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."
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