Silences

Some good friends were down for the weekend. I noticed during the visit that I have a tendency to want to be talking all the time. Not that I have something that needs to be said, but that the talking is the connection. I think of it as the physical manifestation of that hard-to-grasp substance: friendship.

I learned this idea was wrong, though, when Heather and I were dating. It slowly became clear to me that silence can also be good, and that you don't have to be talking all the time to be in love. So I noticed on this visit with friends, too, there were times when our silences were companionable: in the car on the way to Washington, DC, for example, or as we started eating a meal.

I feel like my prayer life has been a little like that--I always feel like I should be praying a certain way: lists of prayers for people dying, hungry, sick, in war. And that conversely God should be communicating missives, goals, instructions, etc. to me on an ongoing basis. But maybe it's possible to have companionable silences with God, too--times when we don't have much to say, or even can't say much, but just live in relationship. Not all will be peaks or valleys. Sometimes it's just a flat road.