Food for thought

The following excerpt is from Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis.  In it, the main character Orual has just presented her case against the gods.  She is complaining to them of the perceived injustice in her life.

“Enough,” said the judge.

There was utter silence all around me.  And now for the first time I knew what I was doing.  Now I know that I had been reading my complaint over and over–perhaps a dozen times.  I would have read it forever, quick as I could, starting the first word again almost before the last was out of my mouth, if the judge had not stopped me.  And the voice I read it in was strange to my ears.  There was given to me a certainty that this, at last, was my real voice.

There was silence in the dark assembly long enough for me to have read my complaint out yet again.  At last the judge spoke.

“Are you answered?” he said.

“Yes,” said I.

The complaint was the answer.  To have heard myself making it was to be answered.  Lightly men talk of saying what they mean.  When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about the joy of words.  I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer.  Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean?  How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?

…The air was growing brighter and brighter and brighter about us; as if something had set it on fire.  Each breath I drew let into me new terror, joy, overpowering sweetness.  I was being unmade.  I was no one.  The earth and stars and sun, all that is or will be, existed for his sake.  And he was coming.  The most dreadful, the most beautiful, the only dread and beauty there is, was coming.  The pillars on the far side of the pool flushed with his approach.  I cast down my eyes.

…I ended my first book of complaint with the words no answer.  I know now, Lord, why you utter no answer.  You are yourself the answer.  Before your face questions die away.  What other answer would suffice?  Only words, words; to be led out to battle against other words.

Guard your steps when you go to the house of God.  Go near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools, who do not know that they do wrong.  Do not be quick with your mouth, do not be hasty in your heart to utter anything before God.  God is in heaven and you are on earth, so let your words be few.  A dream comes when there are many cares, and many words mark the speech of a fool. ~Ecclesiastes 5:1-3