“A profound distrust of everything that is merely verbal often causes a personal word to a brother to be suppressed. What can weak human words accomplish for others? Why add to the empty talk? Are we, like the professionally pious, to ‘talk away’ the other’s real need? Is there anything more perilous than speaking God’s Word to excess? But, on the other hand, who wants to be accountable for having been silent when he should have spoken?” - Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together

Believing profoundly in language, I find myself in strange conflict with the words funneling from my mind to my mouth, or more specifically the way those verbal impulses seem to lose value the closer they get to resolving into sound. What seems profound, or kind, or helpful as it bubbles up out of the weird grey being of mind, feels flippant, self-serving, or even hurtful as it rests on my tongue, and I can’t bring myself to foul the air with it.

Grace and kindness and love are too important to be hollowed out by practiced wit and feigned concern, or twisted by ignorance and inattentiveness. Bonhoeffer puts ‘listening’ well before ‘proclaiming’ in his list of things an individual living in community should strive to do. I think I will try to do the same.