What a great thing to say, though. "Language overlays time."
I've been a wordsmith all my professional life: writing words, speaking them, and teaching them. Groning is correct: language does overlay time. Language functions almost the way a clock does. It measures time (a whole) by dividing it up into little pieces. With a clock, it's all about precision. With language, it's all about rhythm and cadence.
Time's 'Organic' State - For example, consider a simple sentence such as: "We went shopping yesterday." It probably takes just under three seconds to say the words. Now consider the next sentence: "We were trying to find the jar of peppers on sale, but couldn't at first." That's about four-plus seconds. The sentences go from four words to 14 words but gain only a second-plus. Naturally, different speakers will say the words in different ways, and those times will be off, but the point is that words "tick away" time as much as a clock does, only much less precisely.
A clock classifies those snippets of time into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, and millennia. Rhythm and cadence classify time with no comparable sequence of building blocks. They classify ideologically. Words force ideas into a listener's (or a reader's) mind, handily obliterating silence. This happens even when you're reading to yourself! Without words, though, something magic happens: time reverts to its "organic" state - silence.
Into the Realm of Deity - It stands to reason that if we can build into our lives moments, or even snippets, of silence, we will be dealing with time in a far different and healthier way. Without the overlay, time (and silence) is one great, undivided "sheet" that jumps outside of all containers and becomes eternal, infinite, with no beginning and no end. At that point, you've just crossed over into the realm of Deity. Entered into with the right attitude and heart space (and after first getting over the inevitable jitters) can only lead to things such as love, goodness, kindness, and compassion.
Put those words in a Vitamix, turn on the motor, pour them out, and enjoy a delicious mercy shake. Silence (or quiet) and mercy go hand-in-hand. One is the sheath, the other is the sword. One is Abbott, the other is Costello.
Mercy, Passive Voice - Mercy means to react and act with compassion. We react by playing the passive role with God, the way we would if we went to a masseuse. We deliver our bodies, and the professional does the rest. Same with Divine Mercy. We bring our bodies and souls then let The Divine Mercy work on us. Where the masseuse uses his or her hands and fingers to manipulate muscular tissue, The Divine Mercy uses a torrent of love to soften and stretch one's soul, to tone and rejuvenate it. Relax. Accept it. Let it happen.
Passivity has a bum rap in today's testosterone-fed world of extreme competition, but the quality itself should not have to innocently suffer just because a few muscleheads (or many muscleheads) are so afraid of quieting down, perchance to (ulp!) enter into silence. In tapping into the mercy of God, be a receiver. Think of a radio. A radio generates no signal of its own. It receives the broadcasted message. Same with Divine Mercy. The message is being broadcast every moment of our lives. We com into this world wired as receivers. We have but to tune to the right frequency.
Mercy Lets Go - But mercy also acts. We
For example, if you join a poverty relief committee only because you'll get your picture in the paper, your name on the letterhead, and another line for your monument of a resume, you're not putting mercy into action. You're a do-gooder.
Mercy acts without thought of compensation, recognition, recompense, or reward. Mercy doesn't want the glad hand, the pat on the back, or to be carried off the field on the team's shoulders. Likewise, mercy won't be fazed by the cold shoulder, clenched fist, or words of invective. Mercy does its thing - it loves - and then lets go. Think Mother Teresa and you'll instantly get the point.
Talkative people who constantly yak about nothing have no time for the important things. They gab-up an overlay onto silence that chokes their ability to understand that the time we are allotted on God's good earth is finite, and to waste it represents the height of absurdity. I call it absurd because it is self-injurious for no substantive reason. These poor souls have time to go jet-skiing, time to gossip on their cell phones, and time for vacuous movies, but they have no time at all for one moment of reflection.
'... but they have no time to come to Me' - The Diary of St. Faustina contains a stunning passage in which the saint records an instance where Jesus makes this very point:
On one occasion, Jesus gave me to know that when I pray for intentions which people are wont to entrust to me, He is always ready to grant His graces, but souls do not always want to accept them: My Heart overflows with great mercy for souls, and especially for poor sinners. If only they could understand that I am the best of Fathers to them and that it is for them that the Blood and Water flowed from My Heart as from a fount overflowing with mercy. For them I dwell in the tabernacle as King of Mercy. I desire to bestow My graces upon these souls, but they do not want to accept them. You, at least, come to Me as often as possible and take these graces they do not want to accept. In this way, you will console My Heart. Oh, how indifferent are souls to so much goodness, to so many proofs of love! My Heart drinks only of the ingratitude and forgetfulness of souls living in the world. They have time for everything, but they have no time to come to Me for graces (Diary, 367).
Heart-Praying - They have time for everything, but they have no time to come to Me for graces.
Perhaps, Jesus, they have time for everything because they are so distracted by noise. It the din, reflection, meditation, silence, quiet, and prayer not only do not interest them, but often do not even become possibilities. Brother Albin Milewski, MIC, whose gentle, dew-soft spirituality I profiled in an earlier blog, recently told me during an interview for another story that he likes to pray with his heart. He explained that heart-praying uses no words. It sees the overlay of silence and climbs underneath. There, it finds the very vocabulary of God.
Lord, Speak Up, I Can't Hear You" - But NOISE!!!! EVERYWHERE!!!! INFERNAL BLARE, DIN, AND CLAMOR!!!
From Rick Weiss in The Washington Post:
In the beginning was silence, and it was good. From silence came sound, not all of which was good. And the sound that was not welcome was called noise. And there got to be more and more of it.
The article goes on to document "the growing body of evidence" that demonstrates that the "chronic din ... is taking a toll on our health and happiness."
Study after study has found that community noise is interrupting our sleep, interfering with our children's learning, suppressing our immune systems, and even increasing ... our chances of having a heart attack. It is also tarnishing the Golden Rule, reducing people's inclination to help one another."
By community noise, Weiss means ambient intrusions like the construction noise, modern transportation (cars, motorcycles, trucks, railroads, air traffic), and even things like leaf blowers, mowers, and air conditioners. Chronic noise raises your heart rate and blood pressure, and your breathing changes from deep and rhythmic to shallow and sporadic.
Addicted to Noise - Weiss's article didn't get into the fact that we as a society are addicted to noise, with a case in point being iPods, a music machine whose little marshmallow earphones protrude from the ears directing a practically infinite number of tunes inside one's head, on demand, at ear-splitting volumes.
You see, noise reaches the height of absurditiy when we create more of it for ourselves than we incidentally run into by way of modern life. It reaches insanity (though called "sane") when we are so hooked that we must generate more and more noise, progressively, until we completely deaden awareness of or own souls.
Look, if you can't quiet down, you're not going to have much of an interior life. When that happens and you're looking to build a society, you know what you end up with? You end up with one that, just a decade ago, would look like it came from a science fiction movie, you know, one of those bleak, Orwellian nightmares where a small group of masters keeps the robotic masses of people (un)happily drugged with their religious-like Technologies of Distraction.
As a matter of fact, look - and listen - closely as you venture out and around urban America today. Really take a look and listen. You see that such a future is now upon us.
Don't get caught up in it. That would be my advice. The best safeguard is The Quiet. Come to the Quiet. Then you may be able to say, as St. Faustina did, "I am profiting from the time that God have given me (Diary 515).
See Ya' Real Soon - My dear friends, thank God for everything that comes from Him. Have yourselves a beautiful day. On behalf of everyone on Eden Hill, I send, as always, much love and many blessings.
Back Again, 3:05 p.m. - I'd like to tack on this quote from a book sent to me by a dear friend. The book is "They Speak By Silences" by A Carthusian. It has this on page one:
"Our silence is not just emptiness and death. On the contrary, it should draw ever nearer, and bring us nearer, to the fulness of life. We are silent because the worlds by which our souls would fain live cannot be expressed in earthly language."
My friend, by the way, is a cloistered monk.
