Word of the day "le non dit" - what have you left unsaid today?

"Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act." - Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

The quote above comes from Simon Barrow's twitter feed. It says alot about how silence is also something that can be heard, about how choosing not to say something, not to offer support, not to say what you think, feel or want is actually to say something very powerfully. To do nothing is actually to do something and to do it powerfully. This is about resistance and can of course be positive and negative.

In French the phrase "le non dit" - that which is not said - is about the rather Latin habit of not always saying things directly, about learning to read silences, about silences saying something; in very verbal cultures it is also about trying to tease out what has not been said despite the flow of words. In English we might say something like "there is alot that is being left unsaid".

But at another level it also made me wonder what is it each of may have left unsaid at the end of a day? What words of love, encouragement, hope have we left unsaid - do we always expect people to read between the lines to understand that we care about them? Sometimes though there are other things we have left unsaid - acts of injustice we haven't spoken about, fear we have let eat away inside us, unclear or painful situations we can no longer find words for let alone resolve, peacemaking we have been too tired to begin.
These few words of Bonhoeffer's can take us in many directions ...