“In reading a recent novel, I myself was convicted by a comment the mother makes to her adult daughter: ‘My dear, you’ve missed so many opportunities to say nothing.’ We do miss these opportunities, as well as opportunities to say less and say it more judiciously. And so we miss particular delights of finding words and speaking them into silences big enough to allow them to be heard.” WritingLanguageSilenceWordsMarilyn Chandler Mcentyre Book:Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies Source: Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies
“The best listeners I know pause over words. ‘That’s an interesting way of putting it,’ they muse, or they ask. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’ The consciousness that every word is a choice, that each word has its own resonance, nuance, emotional coloring, and weight informs their sense of what is being communicated. This kind of listening comes close to what we engage in when we listen to music...A good listener loves words, respects them, pays attention to them, and recognizes vague approximations as a kind of falsehood.” CommunityListeningConversationWordsSpiritual DisciplinesMarilyn Chandler Mcentyre Book:Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies Source: Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies
