The New Work of Composing

Often, one of the reasons that we are afraid to speak is that we don’t know how our words will be taken. We don’t know whether our combinations of words will be effective for those who hear or read them. One of the biggest barriers to communication is the unexpected word. It is too easy to shut down, to break communication, when we encounter the unexpected. We have become so used to easy communication, to transparency, that we are alienated by what we don’t expect. Boundary conversations are scary. But this a modern response to the unexpected. As we can see in the following description of medieval Jewish rhetoric, the unexpected was significantly valued:

1. Yet surprise was the element the preacher strove to achieve in his homily; it was also what the congregation expected, and the basis on which his artistic prowess was assessed. Surprise was achieved in only one way: by creating an unexpected connection between the text and the theme of the sermon. In a good sermon, the wellknown text was revealed in a totally new light. That every listener knew the preacher’s text, its context, its accepted interpretation, and usually the main commentaries, and some of its aggadic and midrashic exegesis, actually served the preacher’s artistic method. Interest in the sermon was created by the fact that the listeners were anxious to learn what the preacher saw in verses whose interpretation they already knew. The artistry of the preacher was revealed in demonstrating that the text had unsuspected depths, and that it could be connected to the theme of the sermon, though initially there had apparently been no link between them. (Carlebach, 2008, n.p.)
   

We should not so summarily discount the element of surprise in our conversations—oral, written, and digital—as to do so limits the scope and the potential of what we can say.