This past Friday and Saturday the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut met in annual convention. We don't sit in pews or chairs facing front anymore. We quit that last year. Now we gather around tables in groups of 8 or ten and we do Bible study in our groups and we have conversations around the theme of the convention.
This year the theme is Claiming, Equipping, and Sending.
The Friday morning Bible study was on the passage from Exodus in which Moses meets God in the burning bush, from the 3rd and 4th chapters of Exodus. God tells Moses to go to Egypt and speak God's words to the Hebrew people. Moses says he can't. He doesn't have the gift of public speaking. We ask ourselves if we have ever tried to run away from God's call to us to do or be something or someone.
God tells Moses he will give him Moses's brother Aaron to do the speaking. God will give Moses the words, and Moses will give them to Aaron and Aaron will speak to the people. We ask ourselves how Aaron must have felt, not having been consulted as to whether or not he wanted to become the mouthpiece for Moses.
We are asked to publicly claim one gift we have been given - maybe even one we run away from. I claim the gift of silence. That's all I say. "Silence." The table wants to know more. What can I say? I say I like to create spaces of silence, in worship, in retreats, in quiet days, in working to create retreats that don't require any words, so all people of any language or ability or none can come together to sit before Jesus.
I claim silence.
And then, the whole rest of convention, I have to school myself to keep silent and listen instead of planning what brilliant piece of personal experience I know everyone absolutely must hear because it's so very brilliant.
On day two, I have the job of being one of over forty table presiders. Immediately, during all the discussions at table about the business of convention, everyone turns to me to answer their questions. I spend all day talking, as if I actually know something or other.
Now, today, I will try to protect a day of silence for myself. And here, on my desk, is a name and phone number a parishioner gave me at the door after worship yesterday, someone who is a member, who needs a phone call, someone I am pretty sure I don't know, because I don't recognize the name, but that doesn't matter. He needs to hear from the church.
Silence. Just what did I mean when I claimed silence as a gift? And not only that, I said it is my core gift, the core of my being - Silence. What did I mean?
Maybe it was a wish, a prayer. Maybe it is what I most want to have and to be. Silence. Not a gift already actualized, but one yearning to be made alive.
