Emerson and Silence

So first Sunday of every month, we LDS types have at church what's effectively open-mic night--no planned sermons, no assigned talks, just anyone and everyone who's there can get up and speak "as the spirit moves" them.  And just like other open-mics, you get quite the eclectic grab-bag of participants: mostly generic, lots of repetition (especially from the kids), lots of self-consciousness, some achingly heart-felt, some ramblers, some funny, some unintentionally funny, a few who miss the whole point...and then once in awhile, if you're really lucky, some truly, crazy, wild testifying comes across the microphone that sets your hairs on end--not often mind you, but just enough to keep you comin'.

It's hard to be too hard on any of these folks, really--everyone who testifies puts themselves out there, makes themselves vulnerable, in front of both their peers and strangers, not for fame and certainly not for money, awkwardly trying to express the inexpressible. 

There are days, though, that I wish we really were like, say, some Southern Baptist congregation, with some bona fide testifyin'!  I had a mission companion who served on St. Croix, and he told me that the LDS branch out there is so new, that everyone's a convert, many from Evangelical faiths, and when it comes to the first Sunday of the month, these folks get up and shout out, without self-consciousness and without guile, "I knooooow that Joseph Smith was a prophet o' da Lord!" "Amen, brutha!" someone will shout back.  "And I done do testify that the Book o' Mormon is da word o' God!"  "Ow!" "Preach it!" "Hallelujah!" come the call-backs.  "I done got the spirit!" someone else will shout. Oh my mercy, I would love to see that in Utah.

Of course, at the same time, no Mormon I know is Mormon due to theatrics--"I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching," wrote Emerson, and I think I know what he means.  We done got the Spirit too, I believe--at least, I can't think of a believing Mormon who is so otherwise--but it's something we sit in silence of, in awe of.  In fact, I would love to sit in a Sacrament meeting where precisely that happens: silence.  So many of the more awkward testimonies that come up, I believe, come up out of a sense of mere social awkwardness, that, well, someone's got to break the intolerable silence, and guilt-ridden, they trot up to the stand, like they're paying for their sins or completing a duty.

Well, to paraphrase Emerson again, these folks "do what is called a good action...much as they would pay a fine.  Their works are done as an apology...Their virtues are penances.  I do not wish to expiate, but to live."  Only approach the mic if you have something to say--and if we pass 2, 3, 5, 10 minutes in silence, well, what of that?  Whence cometh this strange American intolerance of silence?  Don't fear the silence, embrace it, enjoy it, be filled by it--who knows, we may find that, like Emerson, we will enjoy such a service better than any preaching.