relationships and community on Empty Words

My friend Joi told me that when she was growing up, her parents invented a ploy to keep her from talking all of the time. They told her that people are allowed only so many words in one lifetime, and ...

I was watching the old Dick Van Dyke Show recently, and he was at a party filled with pseudo intellectuals. Dick got trapped into a one-sided conversation with a self-absorbed philosophy professor. On...

Watching television news is often painful… So much conflict, so many harsh words, so many accusations and insults in the headlines. Too many people speak to others with disrespect and contempt. A grac...

The etymology of certain words can profoundly enrich our understanding and experience of life. Consider the word “consolation.” Its roots lie in the Latin words “con-” meaning “ “to be ” and “solus,...

Most Holy God–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: We celebrate Your presence and rejoice in Your light that shines in our lives and our world. Thank You for Your sustaining presence in the past year...that w...

As in buying real estate, three principles are crucial to understanding a person’s words: location, location, and location. We cannot make sense of what someone says unless we understand the context i...

What you do speaks so loud, that I cannot hear what you say.

Light griefs can speak; great ones are dumb.

Words which do not give the light of Christ increase the darkness.

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak knits up the o-er wrought heart and bids it break.

There are no words to express the abyss between isolation and having one ally. It may be conceded to the mathematician that four is twice two. But two is not twice one; two is two thousand times one.

Kind words produce their own image in men's souls; and a beautiful image it is. They soothe and quiet and comfort the hearer. They shame him out of his sour, morose, unkind feelings. We have not y...

The right word may be effective, but no word was ever as effective as a rightly timed pause.

It remains wonderful that mere puffs of wind should allow men to discover what they think and feel, to share their attitudes and plans, to anticipate the future and learn from the past, and to create ...

No worst, there is none. Pitched past pitch of grief, More pangs will, schooled at forepangs, wilder wring. Comforter, where, where is your comforting? Mary, mother of us, where is your relief? My cri...

We had talk enough, but no conversation.

In a culture, the most important things usually go without being said. We Westerners don’t talk all the time about being individualists or about the importance of efficiency or why we prefer youth ove...

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

There is nothing in this world so empty as getting what you want.

One of the dangers of living in a constant state of distraction is that we never go to the bottom of our pain, our sadness, our emptiness, which means we never find that rock-bottom place of the peace...

Time talks. It speaks more plainly than words. The message it conveys comes through loud and clear. Because it is manipulated less consciously, it is subject to less distortion than the spoken languag...

None of us complete each other, but we can add a few words to the lives of the people around us to help them understand God’s bigger plan for all of us.

Talk low, talk slow, and don’t say too much

The character Quentin from Henry Miller’s Play, After the Fall explains a life without God: For many years I looked at life like a case at law. It was a series of proofs. When you’re young you prove ...

I sometimes hold it half a sin To put in words the grief I feel; For words, like nature, half reveal And half conceal the Soul within.

Affirming words from moms and dads are like light switches. Speak a word of affirmation at the right moment in a child's life and it's like lighting up a whole roomful of possibilities.

And can it be that in a world so full and busy, the loss of one weak creature makes a void in any heart, so wide and deep that nothing but the width and depth of eternity can fill it up!

Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garme...

One of the dangers of living in a constant state of distraction is that we never go to the bottom of our pain, our sadness, our emptiness, which means we never find that rock-bottom place of the peace...

There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokenness we find within. Moving apprehensively into the desert's emptiness, up the mo...