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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: Silence is different from absence
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Jengie jon
Semper Reformanda
# 273
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Posted
I found myself writing that phrase in a totally different context but it struck me as containing a discussion.
Bad things happen.
Giving an account of an incident and having it accepted is a form of validation and healing. However, it can also lead to more pain and loss. When something is not spoken of we refer to it as 'keep silent'. That does not mean it did not happen. This so often gets expressed in other ways.
A time for silence, a time to speak.
When is it right to break silence?
Jengie
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"To violate a persons ability to distinguish fact from fantasy is the epistemological equivalent of rape." Noretta Koertge
Back to my blog
Posts: 20894 | From: city of steel, butterflies and rainbows | Registered: May 2001
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ThunderBunk
Stone cold idiot
# 15579
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Posted
Jengie, this is quite uncanny.
As I have mentioned elsewhere, someone I had been close to died recently. The process of grieving is complicated by the fact that he had a heart attack and brain injury ten years or so ago, and thus has been at least as much absent as present for some time.
The grieving process had rather stalled, and I was getting very agitated. A good friend with whom (and others) I share an hour's contemplative lectio divina of a chapter of Julian's revelations every fortnight walked back with me and as we walked shared an image from a film which she felt described exactly what I had not gone through, and she was exactly right. The point was that at the end of the film, the separated friends found each other; I will never, in my lifetime at least, see this person again.
That image, and the loving way she offered it precipitated my grieving process more perfectly than anything I can imagine. Silence might have been the more politic, "kinder" thing to do, but this image was so apposite that its sharing met my needs at that point perfectly.
On the other hand, I very much doubt she could have shared that or I could have received it without the previous hour spent mostly in silence.
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Currently mostly furious, and occasionally foolish. Normal service may resume eventually. Or it may not. And remember children, "feiern ist wichtig".
Foolish, potentially deranged witterings
Posts: 2208 | From: Norwich | Registered: Apr 2010
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