the words of our mouths, the looks on our faces

Supper at Emmaus
Caravaggio

when customers come into our restaurant that have suffered loss - the death of a loved one, especially - my staff tends to act as though nothing happened and/or look the other way. i, on the other hand, make sure i go up and sit with them for a few minutes to see how they are doing, tell them how sorry i am for their loss, let them talk. how can that be ignored? how can you not tell someone you are sorry they are hurting?

"i'm just not good at that sort of thing...." well, honestly --- who is? don't we all stumble over ourselves and our words when we are in an uncomfortable and awkward situation? we learned this week in "discovery" (neat word for "orientation") that communication is the three v's: visual, vocal and verbal - and they are assigned percentages:

VISUAL - 55%

VOCAL - 38%

VERBAL - 7%

what this means is when you are communicating something to someone else, your body language, your eyes, your mannerisms - they play about a 55% part of what is being received by the other person. how you are talking to them: tone of voice, inflection - 38%. what you are actually saying to them, only a mere 7%! communication in person is 93% visual and vocal -- i am not going to go so far as to say that what you are actually saying really doesn't matter, but in the whole scheme of things...............

does it not stand to reason, then, how difficult it is to communicate via message boards or weblogs when there is 93% of the equation actually missing from what we are trying to relate? yeah, smiley faces go a long (ha!) way :) and for those of you who have never had the privilege of hearing my voice (ha!), it is a tough thing to know what i am really trying to impart through my type-written words, but in our real-life situations, all of the above has a tremendous impact on what we are trying to communicate to someone else.

people are watching. they are relating to you on more than a superficial level. it matters what we say, surely, but how we say it and what we communicate to others with our eyes, i learned this week, is extremely important. people are watching, and it all matters.

just to take it to one more level, for believers it goes even deeper than that -- it starts with our hearts, doesn't it?

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart

Be acceptable in Your sight,

O LORD, my strength and my Redeemer. Psalm 19:14