Listen to Life: Teach With Silence

TEACH WITH SILENCE

Her name was Vicki. She passed away this weekend, after a too-long battle against cancer, well before her midlife. I won’t pretend after her passing to know her better than I really did, but one could learn a lot from her by what she did not say, as well as what she did.

Vicki had a difficult adult life, most of which will not be referenced here. Included in her list of challenges were breast cancer, near remission, and reoccurrence of cancer throughout her body. Despite those circumstances over the past several years, people did not hear her complain, place blame, or curse fate. In her silence, one could hear her faith, poise, peace and resolve.

We often can say much more when we don’t speak; we can teach about reacting by our lack of actions. Life is neither easy nor fair; it is neither logical nor just; and, we can have few true expectations from it. In tribute to Vicki, I shall say little here tonight, other than that sometimes the most important lessons we can teach are those of our silence over speech, calm over rage, peace over fighting, and acceptance over blame.

God bless you, Vicki.



Listen to Life is an electronic newsletter that presents lessons for living by listening to life, based on the writing, poetry, photography, presentations and workshops of Dion McInnis. Stories such as these inspired the book, “Listen to Life: Wisdom in Life’s Stories,” published in 2005, available at Barnes and Noble, Amazon and Borders. Dion’s next book will share his views of being father and son.

To subscribe, send an email to: addnewsletter@dionmcinnis.com. To be removed from the subscription list, send email to:unsubscribe@dionmcinnis.comWeb link: www.dionmcinnis.com© 2007 Dion McInnis. All rights reserved.We encourage sharing Listen to Life in whole or in part if copyright and attribution are always included.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++