"Half As Long" Authentic Dialogue

In A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean remembers being a young boy and trying to write an essay for his Father.  Every time he submitted it the Reverend Maclean would give it back to Norman for revision and say, “Half As Long”. Maybe this is why his best work, “A River Runs Through It” was only a 100 pages or so.

I tend to think many things should be half as long. There have been many speakers who I know could have said what they had to say in half the time or as I sometimes sarcastically say, “It could have been spoken in 5 minutes”. I would imagine there are fishing guides who explain way too much and talk and talk about how much they know about fly fishing, all the techniques, and bugs,  as the client stands there wondering  if he signed up for a lecture or a fishing trip. Ironically it is often educators of various sorts who should be the best at understanding attention spans and keeping their audiences engaged who often go on and on.  And then there have been many sermons I painfully endured and thought, “It could have been half as long”, or, spoken in perhaps 5 minutes, or,  perhaps not spoken at all.

I guess when it comes to preachers I often wonder if any of them, or if any of us (since in some sense we are all “preachers” of one kind or another), had nothing new to say, (or, if not something new but  maybe even if we were simply bored with saying the same things over and over),  if we could be honest enough to simply state this fact. Can we imagine a preacher getting up in front of the congregation on a Sunday morning and saying, “I am sorry, but I just don’t have anything to say this morning.”?  Or could a guide, when the fish are not biting simply shut up and not go on and on offering up explanations about why they are not catching fish? As Christians, as authentic human beings, as preachers and teachers and guides,  I often think we would be better off to say less.

In C.S. Lewis’s fantasy novel called “Perelandra”, there is a planet that has never experienced the fall. The “first” woman lives on this planet and knows nothing of sin, deception and double talk. A man from earth is sent to this planet. He and the woman talk. At one point she asks him a question of which he does not have an answer. Like many of us would do, he tries to answer the question anyway and the woman laughs. He asks her, “Why did you laugh at me”? She honestly responds, “I laughed because you had nothing to say about it and yet made the nothing up into words”.

Is that what we do sometimes when we have nothing to say about the Divine or about why we are not catching fish?  We take nothing and make the nothing up into words?

If that is the case, and I often think it is, I sure do appreciate and prefer the words, “I just don’t know”.