Be of few words: Her Majesty's war on verbosity - Christmas card stamp rates - A Christmas Note from Scotland - Column

Commonweal, Dec 17, 1993 by Deborah Smith Douglas

The more I browsed, the more I came up with handfuls of fives. Her Majesty's limitation, which at first had seemed so arbitrary and unreasonable - so ungenerous - began to appear almost recklessly extravagant. After all, so many powerful sayings were compact in four words - Mother Julian's visionary "All shall be well," for instance. And how could Peter have borne another syllable in Jesus' piercing "Do you love me?"

Come to think of it, some deeply significant affirmations, invitations, promises, dramas, and blessings, consist of three words: "So Abram went." "He is risen!" "Come and see." "Go in peace." "Jesus is Lord."

Or two! I recalled how moved I had been, on the remote Hebridean Isle of Iona, by the inscription on the watchtower of the lonely abbey church: "Stand fast." What compressed sorrow lies in "Jesus wept," what immensities of self-offering are implied in "Yes, Lord."

For that matter, didn't one word often say what most needed to be said? Surely "Alleluia" and "Amen" are all we really need most of the time.

By the end of the week (much of which I spent secretly counting the words of, and lamenting the excesses of, telephone conversations, newspaper headlines, and public service announcements on the radio), I was convinced that five words - or four, or three, or even two - can speak volumes. Just as a memorable meal can be prepared from a few simple ingredients, so can a feast of meaning be conveyed by an apparent dearth of words. There is a lesson for my loquacious spirit here, a deep learning about fasting and feasting, about self-discipline, about simplicity and silence.

Perhaps Emily Dickinson summed it up when she observed that "the banquet of abstemiousness effaces that of wine" (even if it did take her eight words to say it).

Deborah Smith Douglas is a writer, wife, and mother who has been weighing her words on a sabbatical in Scothland.