Canter Bridge

Our predicament is on display from several angles. All that is productive, good, and joy-crafting in us is marred, dented, even chained. We are not what we could be and we cannot will ourselves out of this mess.

Nor are we doomed.

One of the angles of approach that provides a clear view on our damnable situation is the fear of other people that we suffer. It seems not to matter whether they possess the authority—moral or otherwise—that would make us subject to them or even eager to please. Nor does our own personal and professional coming of age solve our dilemma. We still live anxiously in the presence of other flesh, as the biblical dialect styles other human beings in order to bring out the limping, provisional, conditioned fragility of them. (more…)

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It is almost impossible to overvalue self-restraint. This is particularly true of the spoken word. When in doubt, a quiet pause is almost always a good idea. To think rather than speak right now is rarely a mistake.

Proverbs 29.20 gets at the matter from the negative side:

Do you see someone who is hasty in speech?
There is more hope for a fool than for anyone like that.

Not often is ‘hope for a fool’ the more likely of two outcomes. So does the proverb-teller underscore the disastrous path of what Seinfeld might have called the ‘fast-talker’.

It’s odd that creatures with an organ of speech planted right in the middle of our faces should inhabit an environment where using it is more often than not a bad idea. The Proverbs bear a second burden, that of teaching us to speak well. But before we can accomplish that, we must be taught to say less.

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