A call to silence

Over a month ago, a class of college freshmen was reading Henri Nouwen.  Not an unusual assignment at the small, Christian liberal arts college where I teach -- everyone here reads and quotes Nouwen.  In fact, Nouwen is now the favored reading in the honors seminar I team-teach with a colleague.  I have to admit, Nouwen's In the Name of Jesus does issue a compelling call for humans to be needy and not, as we would assume, successful, spectacular, popular, or even relevant.  Non-Christians can gain as much from considering Nouwen's call to vulnerability as Christians can -- yes, really.   In short, it's worth reading, especially during the holidays, a time that requires all of us to receive the vulnerability in ourselves and others.

I am sort of obsessed with vulnerability -- even though I'm still learning what it is and why I need to embrace it.  Brene Brown's writing on this topic inspires me on a daily basis to set aside the demanding "shoulds" of perfectionism and turn to the "choices" to accept vulnerability.  When I accept my vulnerable, needy humanity, I no longer think that I "should" have a sparkling house to receive everyone for a bazillion holiday parties or the perfectly wrapped gifts for everyone I've ever met.  I no longer have to complete the impossible to-do list of a thousand dances.  I remember that I am enough. You are enough.  It is a complex and significant shift in thinking.  It is a liberation that requires a lot of work....like most liberations.

It also requires me to shut up.  Words are a powerful thing, and if I am to be vulnerable, I need to be quiet. The call to vulnerability is a call to silence.

Take Cordelia, the silent daughter of King Lear.   My students struggled to make sense of her silence when her father demands that his three daughters tell him how much they love him.  The other two know the drill. They give brash, flattering speeches.  Cordelia does not speak any more than necessary -- a risky and vulnerable act.  This time through the play, I thought about how much people talk only to be heard by others, to perform for others.  We are desperately afraid of being thought dumb or indifferent if we remain silent.  It's why my students fear a low participation grade just because they don't talk a lot in class.  We are all Lear, valuing the noise, pomp, and pride of speech.  Speech covers up a multitude of sins, right?  Just talk your way out of a bad situation, into a good idea, or through a lie.  At least you weren't the quiet one.

But to be vulnerable, we have to drop the armor of words and language.  The present moment doesn't often require words at all.  It may just require awareness and a refusal to say what we think we "should." To be vulnerable requires saying nothing at all.

What if we listened this year?  What if we received silence as sufficient?