Speaking Silently

I’m sitting here at my desk, eating a mandarin orange, and staring at a blinking cursor, trying to find words for you. Words to share the thoughts and prayers shaping my heart this week. Words to share the deep concerns, and those things that are making me come alive with anticipation.

For someone who has shaped a life around a love of words, they’ve been hard to form lately. Hard to shape and manipulate and cause to reflect the meanings of my heart. As the places and spaces I’m occupying grow increasingly deeper, more and more I find myself unable to use the language and conventions of grammar that I’ve always known to describe these things. And I find myself wondering if perhaps a whole new language, a whole new set of words and thoughts and conventions will be formed, to again give voice to my heart.

And so, I sit here, at my desk, eating a mandarin orange.

Or I sit in my candlelit bedroom, the smell of incense or rose oil drifting through the air, and I nibble on chocolate.

Or I finger the tiny crucifix from the rosary I bought at the Vatican. Or let my fingers caress the face of Jesus – one of many charms filled with the saints, on a bracelet that is a much cherished gift from a much cherished friend.

And I find my fingers reaching for the tiny silver medallion that hangs on a delicate chain around my neck most days. The medallion with the face of St. Claire of Assisi on it. My fingers reach for it and my thoughts are drawn back to a moment of dreaming. To oil and tears mingled as the sign of the cross was traced upon my cheeks, and followed by a long and loving embrace.

It would seem, these days, that my hands, my clothing, my jewelry, my choices of food, the items on my shelves and counters and walls, and the scents I use to fill the air around me do much of my speaking. They give voice to the things that remain, for now, too deep for words. And I am seeking to rest in that. To let them speak of the peace and joy and hope I’m finding. To let them declare to the world that I am falling in love with a God who hung bleeding and broken before the world. And a God who lives and speaks and breathes life. I let these things declare that I am being wooed, that vows have been made. I let them declare a struggle to trust, and a commitment to push through. And I pray that they will speak loudly when I cannot form words, but that, one day, the words will again begin to form on my tongue and pour out of my fingertips – not in a stumbling, clumsy, child-like way, but in a deep and flowing and eloquent way that speaks of the awe I feel at being swept into this journey that encompasses thousands of years, millions of people, and ultimately brings life, hope, joy, peace and redemption.