A lifetime of conversations passed before I sat, quiet and unnecessarily stiff, in a pew in a church in which I'd never been. Though new to the party, I'd already arrived late and I was still feeling a bit on edge and nervous from rushing to my seat as I entered. Though I was not yet fully present, one phrase found its way to my ear, past my brick wall of tension, and into my head, pulling at the millions of conversations making up my current person.

"I believed, therefore I have spoken."

I make no habit of basing my writing in my Catholic background; I rarely find it necessary, effective, or inclusive for the sake of my messaging. This phrase, however, did not matter to me so much as a Bible verse; my involuntary mental reaction to it had nothing to do, necessarily, with faith.

It came, instead, as a call to interact with conviction.

The lessons we can draw from this phrase are twofold. First, it is not only unnecessary but also harmful to speak for the sake of adding words. Our political and even social interactions have become inundated with extra commentary based in neither knowledge, purpose, nor conviction. It is tragically easy to hold strong opinions that we formed based not on research, awareness of the news, experience, or knowledge, but rather on something as biased and unreliable as semi-political Internet memes.

We are well aware that it is our duty, particularly as citizens of a democracy, to be well-informed and form our own opinions about issues. The problem is that we often react to this duty by grasping at opinions without doing the work to form them logically. It is self-serving, certainly, to talk at people simply to sound like we have a smart opinion. But it becomes downright harmful when other people then take such unsubstantiated ideas or even misinformation into their own repertoire and the cycle continues.

So, lesson one: Only speak once you have formed a belief based on trustworthy information and adequate reflection.

But there is another lesson to be taken from the verse. Once we have formed our beliefs- not momentary concepts taken from an unreliable source, but an idea in which we strongly believe- we should speak. And we should speak in a way which gives respect to the fact that we believe in what we are saying.

The most convincing people are those who speak with conviction, whose eyes brighten, who are more than fully present and assert the presence of the issue at hand, who incorporate emotion and data and stories and reasoning. These are the people who do not just have a passing opinion but believe. And that is the person from whom I will listen and learn. This is what we want of conversation. We want to learn about both the issue and about our conversation partner all at once; we want to engage in discussion in which both parties care and are invested. Ultimately, we want to come to a productive conclusion rather than state one idea we saw somewhere.

Lesson two, then: Speak with conviction to beliefs about which you care.

For the rest of the church service, I breathed and I listened. Because if I'm to have any belief- political or otherwise- I have to pay attention and gain conviction of my own. "I believed, therefore have I spoken." This must inform the future of my convictions and conversations.