I love words.
Words are important to me. I have always been more of a word person than a number person. I have been an attorney, a policy analyst, a university professor, and an executive. Now I am a leadership and organizational coach and a spiritual life mentor. I write and read. I talk to people and I listen to their words.
My life is filled with words.
I enjoy how words sound. I care about what words mean. I love the feeling that comes from finding exactly the right word.
The more I recognize how I value words, the more I come to appreciate the value of silence.
Silence is where words originate. Silence is where we experience the deep truths that we struggle to put into words. The reflection that takes place in silence, or on the blank page, sparks in us the desire to put something of value into words.
Thomas Keating, the Trappist monk who is one of the fathers of centering prayer, says that, “God’s first language is silence. Everything else is just a poor translation.”
Our words tend to gather momentum and take on lives of their own. Words expand to fill more and more space. Words threaten to squeeze out the silence in our lives.
When we lose the silence our words lose their depth. They become shallow.
At least once each year I go listen to the silence at a monastery, my monastery, New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur. I find a peace beyond understanding in the beauty, the chanting, the breath, the silence.
For a few days the deep silence reminds me what is behind all those words.
Where do you go to find silence in your life?
How do you ensure that your words have the depth you would like them to have?
[Image by Muffet]
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