Day Twenty-One // March 20 // Tone-Deafness “Somewhere we know that, without silence, words lose their meaning; that without listening, speaking no longer heals; that without distance, closeness cannot cure.” – Henri Nouwen –
It is an ancient curse that feels shiny and new: tonedeafness. It’s not the actual physical disease that denies one’s ears the ability to hear, but the spiritual and emotional disease that denies our souls the ability to discern. It’s the one who laughs in the midst of another’s tears. It’s the one who dances to the music of a dirge. And we’ve all been guilty of it. We have all been in situations where we were not present enough in mind to read the cues. We’ve all missed the signals. Perhaps it’s not a cause of the rot, but it is certainly a symptom. The poorly worded phrase. The ill-timed joke.
