PASS IT ON #63
Of Speech and Silence
by a Madonna House Staff Worker
Last night a friend was here. We spoke about how much of our speech is to avoid communication rather than to communicate. We chatter away to keep any gap of silence well filled. We’re all guilty of it, for somehow we fear silence. I wonder if we don’t fear silence because we fear to face ourselves! When we are alone we rush to a radio or switch on the TV or call someone on the telephone—anything to avoid the silence. When we are together with people we refuse to let silence fall upon us.
Silence might—it just might—break open our true thoughts. We just might begin to reveal ourselves and share at a deeper level those things we wish to keep well-guarded. We were discussing these things, my friend and I, for we had shared this evening more deeply than we had shared in a long time, and we appreciated it. She said that we were often too reluctant to share for we didn’t really believe the other person wanted to help us bear our burdens—which of course could be true. We don’t want to reach out, we are afraid to reach out for fear we won’t meet love and understanding.
Yet, Christ told us to bear one another’s burdens. If we don’t know what these burdens are, how can we bear them? Much of our chatter then is to cover up a lack of trust in our ability to share. We need to pray that we will all radiate more the compassion of Christ to others; so that we will not feel that we cannot open our hearts to one another. We need to share our burdens with one another, so we must allow for those “inviting silences” in which people can reveal their burdens to us.
On the other hand, some of our deepest sharings do not take place with words. There are so many ways to communicate: warmth, calmness, acceptance. The love of God can be communicated to someone who needs it desperately simply by our loving presence.
There are times in our lives—I think we have all had them—when we hardly have faith enough for ourselves. We find it impossible to believe that God exists, that he loves us and cares for us. It is then that the loving presence of another person can be an intermediary for us of the love of God. Another person’s love can be so beautiful and Christ-like that we are led to reason something like this: “If so-and-so is that loving and cares that much, how much more must God care!”
But when we or someone else is really hurting, often the only way to reach out is in silence, which means that we must be at peace with God so that his own peace can radiate through our silence.
I think it was Thomas Merton who said that in a world so filled with “verbal inflation” we all need silence in order to rediscover the climate of solitude. He said that we all need to be silent and alone “everywhere,” that is, know how to live with a quiet heart. He said that speaking does not necessarily destroy silence. For those of us who cannot go apart to a quiet place, we have to learn to make spaces of silence in our hearts and there meet the God of silence. Our psyches, which have been overexposed to all the verbal inflation, cannot cope any more with the blare of noises that screams at us ever more intensely.
God the Father has only spoken one Word, his Son. Sometimes we make music for the Lord in conversation—for speech is a blessed gift. Sometimes we rest together side by side, in the presence of the Word; a deep sharing can then take place. The divine Word will instruct us. Perhaps what we all need is to listen a little more attentively to the stirring of his Spirit within us, that we may know the time to speak and the time to be silent, so that both speech and silence will be used only for God’s glory.
— Adapted from Coming Home
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