December 6, 2015 - 20:37
I don't know what you can do with this, but I was thinking it and I want to share:
Have you ever been to a religious conference? When I went to the Union for Reform Judaism Biennial, it was packed with panels and plenaries and sessions. But it was also--in true Jewish fashion--filled with noshing and shmoozing and praying. It was overwhelming, but it was supposed to be complemented with reflection. I think those kinds of reflective conferences are out there and they work. Your colleagues are wrong. Redesign the conference.
Why are the conferences this way in the first place? Why is college (and many other institutional and educational spaces) structured this way. Why does our society so often shun silence? Whom does it serve?
I really liked this quote: "The deliberate practice of silence accomplishes far more, however, than increasing the range of things that might be said. It reminds us that everything that is important cannot be said."
It was really cool reading what you wrote, because I was there, in The Rhetorics of Silence, learning to think differntly not just about words, but about the silences between words and the silences with no bounds. I started to even question this idea of silences between words; maybe the words are between silences. Does a zebra have black on white stripes or white on black stripes? Sometimes it depends on the zebra.
Similar to my experience with silence in this class, this whole 360 challenged me to examine, deconstruct, rethink many things I assumed to be true, things I often didn't realize I assumed to be true.
Let the silence of gratitude suffice here and below are all of the important things that cannot be put into words:
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