Zip it!!

That’s right.  You heard me.

My new year’s resolution is to do just that.  To Zip it.  Let me explain.

Late last year my wife and I went to Cape Town to watch Linkin Park live in concert.  I had been waiting for that moment for like, 10 years or more and when it finally arrived I was determined to make the most of it.  So needless to say I sang (OK, screamed) my head off.  As a result, I awoke the morning after with that tell-tale scratch in my throat that said I might sound a bit like Barry White for the foreseeable future.

As it turned out, I sounded like Barry for a full week before my voice petered away to nothing…slap bang in the middle of a workshop with a client.  Instead of rescheduling the workshop we forged ahead; me handing written instructions to a colleague who in turn would read these out to the group.  Somehow, we limped through the day in this fashion. 

Then came the trip home.  Savage rainstorms had hammered Gauteng throughout the afternoon disrupting flights out of ORT by several hours.  What made it worse was that the airlines weren’t being completely honest about the delays and my flight got pushed out at least three times.  In the end, I flew out four hours late just before midnight.

Yet in spite of the obvious turmoil, the experience held the seeds of an intriguing discovery  - one profound enough to become enshrined as a resolution for 2013.  In a nutshell, here it is: 

When you can’t complain, the experience you wish to complain about isn’t half as frustrating as it would be if you could complain.  Therefore Zip It

Or put another way, silence is Golden.

The discovery came at about 10.45 when I bumped into my friend Robbie who’d been travelling for 2 days and was itching to get home to spend the weekend with his wife and small baby girl.  Robbie let fly with a stream of vitriol, no doubt hoping I’d add to it with a touch of my own hot air.  The more he vented, the more agitated he got.  When he was finished, I just gestured apologetically at my throat, croaked feebly and indicated with a slicing motion that I was a mute.  He nodded, said sorry and we parted ways.

I reflected on the evening which in some ways had been quite frustrating.  Yet once I’d resigned myself to the delay and settled down with a Cappuccino and my book it was actually quite an agreeable experience.  What's more, because I couldn’t recount the story to my wife the following day – or for the following three days - the experience rapidly faded from memory.  What role had being voiceless played in this strange phenomenon?  I don’t know but I’m sure it was a key factor.

The experience led me to two Bible stories in which people had been temporarily struck dumb because they failed to believe the promises of God.  One was Abraham’s wife Sarah (Genesis 17) and the other was John the Baptist’s father Zechariah (Luke 1).  A Typical interpretation of these two events suggests that the individuals concerned were being punished for their unbelief, which, so far as it goes, was probably true.  But was punishment the only end?  I believe that in at least one instance (Zechariah’s), the enforced silence was meant to create the space for the individual to grasp the momentous thing that God was doing.  As John emerges from his mother’s womb, Zechariah literally explodes into prophecy about both the significance of his son’s ministry and that of Jesus – suggesting his spirit had undergone  a massive change during his forced silence.

I am no saint but I’ve tasted just enough of silence’s benefits to believe that it’s going to play a key role in my spiritual growth this year. 

Who knows? I’ll keep you posted.