Well, if you’ve been around my blog or read many of my comments, you might be tired of hearing that phrase. I’m starting to think it should be my life’s motto. But, now it’s giving me a problem.
You see, I care about communication. I really don’t care about being a great writer. But I do care about being actually understood–of having what you hear be pretty close to what I actually mean (what’s the point, if that doesn’t happen?).
And I think when a reader or listener hears me say “Thank you. I was deeply moved by your words” too frequently, the meaning might start to be lost. “There’s no way she can be that deeply moved that often.” Only I can. Really. It happens all the time. And it’s no less significant to me just because it happens frequently.
Still, I wish I had some other ways of saying it, so that when I try to communicate being deeply moved (yet again), my words don’t lose their impact or be heard as meaning something less than what I mean.
That’s my preface and disclaimer before I once again say the words.
I was deeply moved when reading Doris Lessing’s acceptance speech of the Nobel Prize for Literature. As much as I love to read, I’m notoriously culturally illiterate. I had no idea who Doris Lessing was until I followed a link from a comment on Lingamish’s blog. But, what a beautiful speech and nice way to be introduced to her. She gets quite a few profound, make-me-think, concepts across. And weaves stories and pictures to fill out and make the concepts stick.
As I read the words of her speech, I hear a woman full of life and passion, who has an incredible gift for creating connections. Reading the speech I feel connected again to places and people I have known in Africa.
But, it’s more than that. She also makes me feel like I’m there, seeing people and looking in on places I’ve never known. Somehow, through the way she weaves her words, those people and places feel alive and relevant and understandable, even here and now, to me, in a country far away, living a life very different from the one she is portraying in the stories she tells. (Along the lines of Emily Dickinson’s, “I never saw the moor, I never saw the sea; Yet know I how the heather look, And what a billow be.” Incidentally, Dickinson was born 177 years ago yesterday.)
Feeling that relevance and getting a glimpse into the lives of different people in a way that I can understand is delightful to me. All of that, and a whole lot more is what is behind the phrase “I was deeply moved by Doris Lessing’s speech.” Go read it. It’s beautiful.
And while I’ll never be a writer, nor do I even aspire to be one, I have a greater appreciation for what it takes for a person gifted with the mind and abilities to pass on stories, to actually be able to use that giftedness to write those stories down. To give the gift of written words. To craft that story in a way that it comes alive on paper, without the benefit of intonation, sound effects or body language to get your point across.
I get moved (really I do–I’m not just saying it!) thinking about things that touch me deeply, and which I “nearly missed” or which I conceivably could have gone my merry way without knowing. This speech feels like one of those near misses. So, in addition to being happy that I read it, I’m extra happy because I realize I truly wasn’t very far away from NOT having read it.
I told two people last night that I was deeply moved by their music, only to end up leaving the event feeling like a dupe. I must have been in a highly sensitive mode last night, but I burst into tears once I got in the car, feeling like a fool for sharing my heart with two people who had moved me, only to feel that they really didn’t understand. I was trying to give them a compliment! Did I stumble over my words, or what? I felt like I got the glazed over look, the look past my shoulder, the puzzled stare, the vibe that my words didn’t really connect.
Personally, I don’t understand this. If I ever publish a book and have the privilege to speak places and give a book signing, I’m going to be careful to sit and be present and listen to people and receive what they have to say. Especially since I know what it’s like to screw up one’s courage and take the risk to tell someone how they made me feel.
Anyway, enough of my rant. But your disclaimer at the beginning of this post hit me right where I was this morning.
PS: You can expect a reply e-mail from me real soon, I promise!
“If I ever publish a book and have the privilege to speak places and give a book signing, I’m going to be careful to sit and be present and listen to people and receive what they have to say.” Maybe that is the redemptive part of those miserable situations when we put our heart out there only to have it missed or have people make assumptions that seem worlds away from what was intended in the sharing. I would guess that you would have been present and receptive to what was on people’s hearts when they shared even if you hadn’t had your own heart missed. But, I suppose now it will be an even more conscious and deliberate gift that you will hold out to those whom you will touch and move deeply with the expresion of yourself and your God-given gifts.
I’m just relieved you didn’t misread my disclaimer
You wouldn’t believe (maybe you would!) how just the giving of the disclaimer creates confusion and missed understanding.
Thanks for your post here. And thanks for your comments at my post on Denver Moore and Ron Hall and Debbie Hall, and how they’ve moved so many of us with their stories, and their story together. Hope you find their book, Same Kind of Different as Me.
Thanks for your thoughts on Doris Lessing’s speech. Yes, moving in all the ways you describe. You make me remember Toni Morrison’s Nobel speech from 1993: http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/morrison-lecture.html .
And you make me think of the ways Jesus’s first followers describe him, many many times and in different ways “moved” by people all around him. Thanks again.
Thanks, J.K. for stopping by. I appreciate the link to Toni Morrison’s speech. Very good, and a lot to chew on there! I hadn’t made the connection with my current thoughts, to how deeply and frequently Jesus was moved by those around him.