Everyone speaks or do they? We communicate in many different ways. Using words is one mode of methods that we seem to prefer. We often think that when we speak we are expressing ourselves. We let others know our feelings, experiences and being by using words. Another way we communicate is through our body language. Often a raising of one’s eyebrow can say more than words). People get cues as to what we are up to by observing our behaviours. Our world in this sense is visual as well as verbal.
What happens, however, if suddenly we enter into a non-visual and non-verbal world? First instinct would probably be to fill it with what we know. That is, we will try to communicate by using words or gestures. We will get very anxious. This is not that different than if one finds oneself in a strange country which speaks a language that is totally different. At least in this case, visual clues do help to navigate in a foreign country. For example, in a monastery where silence was the rule, I noticed that monks developed an elaborate system of communication using various methods including drawing and hand gestures not unlike sign languages used by the deaf.
As relational beings, we become awfully stressed and anxious when we cannot communicate with those around us. Yet, in the world of Christian faith, we plunge into God’s world where words, drawings, or signs often make no sense to us. That is, to most of us—with an exception of the very select few—have only had silence from God. Mind you, many Christians found elaborate ways to interpret the silence they had encountered. Often their interpretations were wrong—as wrong as the predictions of the end of the world.
Yet, silence is far more important part of communications than we might think. Silence is what gives words, gestures, signs and symbols meaning. Indeed silence is far more prevalent than words that make up our sentences, signs that we exchange with one another and symbols we offer. Without right pauses to bring in silence, our sentences are nothing more than words being lined up.
Think, then, for a minute what silence really is.
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