Words, silence, prayer and the first person singular

Rockstonepebble Those who know me know I talk a lot. And I write a lot. I hope too, I listen a lot. I suppose I live by words.

Nearly one in five of the words above is the first person singular – which is its own comment on what happens if we are addicted to words, and uncritically permissive of our own voice.

That said, I'm also someone who needs silence and solitude, not lots of it, not stretches of it. But enough to think, to pray, to wait, to listen. Thomas Merton taught me years ago to pay more attention to the inner life when he said words are the noises that interrupt our silence.

And then there's the wise wistfulness of the woman who said, "Sometimes I think that just not thinking of oneself is a form of prayer".

Well Amen to that.

Renita Weems, whose book I quoted from yesterday says much the same thing:

"As with most great communicators, God knows that the point of silence and the pause between sentences is not to give the audience the chance to fill the silence with empty babbling but to help create more depth to the conversation."

Comments

2 responses to “Words, silence, prayer and the first person singular”

  1. Les Hutchinson avatar

    Jim
    This is a lovely post – thank you.
    I was at a seminar on Friday about the use of conversations in the business world – enabling purposeful conversation. But the thing that struck me most was a comment from a fellow participant about her habit of starting some meetings with a period of silence, in the Quaker style, to allow the real issues to find their way to the top of the agenda. I like that!

  2. Les Hutchinson avatar

    Jim
    This is a lovely post – thank you.
    I was at a seminar on Friday about the use of conversations in the business world – enabling purposeful conversation. But the thing that struck me most was a comment from a fellow participant about her habit of starting some meetings with a period of silence, in the Quaker style, to allow the real issues to find their way to the top of the agenda. I like that!

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