Grace to you
The poets all agree, find your voice and live:
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you” – says Maya Angelou.
“Speak the truth, even if your voice shakes” – says the graffiti on the side of a derelict house.
“Most [people] lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with their song still in them” – says Henry Thoreau.
“you can not remain at war between what you want to say (who you really are) and what you should say (who you pretend to be) your mouth was not designed to eat itself” – says Nayyirah Waheed.
The poets all agree, find your voice and live.
Yet we know it is not so easy to find our voice – to speak what we want to say. We know the agony of our silence. We have experience of taking our song to the grave – for the moment we did not speak or sing has passed – has died and is buried.
Fear silences us: Fear of our own voice (often unconsciously) and fear of how our voice will be received by others (often consciously).
If it is true that “Love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18) then we will only find our voice, speak our truth and sing our song to the extent that we have fallen in love with our voice (self worth / love) and fallen in love with the one/s who we are meant to share our song with (our neighbour).
Fear silences us while love lets us speak. The very brave are the very loving.
The author of Ephesians calls us to “Speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). In this we are reminded that speaking truth is most fruitful only when we are committed to love being birthed as a result of the truth spoken. To speak the truth, to hurt and belittle or to “teach them a lesson” is no basis to speak the truth. If this is our intention it is better that we keep quiet.
Grace
Alan