B
BarbaraTherese
Guest
Hi Pug…Would some people be willing to post specific examples of superflous speech in action? I’ve had trouble with understanding just what is and isn’t it. For example, when I see my brother I often joke with him as the first thing. It works well to show him I’m glad to see him. He is very secular and I’m much older than him. I could have gone with the serious elder over the years, but instead I’ve gone with the teasing elder who can be relied upon to be there for him. That role fits better into our family mix. It could be taken that my words are just to make him laugh, but from my perspective that is not the case. They tell him in a comfortable way that I am very glad to see him, and him specifically, because I joke only with him in that certain way, and not my other brother. The other one gets his own form of greeting.
Huh, maybe I guess examples of what is good joking and good non-superflous interaction. Honestly, I don’t know how to build up social bonds without some teasing and joking and extra chat beyond “edifying” stuff. I build bonds with interested questions about hostas and lilies and water features and whether or not Hickory is better than Mesquite (it is, by the way).
What you speak of above is for the edification of the other person. You wish to make him at ease and to communicate your joy in being with him and you adopt the means you insight are necessary to effect these positive results. This is not gossip or idle chatter or superfluous conversation.
We understand much more today about human communication than in the days when our classical spiritual works were written.
In reading these works we need to put them into the context of our own lives and common sense and with some works other relevant contexts too. The works are most edifying and also very true. St. Albert and the first person to form a religious way of life and write rule for it - very simple and short rule, in his closing comments to that rule wrote “common sense is the guide of all the virtues”.
Most of these works are written by religious and for religious whose lifestyle, duties etc. are entirely different to a lay life. In other words, we need to use our common sense and get the intrinsic spiritual theology in these works into the context of our ordinary lay life.
Barb