Wordless

How many times in the past few years have I been here? This place of wordlessness, yawning open like a canyon at my feet. I've witnessed these moments more than a few times with more than a few people who are hurting, deeply. And each and every time I sit with blinking cursor and type and erase, type and erase a thousand times words that cannot adequately speak to the ache of life and the howl of a human soul.

It's a curious time for comfort. In a time when we in some ways have more opportunity to reach one another, we are isolated from very real, deep ways to conveying sympathy, prevented in some ways from setting up real shoulder to shoulder community by a lack of physical, tangible presence in the lives of one another.

That's the thing about this ultra connected, text and social media world we have set up for ourselves: there is no space here for wordlessness. Silence. No way to communicate beyond what only feels like trite platitudes in the place silent space-holding should occupy. My best friends in the world don't even live in the same state as I do, and time and time again I feel myself pressing against the glass of superficiality when words are the only thing I have to offer when life shocks us silent.

It's a frustration I rail against and walk circles around, trying to tug my way beyond into something more meaningful. Something beyond "I'm sorry." Or "I love you." Something deeper than "I don't know what to say." It's a time when I have to face down the fact that I'm not God and I can't fix it. Or, really? Anything. Really, isn't that the point? Those words feel trite because they are. The redemption of human suffering is beyond the scope of what mere mortals are capable of, the cobbling together of a solution impossible in our limitations.

That's why there is nothing to say. There is nothing to say, nothing to do, nothing for me but to be a holder of hearts, a silent sentry bearing witness to the pain of another. And in my helplessness, cry out to the only One who holds us all.

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