Sometimes
I feel talkative, and sometimes I don't. I really can't explain why
except to say that at times I feel inspired (an urge to write or talk
over which I seem to have little or no direct or willful control).
Inhibitions to speaking also seem outside willful control. There have
been times, especially over lunch, that I would have given my right
arm to have the facile ability to engage in entertaining conversation
with others sitting at the table. But, out of all proportion to the
apparent significance of the occasion, I earnestly have felt that God
did not want me to speak. It as is if my desire to speak is trumped
by higher authority. Composing papers in college shared in this
phenomenon. Sometimes I was inspired (again, outside willful control)
and had great energy and coming ideas. At other times (outside the
will) I experienced what only can be called an enforced silence.
These silences are occasionally problematic as we find ourselves in
command performance situations during which it is very awkward and
even penalizing to remain silent. I recall in high school being on a
panel aired by the local radio station in which I said not one word.
This was extremely awkward and humiliating, but I honestly felt as if
God desired that I remain silent. There is the saying “the devil
made me do it” ejaculated when we wish to rationalize our own
shortcomings. Perhaps saying that “God made me do it” is a
similar and more self-righteous rationalization of my own limitations
and excesses. I remember as a young man in college a professor saying
that when people begin to write, they sometimes experience the urge
to masturbate – a behavior that can seem more driven than willful.
Perhaps something similar is going on here, but I choose to dignify
the drive (or conversely its inhibition) by appealing to the throne
of God.
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