Thursday, January 27, 2011

Mute Your Mouth

I've been thinking a lot about talking. I say SO many things in one day. And how many of them are positive and uplifting?  When I think about what sorts of things I should be saying, Eph 5:19(a) comes to mind, and always sort of baffles me: "addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs..." (ESV)  I understand what it says, but how do I do that??  I've always wanted to understand this verse and put it into practice, but I need a little guidance. 
What do you think about this verse?


There's a book called SoulPancake that Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office) co-authored, which challenges the reader to tackle "life's toughest questions".  While clicking through the preview, one page really struck me.  Have a look for yourself: 
It says: Cease your chatter. Don't speak for an entire day. Just listen. Describe your experience.



Can you imagine doing that? Muting your mouth for a whole day?? Even just pondering that experience made me come to realize a few things:


1. I would refrain from idle chatter
2. I would be challenged to express myself in other ways
3. I would THINK before I spoke!


I think I'll try it next week and let you know how it goes. How about you?
Posted by Steph McGee at 11:53 PM

3 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 28, 2011 at 12:29 PM

    Hi! I'm Alison, Tim Greiving's wife. His g-ma sent me a link to you blog and I'm following it and now I'm commenting on it! When I was in high school, every month or so I would go mute for a day, just because I found myself so over stimulated by life that the only way to cope was to shut down and not talk. It felt wonderful. Maybe I'll start that up again, but I'm not all that talkative anyway.:)

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  2. UnknownJanuary 28, 2011 at 2:30 PM

    Good post. That seems like it would be such a challenging task. I feel like I'd have to be doing something else-if I weren't talking. Maybe typing my thoughts, blogging, writing in a journal, reading-it would be hard. A friend of mine recently did this. One of the things that she noticed after not speaking for a day was that she looked people in the eyes more, I thought that was interesting. Here's here experience if you want a heads up on what to expect: http://kirstynrose.blogspot.com/2010/11/silence-is-golden.html

    Lovin' your posts steph!

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  3. LisaJanuary 29, 2011 at 8:59 PM

    My professor said an awesome quote today totally related to this. I can't remember who she said was the original person who said this but it goes something like this "brilliant people talk about ideas, smart people talk about events and dumb people talk about other people."

    The other part of what you wrote about in regards to listening is quite interesting! I can't imagine not talking for a whole day but consciously limiting your words and focusing on listening to what people have to say is so important. Thanks for the great thoughts as usual! :)

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