The Language Of God
I just returned from my first silent retreat – no talking from Friday evening until Sunday afternoon, except for Saturday dinner and daily vocal prayer. I tend toward solitude and was excited to immerse myself in the quiet, but I didn’t know my real reason for being there until God put it on my lips during our introductory “Why are you here?” spiels. When my turn came, I said that I spend most of my time thinking about what words can do; I wanted to experience what words cannot do. In His goodness, God delivered.
Words are a major way that we come to know God. He speaks to us through Scripture. The Church has nurtured a plethora of poets and scholars who point to God in metaphors and elegant sentences. Vocal prayers and the words of the Mass have been passed down for centuries.
Words are also the means by which we come to learn about ourselves and the people and world around us. We use terms like “daughter,” “student” and “incorrigible grammar nerd” to tell other people what we’re like. This is natural and often good, but in a way it is dangerous: we must combat the notion that words can encompass our identities, as if we’re reducible to lists of bullet points.
Our culture is full of simplifying and totalizing language: “Everything you ever wanted to know about x in five minutes.” “Become an expert in x in three easy steps!” We like our information – including information about one another, and perhaps even ourselves – to be short, digestible and encompassing.
Without realizing it, I had begun to let this attitude seep into my prayer. Instead of seeking personal relationship with the omnipotent and eternal God, I subconsciously fostered a desire to leave my prayer time with a takeaway, some little door prize to prove to myself that my prayer time was worthwhile.
I expected the infinite and mysterious God to reduce Himself to a phrase, because that would be pretty convenient.
When did I bury the desire to enter into mystery? When did I bury the desire to be overwhelmed by the miracle of the Trinity?
Words can move us with their ability to convey truth, beauty and goodness, but it is outlandish to expect the infinite God to cram Himself entirely into human systems of communication.
This point also applies to us. We become so acclimated to “getting to know one another” through discussions of tastes and occupations that we trick ourselves into believing our identities can be encapsulated in itemized lists or sparse paragraphs.
Such information, however, is not only largely subjective and relative, but it speaks merely to what Thomas Merton calls the “empirical self” – the “I” we talk about at dinner parties and in social media “about me” pages.
Merton asserts: “We must remember that this superficial ‘I’ is not our real self. It is our ‘individuality’ and our ‘empirical self’ but it is not truly the hidden and mysterious person in whom we subsist before the eyes of God.”
On the silent retreat, the priest leading us said during a talk, “Silence is the language of God.” How true and wonderful that is. That God resists summary or explanation speaks to His infinity and affirms His glory. To remember that we defy summary and explanation is also to affirm this glory. Do we see His mystery as a source of joy, and not frustration?
I ask you to join me in renewing your desire for mystery. May we be grateful for what words can convey about God and rejoice in what they cannot. May we remember that we are more than the summation of our traits – that we are, in fact, embodiments of His incomprehensible, ineffable love. And may we remember that God invites us to meet Him in silence – to know Him and be known in a way that words cannot express.
