Conversational Impatience

I find it funny how after I posted this once I looked at it and realized that if it were that long on someone else's blog, I probably wouldn't read it. I'm lazy - that's bad.

We had our first Mayterm "chapel" today, and for it we watched the Nooma video on Silence/Noise. I'd seen it before in a floor Bible study, but I think that it definitely applied to my life far more now than it did when I first saw it. There was definitely a change from first semester to this semester where I became far far busier in life and didn't spend nearly the time with myself or with God that I did in the fall.
Yeah, that's a problem.

One of the beautiful parts of this chapel was that instead of a more traditional "lecture" or a "talk" we as a body watched the video and then talked about what it meant to us, and we had a leader (Dr. Shirley Mullen, the college president) kind of guiding and shaping our discussion as we went. I personally tihnk that I had far more profound thoughts and statements that meant something ot me doing "chapel" in this way than at any other point in my Houghton career. I think that part of it is because I could see that other people really meant what they were saying; and even knowing some of them, I knew why they were saying what they were. It wasn't just someone that "we" as a "community" brought in to speak to us from a stage, but it was we ourselves sharing our own thoughts and experiences with each other.
I want to say that this is much more like what Paul had in mind when he goes on his tirade about how prophecy is better than tongues in 1 Corinthians 14; each person contributing something positive to the whole assembly that can build the body up.


The first thought that really struck me was when someone said that the reason that he had a negative view of silence was because it meant introspection, and he didn't always like what he would find in that introspection... Believe me, that is definitely my life.
Or maybe I'm more afraid that I won't find anything.
Or something that I can't achieve or can't have...

Another thing that was said (thank you Tineke!) was that there is a very marked difference between an empty silence and a filled silence. And empty silence is uncomfortable and awkward, and no one likes it; a filled silence is a sign of intimacy.

And then someone else also said that we are uncomfortable with silence (specifically in conversation) because it represents the idea that we don't know what comes next. We are no longer in control. We are going to have to hear what someone else says, or to go in the direction that they want to take the conversation. And if you apply that to a meditation setting, you have no idea where your thoughts will end up.

A combination of those two ideas with one of my own (though I'm sure it's not really mine alone) that society defines whether or not yo uare important off of what you have to say and what you can do and get done and how productive you are...

And you get an outline of something that has been floating around in my head for a while now as "Conversational Impatience".

I've noticed in myself so many times over this semester situations where in conversation someone will say something that I want to respond to, and so I will; regardless of whether or not they had more to say or were going on to some other point or were finished talking. Occasionally I will interject something quickly and then re-focus them, but more often I try to make the conversation go in a different direction. I want it to be something that we both have control over (which really means that I have control over) and so we both just keep going.

But someone raised the question today (and since it wasn't just a thought floating around in my own head, it really struck me) what about all the things that might be said? It was certainly presented in a negative manner; not only does it represent something that we can't control, but it also might affect us in ways we don't want it to. But I wonder how much do we/I miss out on something because we/I are so impatient that we roll right over what someone else has to say to make our own point? To assert our own piece of control?
To fulfill our own pride?

I have also (partly in my own thoughts, partly in the words that others have come to me with) struggled with caring about people this semester. And I wonder how much a part of that this conversational impatience is. If I always want to insert my own thoughts into what people are saying to me, or telling me, or pouring out from their hearts into my ears, how long will they continue to think that I care? Or will they see me as a self-centered and self-focused person who only wants to give his own view on the situation? I wonder how many times I have turned someone away without realizing it because of this?

And beyond that, I have also been struggling with the idea that God ~maybe~ has a plan for my life, and not knowing what it is, and not knowing how He is going to communicate with me. Conversational impatience with the people around me pretty much seals the deal on them being able to speak God's will in my life... And it also seals the deal on God Himself being able to do it. If I take the way that I insert my own thoughts and opinions into conversations with other people, how much more do I do this in prayer - where it is so hard to listen anyways?

Dr. Mullen pointed out today that silence is a practice - and that we are all out of practice. She said that one of the key ways that this is so visible is that when we stop talking and stop listening to all the noise around us, and try to have a time of silence... Our mind goes wild. We start thinking about the millions of things that we should have done or need to do or are going to do; where in the middle of that can God get through to us?
Especially if we insist on constantly telling him all the things that we "want Him to know"?

In this vein of how God speaks to us, I've also had this profoud (to me) thought about how He does it... It's really that He did it. Madrigals sang a song about "And this is love - not that I have first loved You. And this is love - that You have first loved me." How often do we describe the Bible (at least to little children) as God's love letter to us, as the way that He speaks to us in our lives; yet we wait for Him to speak to us (in our ears (which only comes in a still, small voice anyways) in a real sense) before we will truly give our lives over to Him. How illogical is that?

I arrived at that thought because I had thought that in any human relationship with someone else, I would gradually get to know the other person as time passed by, and they would gradually get to know me. So how is it fair that I have to go through my whole life talking to God and He gets to talk to me only when and how He chooses, and probably only very seldomly over the course of my life?
And then I was like "Oh..." Because of course God has already sent me a message in the Bible (as if Creation, both of the world and of me wasn't enough) that has said the basic message of what He wants to say to me. That He loves me and He wants to know me and be in a relationship with me. And I don't give Him the time of day? I treat Him with the same basic disrespect and conversational impatience that I treat any of my human friends with? What kind of person does that make me? Shouldn't I not only want to tell God everything, but also listen for His voice in return? Or at least spend significant (if not enormous) amounts of time in His word, His letter written to me?
How much is that the greatest sin that I have in my life?