A Conversation Without Words

Once you make time to “listen with the ear of your heart,” as St. Benedict advises, you discover that God is a sparkling conversationalist. You also learn that God often converses without words. “God spoke today in flowers, and I, who was waiting on words, almost missed the conversation,” said Ingrid Goff-Maidoff.

Thomas Keating observed that “God’s first language is silence,” which implies that to hear what God wishes to communicate to us, we need to escape the barrage of words that constantly surrounds us. People who come to the Mount often comment on how peaceful it feels here, and I think part of what they are responding to is the periods of silence we intentionally cultivate as part of our prayer and the rhythm of our day.

One way we ourselves communicate with others silently is through gifts we give them or things we do for them. Gestures such as baking cookies for a friend or cleaning the car windshield of a family member are ways to show we care for them. It’s not a stretch, then, to believe that God does the same with us — wishing us good cheer with flowers, comfort with the shade of an oak tree, sweet sustenance with a crisp apple.

Once we learn God’s language, which typically does not entail the use of words, we discover that the creator of the universe has scattered love notes for us pretty much everywhere we look. Blessed are those with the eyes to see.