Reading between the lines

This afternoon it just occurred to me that I learn more from other people and more about them by listening closely to what they don’t say rather than by listening to what they do. Of course, I don’t mean that that’s my starting point, or that I learn by listening to them when they’re not speaking at all—that would be absurd. They have to speak, or write, and it’s by hearing or reading their words that I also learn from what they don’t express. I suppose that’s the plain meaning of “reading between the lines,” and so I’m not claiming to have received some kind of revelation. But I just now realized how much of my thinking about other people and the world around me comes from this kind of listening, and I wonder if the same is true of me, that people learn more from me and about me in the same way.

It seems to me that real life is actually lived “between the lines” of our visible existence. That’s where we are, that’s where the Lord is, and that’s where we meet Him, and that place we carry about with us as we move through the world.

Could it be that this is why we feel at home nowhere
and yet can be happy everywhere?
Is it because the Lord our God is with us
in a manner that cannot be taken away?

Glory to You, O God, glory to You!