For a lover of words, it's ironic to say I’ve grown to believe talking is overrated. As a counsellor and helper this becomes even more tricky. I’ve yet to read the book, “Quiet”, but the title speaks to me, soothes me, and relaxes shoulders as I meditate just the five letters.
I share a 10 X 6 office space with my colleague and friend of over seven years. We joke that it is the longest relationship I have ever had. In the tiniest room, like a crucible. We spend a lot of time counselling parents on the phone and it can sometimes look like an act of acrobats as we bend and twist and adapt between and within our dual conversations. Sometimes....often... I find myself on sensory overload.
In our Western culture we rely so heavily on the intellect; a picture I envision as talking heads aside decapitated bodies, hearts aimlessly wandering about. Trauma experts tell us that the pain of a memory itself, or more often the felt experience of the memory gets stuck in the visceral experience of the body blocking out the actual content of the trauma story. This works to protect our fragile minds from the gory details that serve to decimate wellness. The problem is we try to talk it out. Make sense of it. But the process of talking, without first attending to the body and the heartfelt experience, is akin to asking an infant to solve an algebra equation.
Sometimes I have no words for God. I find in my longing and in my heart experience, I want to connect with Him, but like a 10 X 6 office space, with the noise and chaos of my daily surroundings, I just want to put on headphones and sing. The two dimensional world of my prayers can feel empty and cardboard. Heartstrings are deadened, needing Him but through words alone, falling short and stuck in my embodied experience.
When I acknowledge this with Him, and to Him, a strange thing happens. Here is where He calls me. Meets me. Tugs at me. Beckons. "Be still and know that I am God". In whispers, and feeling. In unexpected moments. In silence and solitude. In napkins on laps of buzzy dinner conversation. And even in office space crucibles. "Anointed one", "Beloved", He sees through and grips me. "Daughter". Here in this place and in this time I bring myself. Embodied, awakened. Quiet.
"But the Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth be silent before him."
~Habakkuk 2:20
