Words, Wordlessness, and the Word

In silent worship one can ritualistically participate in the unity of Godhead by abandoning the in authenticity of words. But words are not eliminated in Quaker worship, which reconciles the human necessity of speaking with the spiritual need for silence. Most deeply, words and wordlessness are allies; silence is not speech's elimination so much as its seed-bed, an excess of messages expressed, unexpressed, and perhaps inexpressible. In meeting, as in Beckett's novel The Unnamable, the wordless silence of the Word paradoxically gives meaning to the messages, just as the messages paradoxically give meaning to the silence.