It's good to talk

Last week Dave, the postman, delivered no less than four church publications through the manse letterbox on the same day; so, I had more than enough to browse through over the morning coffee.  Lots of words!

It’s significant that the Pandemic hasn’t made us talk less!  We’ve been able to fill our own church magazine with interesting articles even when we were hardly meeting at all in person.

I rather like the phrase the ‘Chattering Class’ describing folk who love nothing better than to chew things over in conversation (it currently happens after every Sunday morning service in the car park in groups of six!).  Of course, we can over analyse or descend into gossip.  Yet talking things through often brings an unexpected solution or at least sheds a different light on a subject giving us a broader perspective. 

Listening to others is an important ingredient in discernment.

I was talking the other day to a colleague who told me he hadn’t, and these were his words: ‘read anything in years’.  Well, I read – both the periodicals that came through the door last week and the tomes recommended by the two book groups to which I belong - because it’s a way of me avoiding a life that is just ‘self-referencing’.  I need the bigger horizons and reading books and talking with others helps give me that.

It’s good to talk, and in the process listen.