I Read Out Loud To Nobody

You read four paragraphs out loud in your own kitchen on Sunday and there was nobody there.

You have done it for years. Not performing, not rehearsing anything. A sentence turns up in the book that is worth hearing, and your mouth wants to say it, so you say it, out loud, to a kitchen.

And you would not tell anybody that. You have never told anybody that, in about eleven years, because you live alone and reading out loud to an empty room is exactly the sort of detail a person keeps to themselves in case it means something.

Two things are not coming here, and you have met them both.

Nobody is handing you a list. Not a title, not an author, not a genre, and no shelf of what anybody ought to have read by now. Being handed one has never once opened a book.

And nobody is saying one word about your phone. You know about the phone. Everybody knows. Being told again by a stranger returns nothing at all.

What I want to look at is the keeping quiet about it, because the thing itself is fine and the secrecy is what has made it strange.

Scripture has somebody doing exactly this and naming it as one of the good things.

The voice of joy

There is a line in Psalm 42 where the psalmist is remembering something, and the detail he keeps is the sound of it.

When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday. (Psalm 42:4, King James Version)

Notice what he pours out and where.

I pour out my soul in me. In me. This is happening inside one person, alone, remembering. There is no congregation in this verse; the multitude is in the memory and the man is by himself.

And the thing he remembers is a sound. With the voice of joy and praise. Not the thought of joy, not the feeling of it. The voice.

You are keeping a thing Scripture names by its sound, and a voice in an empty room has never once been a strange thing to have. Psalm 42:4 has a man pouring out his soul alone while remembering a voice, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a kitchen on a Sunday.

There is one more piece in that psalm and it settles the aloneness.

The whole psalm is one person talking. He addresses his own soul directly, out loud on the page, and asks it questions and answers them, and Scripture keeps every word of it. A person by themselves, using their voice, at length, is what that psalm physically is.

You have a voice that is doing something Scripture does, and talking out loud alone has never once needed an audience to be legitimate. It is written when I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me, the whole psalm is one voice by itself and the Bible keeps all of it, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The secrecy is what made it odd

Here is the mechanism, and it is not about the reading at all.

Reading out loud alone is unremarkable. Never mentioning it for eleven years is what gave it weight.

Consider what happens to a habit that is never spoken about. It gets no reflection back from anybody, so it never gets normalized, and it sits in the part of a person's head where the things they are not sure about live. And things in that part of the head accumulate a small dread, entirely independently of what they actually are.

So the four paragraphs on Sunday are fine. The eleven years of not telling anybody is where the strangeness came from, and it was manufactured by the silence rather than by the act.

You are carrying a secrecy and not a symptom, and eleven years of never mentioning it has never once made a thing odd. Psalm 42:4 keeps a man's solitary voice and prints all of it, and the Holy Spirit is present with a woman who has told nobody for eleven years.

And there is a second layer, and it is the one worth being warm about.

The reason you do it is good. A sentence lands, and the mouth wants it, and saying a good sentence out loud is one of the oldest pleasures there is. That is why it happens, and it is not a substitute for company and it is not a sign of anything.

It is also true that living alone means there is nobody to say it to, and that is a real thing and it is worth saying plainly rather than dressing up. Both of those are true at once and neither cancels the other.

You have a real pleasure and a real absence, and one of those has never once been an explanation for the other. The written word has one voice pouring out a soul while remembering a multitude, and both the voice and the memory are kept, and His Spirit is the one who takes a manufactured strangeness off a good thing.

One page out loud tonight

So here is the assignment, and it has a house in it.

Read one page out loud to somebody in your house tonight.

Here is the thing about that instruction in your case. There may be nobody. So the assignment adapts, and it adapts in a direction you will not expect.

Read one page out loud, as usual, in the kitchen. And then tell one person about it this week.

You have a voice Scripture keeps every word of, and eleven years of telling nobody have never once made a good thing odd. The Holy Spirit is the one in that kitchen with you, and Psalm 42:4 has a man pour out his soul in himself and remember the voice of joy.

Not a confession. Not an explanation. Just the sentence: I read out loud to myself sometimes when a line is good. Say it to a friend, in passing, in the middle of something else.

Here is why that is the assignment.

The reading is not the problem and it never was. The eleven years of silence around it is what turned an ordinary pleasure into a thing with weight, and one sentence said to one person takes the weight off permanently.

And most people will say something back that surprises you. A great many people do it and almost nobody says so.

You are able to say one sentence to one person this week, and eleven years of a good habit has never once needed to be hidden. Psalm 42:4 says with the voice of joy and praise, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a woman telling a friend a small true thing about herself.

And if there is somebody in the house tonight, read them a page. And if there is not, read it to the kitchen as usual and then make the phone call.

You have a voice Scripture is comfortable with, and reading out loud alone has never once been a thing you needed to keep quiet. It is written I pour out my soul in me, the pouring out is internal and the psalm is one voice at length with nobody else in it, and the Spirit of God is saying it in a kitchen tonight.