Silence is Golden
To my dedicated readers numbering three,
I jest; I think there are actually about five of you. We'll see if that number dwindles. Sometimes, quite frequently actually, I feel like I open my mouth to express a thought and the world around me just shuts down. I beging to doubt my ability to communicate with other people. We were discussing "Noah and the Flood" last night in church. A few people started debating various scientific questions involved in the story. A question or comment was made, and instantly there were two or three people trying to respond. Great! but at a lull in the conversation I brought up some ideas about the freedom and responsabilty in this world shown by God in his covenant with Noah. There was no immediate reaction, so I kept talking for another minute and finally shut up. It was like Daffy Duck standing on stage in an old Warner Bros. cartoon... dead silence except for the lonely cricket. Finally baby Lila (age 2) spoke up and saved the situation... This is not an uncommen situation. Sometimes I wonder if there is something wrong with me that I stall conversation like that.
posted by Curran | 10:09 AM
3 Comments:
I think most people who speak out at lgbc feel that way sometimes.Sometimes it is because we are all responding from such totally different places that we hardly know what to say when we hear someone else's ideas. But also I think that there are about half of us who are slow digesters of words, and by the time we have digested what one person says and are about ready to respond out loud to it, we realize that three other people have spoken by then and our response would no longer make sense if injected into the conversation at that point. It is a challenge communicating in such diversity. But in any setting, when I have said something that is really important to me and am greeted with silence, I have decided to assume that people need time to process it and that God will preserve in their consciousness whatever truth needs to intersect with their lives.
Julie, that is a wonderful truth, one that I don't hold to strongly enough. I'm usually too worried that I said something irrational and wasted someone's time, or that I said something too simple to bothered responding to, or am speaking on something that the people around me have no interest in and are merely humoring me out of politeness. These are purely negative thoughts based on, I'm not good enough or caring enough around other people.
Your phrase "...people need time to process it and that God will preserve in their consciousness whatever truth nees to intersect with their lives." is beautiful. It validates both the speaker and the listener while still allowing God His role to guide us towards growth and health. Thanks
Curran,
A lot of people are visual and do process words slowly, having to build mental images as they go. I suffer from this to a degree. Also, I have noticed that your mind is very quick and you often view an issue from, or have an insight from a perspective that the others will/may not have considered. It takes them time to "process" those thoughts, figure out how they relate to them, and by that time feel somewhat shy about saying something. Remember, as long as you are holding to your integrity in Christ, you are doing as you should, and don't need to judge youself by what others think (or you think they think ;-) ).
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