Words

I started a blog this week. Maybe it's because I don't want to be left behind as the world whizzes into the future. Maybe it's because I have had a glimpse of the way "networking" creates power. My late friend John Hornbuckle told me back in the middle of the 1980's, when I bought my first computer, that I wouldn't really have experienced computers until I had experienced networking. (This was before the invention of the "world wide web" and before I had first experienced the internet which was in 1988.) Maybe it's because I have been involved in "open-source" software for 8 years, and I believe in the empowerment that comes from a community working together.

Whatever the reason, I did it. I'm letting you know about it. And herewith some reflections on my rash action.

When I was in high school I assumed that I would become a scientist or engineer. Mathematics and Physics seemed to come naturally to me. I could relate to numbers, shapes, the relationships between things. I once dreamed of making an ultra-accurate pendulum clock that had been featured in Scientific American. (This was just before the invention of quartz crystal, and then atomic, clocks that are the basis for time-keeping these days.)

But there was another side that I couldn't ignore. Maybe it was related to my abilities with music. I had been good at that, too. It wasn't as much the technical ability of making music - that has to do with "numbers, shapes, and relationships", together with coordination - but it had more to do with a sensitivity to a more elusive side to music. It was the beauty, the spirit, of the music that I could sense.

This same side of me could be seen in the response I made to church summer camp when I was 13 and 14 years old. I caught a glimpse of the spirit that was associated with the Holy Spirit and I wanted to know (or experience) more of it.

Now these impulses may be no more than is present in every adolescent, but these were mine. So by the time I got to college, I abandoned the assumption that I would be an engineer and I began to explore language, both formally and informally.

What captivated me about language was not the scientific or quantifiable aspect of language. It was the power of language to point to what was beyond. Language, words, have the power to point us beyond language itself, to what can not be said.

It is a strange thing that as human beings, the only way we can talk about the ineffable is with words. From that age onward, words have seemed to me to be most valuable when they express what words cannot express. They reach beyond themselves to the world of spirit.

During these years I became especially aware of the power of words. They were able to express something beyond the bare meanings of individual words. It was in images that could be evoked. It was in a harmony that could be made to "play" when certain words were brought together.

Words could be used for good and for ill. They were behind the power of demagogues and tyrants as well as providing us the link to saints and mystics. Poets could be intolerable as human beings and at the same time use words that lifted others into the neighborhood of God. It was possible to get the meaning of words profoundly wrong. At one point "bad" came to mean "good."

An example for me was the time I made what I thought were wonderful, special Christmas greetings. I had been pursuing the link between various Greek philosophers and the use of the word "word" (logos) in the opening of John's gospel. I spent weeks carving a linoleum block with the Greek of John's prologue. And only at the end of my labors did I realize that I had forgotten to carve the whole thing backwards. (So that when printed it would come out right.) The experience has been a reminder to me that it is possible to get the impact of words precisely and radically wrong!

Words are slippery. They seem so solid, but they're more like mercury. Useful and powerful, yes. But mercurial, yes, too. You can't really pin them down.

What a Wonderful symbol
for God's Son.

God spoke and it was. Through the word, the world came to be. Through the Word, the light beyond light came into the world. But no word or words can pin this Word down.

Words seem to be one of the essential features of human beings. Though elements of language and communication can be found throughout the natural world (something we know only from the advances of science in recent years), language as such seems to be distinctly human. Our words link us to one another, perhaps because we can call one another by name. We have a name. And you can know my name. We can have a relationship. We are linked.

I opened a blog this week because of my own conviction that words have power to link us in communion. That words have the ability to unite us. I am not under the illusion that my words, or my blog, are in any special way powerful. But as of now I have put them out there for you to read. You can also comment on any of my words if you would like. May God's Word, the living One, bless you.