silence

I'm tired today and my brain is functioning at a low level.

As I write this I hear the sound of the gusty rain falling.

For some reason I began thinking about silence. As you know, silence can signify many things, it has many different functions. Sometimes, perhaps too often, silence walks hand-in-hand with judgement, with weighing others and finding them wanting. It's the silence of disapproval, of censure.

There is another silence too. Think of Christ's silence before the woman caught in adultery and facing death by stoning. This is an enigmatic silence, for it is accompanied by Christ's drawing or writing on the ground - the narrative doesn't reveal what.

Whatever he was writing or drawing in his silence, he concludes it not with condemnation but with a word of mercy and freedom.

No wonder this pericope has been so controversial in the history of the church.