The last of the pictures from Thanksgiving Vacation 2007. Above are Mandy and Trae at Sea World on Thanksgiving morning and Tori sitting for her Funny Faces Caricature drawing on our final day in San Diego.
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Last night, I led my Bible class in a discussion of the Spiritual Discipline of Solitude and its accompaying discipline, Silence. In our technologically crazed culture of hustle-and-bustle noise, perhaps no spiritual discipline seems more out of touch than the seeking out of solitude/silence.
“One reason we can hardly bear to remain silent is that it makes us feel so helpless. We are so accustomed to relying upon words to manage and control others. If we are silent, who will take control? God will take control, but we will never let him take control until we trust him. Silence is intimately related to trust.
The tongue is our most powerful weapon of manipulation. A frantic stream of words flows from us because we are in a constant process of adjusting our public image. We fear so deeply what we think other people see in us that we talk in order to straighten out their understanding. If I have done some wrong thing – or even some right thing that I think you may misunderstand – and discover that you may know about it, I will be very tempted to help you understand my action. Silence is one of the deepest spiritual disciplines simply because it puts the stopper on all self-justification" (Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline, 100-1).
