{"id":84,"date":"2009-10-03T12:28:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-03T16:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=84"},"modified":"2009-10-03T12:28:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-03T16:28:00","slug":"words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/?p=84","title":{"rendered":"Words"},"content":{"rendered":"
I can still recall (probably a good thing) sitting in Peter Denny\u2019s cognitive psychology class during grad school days, enthralled by what this man had to say about language, it\u2019s infinite cultural variations, how one\u2019s environment shapes the subtleties and nuances that insinuate themselves into our speech. And perhaps most profoundly, how words facilitate thought (which, after all, was the point of the class); and its converse, how, without words, thought beyond certain, elemental levels becomes difficult, if not impossible. I\u2019d venture that my love affair with language and reverence for same was cemented in those heady days of academe. A favorite read: Eats, Shoots and Leaves. Fowler\u2019s English Usage and The Chicago Manual of Style continue to occupy positions of veneration on the book shelf. How fitting that I have earned my living with words for all of my working life. And please don\u2019t presume to correct my syntax! <\/p>\n

Then encouraged by a friend to give ear to a recent Rowan Williams\u2019 BBC interview and focusing on prayer, things shifted. He finished with reference to a poem written by a priest-poet, following 9-11 recounting the meeting of a priest, a rabbi, and an imam (no, this is not the lead in to another tired joke!) Sharing neither a common language nor essentially a common belief, the three contemplate the enormity of what\u2019s just happened and what their respective roles might be \u2013 as they minister to their damaged and damaging flocks. They sit in silence \u2013 and, in that wordless space, the healing began.<\/p>\n

I was immediately struck by the paradox that the very capacity to speak, not merely \u2018communicate\u2019 (as, obviously some \u2018sub-human\u2019 species are able), at once contains perhaps the single most defining aspect of our \u2018humanness\u2019 and<\/em> the particular seeds of our undoing. Although the point of Babel was to highlight the folly of human achievement for its own sake (vs. the \u2018glory of God\u2019), an interesting sidebar is the mechanism by which the endeavor was ultimately quashed \u2013 failed communication. How many times have we heard variations on the theme of being \u2018misunderstood\u2019, when our meaning fails to match the intention of our spoken word; heard email pilloried because it lacks the nuance, the face-to-face quality and cues, the inflection in the voice \u2013 and is \u2018mis-read\u2019. How, when we sense we are being misinterpreted, our compulsion is to throw more words at the issue \u2013 and succeed in only making things worse.<\/p>\n

Conversely, how often silence is referred to as \u2018awkward\u2019 and gaps in conversation filled with idle chatter \u2013 seen, most times for what it is, yet indulged nonetheless. How, faced with the prospect of \u2018being out of touch\u2019 for more than minutes, the cell phone comes out, the recent \u2018texts\u2019 checked, the twittered comment sent, email reviewed. How often is the quiet person vilified in some fashion \u2013 standoffish, sullen, uncommunicative, isolated; the loquacious one seen as social, friendly, engaging. How we abhor silence. How we suspect what it might conceal.<\/p>\n

Our friend, as she so often does, built some lovely connections between Williams\u2019 comments and a much-loved subject of hers (and ours): meditation \u2013 and the attendant importance of silence. \u201cWhat is going on when nothing is going on?\u201d a popular invitation to \u2018listen to the silence of oneself\u2019, foregoing the urgency to fill the space with noise, words. So elemental, so primitive and involuntary is our compulsion to \u2018drown out silence\u2019 that reportedly our brain, confronted with same, will \u2018manufacture\u2019 its own sound (in the form of that hugely irritating hum, the whine experienced as a tinnitic \u2018ringing in the ears\u2019) that plagues so many of us as we age.<\/p>\n

Our priest today, quite unwittingly I suspect put the final punctuation point behind our culture\u2019s tacit but widely shared opinion of this \u2018anathema\u2019 of human interaction \u2013 silence. Excluded from the oral and quite redundant recitation of the \u2018announcements\u2019 (printed in their entirety in a bloated bulletin of Sunday services) was any mention the contemplative (read: reflective, meditative and silent) activities in the parish. I suspect the irony was lost on most that, in his own way he was \u2018supporting\u2019 these very goings-on and their shared de-emphasizing of the spoken word by \u2018keeping silent\u2019 about them; while airing the things we could quite easily read about, were self-evident, or of little interest \u2013 much in the vein of so much of our \u2018communication\u2019.<\/p>\n

A small plea then to test drive the alternative. When compelled to share the bit of gossip, the less than helpful suggestion, to fill the space between with small talk, to \u2018tweet\u2019 \u2013 try silence. For anyone who\u2019s sat in a filled room and foregone the \u2018human privilege\u2019 of speaking, who\u2019s experienced a day or even an hour at a silent retreat, will know the potency of quiet. Perhaps it\u2019s time to heed the words of another poet and listen to \u2018the sounds of silence\u2019.
David Howard<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can still recall (probably a good thing) sitting in Peter Denny\u2019s cognitive psychology class during grad school days, enthralled by what this man had to say about language, it\u2019s infinite cultural variations, how one\u2019s environment shapes the subtleties and nuances that insinuate themselves into our speech. And perhaps most profoundly, how words facilitate thought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davidhowardpsychologist.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}