I know, MMario. ANd I understand completely what you said too, Jerry.

I think it's kinda strange I posted my thoughts about the virtues of Silence here, just after Bobert's wonderful Christmas story gave me the courage to witness for Jesus as Divine Healer myself. Sometimes I really don't understand myself at all ...

Truth is, I love Jesus so much I can't bear to think that any ill-timed or ill-placed words of mine might draw more pain or ridicule or abuse His way. (Not that such ridicule or abuse harms Him, mind you, just all the rest of the people involved)

It's doubly difficult for me, I think, because no matter what my personal relationship with Jesus might be, I do not label myself as "Christian". I can't, for many excellent personal reasons.

My own spiritual understandings and practices have evolved in a way that leave me an outsider in any religious organization or spiritual group. So it's been quite the long, lonely haul. And a much more peaceful one when I have the strength and presence of mind to practice silence as a virtue. Which, as most of you here know, is certainly not always the case!