When God is Silent

Language is the deck of cards we have been give to name our experience.
There are hundreds of games we can play with it,
but in the end there are only fifty-two cards.
We cannot say anything with five aces in it,
or win an argument that calls for three red queens.
There are limits to our language,
and while most of the time fifty-two cards seem entirely too few,
the truth is that more would ruin the game.
Because we are limited in what we can say,
we know what it is to come to the end of speech- to come to the very edge of language- and to gaze slack-jawed at what still lies beyond.
If you have ever stood on a high cliff over the sea and felt that strange,
frightening pull toward the brink, then you know what I mean.
There is a human fascination with limits that is
both holy and chastening all at the same time. 

Without limits, we would have no feel for the infinite.
Without limits, we would be freed from out longing for what lies beyond.
It is precisely our inability to say God that teaches us who God is.
When we run out of words, we are very near the God whose name is unsayable. The fact that we cannot say it, however, does not mean we may stop trying.
The trying is essential to our humanity.
It is how we push language to the limit so that we may listen to it as it falls,
exploding into scripture, sonnet, story, song.
All these may fail in the end to name the living God,
but hey fail like shooting stars.

-Barbara Brown Taylor