act on it or reveal it when it would serve no good purpose. I would act as a storehouse for the trash.

But I wasn’t strong enough to carry the weight of that secret. The penance I took on was too hard for me. The secret made me suspicious. It changed the way I saw people. Increasingly, I questioned the truthfulness of those around me, not just those involved but everyone. Instead of assuming good intentions in others, I assumed the worst. The gossip I asked for tainted me. The treasure I wanted cost me habitual charity.

Eventually Chris found out what had happened. I admitted to him that I’d known and for long I’d known. My biggest regret wasn’t that I had kept the secret but that I’d been so greedy for the knowledge in the first place. I still feel that way. I wanted to know the dirt and I didn’t think about the ramifications.

I struggle with the warning Jesus gives us in today’s reading from Luke. I have this tendency to understand the wealth we shouldn’t hoard as solely physical riches. We shouldn’t stockpile gold or jewels or money. In the current age, when we have an entire infrastructure devoted to information right at our fingertips, we’re especially vulnerable to a hidden greed for gossip. Gossip is as old as sin; however, we now unthinkingly carry it in our pocket at astronomical levels.

Too often gossip is the treasure I want to store. For me, gossip is particularly deceptive because I don’t recognize that it’s my cache like I would if I had, for example, a storehouse of diamonds. Gossip is insidious because it is unseen.

Gossip is also devious because it rots its storehouse, the soul. In that way it’s more deadly than any physical treasure, at least those you could choose to use for a noble purpose. Gossip as treasure cannot serve the good. So, it can only lead to our decay.

I didn’t understand that when I agreed to keep a secret from my husband and I didn’t understand that when I decided to keep the secret hidden in my soul. It took noticing the rot within myself and the release of the secret for me to learn that some things, when treasured, yield only trash.

Now if a friend asks me to keep a secret from my husband, I tell them that I don’t do that. I will tell my husband any information shared with me if I think it’s helpful for him to know or if it’s been told to me expressly to keep hidden from him. Some people have marveled at that honesty; others have chosen not to tell me what they want to keep secret. I’m more careful now about how I enlarge my storehouse. When God calls me to account for it, I hope I’ll have a better treasure saved.

Readings for the Eighteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year C) on the USCCB website