Amoun’s Rules for Conflict Resolution

Today the reading from the handbook was about human nature, the tendency for human interactions to become contentious and conflict resolution. Conflict resolution is an enormous and growing psychological/sociological field. When I was in seminary more than twenty years ago, we were required to attend seminars hosted by the Canadian Center for Conflict Resolution, an entity that had its seat at l’Université Saint-Paul, just as the Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies did. It was our impression at the time that the field was sorely lacking in substance. Most of the “profound strategies” for conflict resolution were reducible, at least in our minds, to “just be kind to other people.”

It occurs to me now, decades later, that we have far more profound experts in conflict resolution than the Canadian Center ever dreamed of. These experts taught “strategies” that were actually profound and that have been used with profit for the last millennium and a half.

Among the men who went to the desert as part of the first generation of monks in Egypt was a man named Amoun. He became a disciple of St. Antony the Great, and when Antony died in January of 356, Amoun took up the mantle of leadership for the monastic communities in Lower Egypt. Amoun was the first to settle in the wastelands at Nitria, and he is still known as Amoun of Nitria, because he built it up over the years into a veritable city of monks.

The first of St. Amoun of Nitria’s rules for conflict resolution would be largely preventative. Try to keep conflict from happening in the first place by preventing singularity. If you see somebody doing something eccentric, you do it too. If you have a community that’s divided, some doing x and others doing y, then side with the minority, especially if their position is a concession to weakness. This rule was applied by Amoun in many cases but one case is sufficient to note. There was the custom in the monastic settlements at Nitria to issue to every monk an amphora of olive oil for their use during the whole year. It was a point of pride among all the monks to return these jars at the end of the year unopened, showing how severe their ascetic life was. There was one sickly monk, who took a sharp knife and opened the seal almost imperceptibly, so that he could use some of the oil without calling attention to himself. Amoun knew of this, so he took a sharp knife and did the same to his own jar, so that everybody would be able to see that the superior had partaken of oil in the previous year along with the sickly monk. Amoun testified on that occasion that, because of the oppressive atmosphere of judgment and pride, both of them felt as if they had committed fornication.

Amoun’s second rule of conflict resolution could be put in this way: Always make excuses for others. Never make excuses for yourself. This rule was lived out by Amoun in perhaps the most dramatic way of all. On one occasion, for example, one of the brothers was to be expelled from the community, because he was accused of hiking to the cultivation at night to visit a prostitute. There was a meeting of the entire community in which the decision for expulsion or not was going to be made. Amoun got up at this meeting and spoke forcefully, advocating the man’s expulsion. When all was said and done, and the community had voted to expel the accused monk, ejecting him from the community through the front gate, Amoun ostentatiously stripped himself of his monastic habit too, shouldered a pack full of belongings and walked out the front gate, following the expelled, former monk. At this point, the members of the community said, “Abba, where are you going?” He replied, “I am going with him, because I’m a sinner too.”

Amoun’s third rule of conflict resolution requires that we see the illustration first and then state the rule. Once upon a time, Amoun was traveling somewhere with three younger monks. Because it was already dark, the monks took shelter for the night in one of Egypt’s many ruined pagan temples. That night, they slept in the inner part of the temple, because it still had its roof. Amoun disturbed the other monks three times during the night by performing the same procedure. He got up from the place where he had been sleeping, and he began to throw stones at the faces of the idols, loudly yelling curses and all kinds of abuse at them. After he was done with this, he would lie back down, but then, after an hour or two, he would be up again, doing the same thing. In the morning, the younger monks came to him and said, “Abba, we think that you have lost your mind.” Amoun replied, “Oh? Why is that?” “Because you woke us three times during the night, throwing stones, cursing and abusing the idols.” “Oh, really?” Amoun replied. “And what did they say back to me? Were their feelings hurt exceedingly by my behavior? Did they defend themselves?” “No, Abba, of course not.” “Then you must be like them. You must bear the insults and abuse of others as if you were insensible stones.”  Thus, Amoun’s third rule of conflict resolution can be stated: Forebear. Forebear. Forebear. As St. Maximus the Confessor points out, there are three stages in anger: response, resistance and resentment. The answer to all three of these is forebear.