So about this no talking thing...

Here's the update on the whole Lenten silence thing (Hopefully this will satisfy Hack). For those of you who don't know, after a few weeks of what I felt was fruitful progress, the whole thing fell apart. I struggled with it for a while and really wanted to continue in the effort, but on the whole, I really felt that the whole practice was backfiring in a lot of ways.
Sometime in the third and fourth week of Lent, I needed to consider my goals for this whole thing and evaluate what was happening in reality. I wanted to learn how to listen better...but without my response, many people had essentially stopped talking to me. I wanted to remove myself from the center of conversations...and everytime I had something valuable to say, my miming and charading put the focus on my Lenten fast, rather than the conversation. Something wasn't working.
Of course, I had to ask myself, am I just being weak and undisciplined, and of course, there's definitely a good amount of affirmative response to that question. Not talking was hard, especially for me. But my decision to start talking again wasn't so much about the fact that I wanted to talk, as the fact that not talking really wasn't proving all that fruitful.
On top of the fact that I wasn't getting what I wanted out of it, there were several other problems I was having. First, not talking is incredibly socially awkward, and rather rude, especially when people aren't aware of the situation. Second, not talking works just fine in group settings, but in one-on-one situations, it can be rather offputting, for both myself and the other person. Part of me wished that wasn't the case. It'd be nice to be able to sit with people in silence and not have it be uncomfortable, and in some cases that's very possible, but by and large, our culture demands conversation and dialogue in a number of settings.
The third prblem I was having was that I was meeting a large number of new people. I was still very new to the community at the Doggett Center (Catholic Campus Ministry here at State) and was trying to get more involved. My relation to the Catholic Church is very much based on the value of community. The Church for me is much more about the people than anything else. I was finding it very difficult to integrate myself into the Doggett community in silence.
So basically, the silence thing worked for the first few weeks and I really did get a lot out of it. Probably the most valuable thing I learned during that time was simply that a significant amount of what I say on a daily basis really doesn't need to be said. I had a pretty good understanding of that going into Lent, but I really gained an appreciation for it. Forced to mime things and put a great deal of effort into making a point, you learn just how valuable each statement you make actually is. Guess what...most of it's not worth the effort, but there are some things that you'd give pretty much anything to express. Maybe that's the greatest bit of all of this. The fact that some things bring so much joy and excitement that you can't help but share them, the fact that we as humans are a social, communal group, and that some things just don't hold much meaning until you're able to share them with those you care about.
So that's that, another Lent, and some more good stuff to learn. It didn't last the whole time, but it was still a very valuable experience, and I learned even more about how valuable community really is.