Words_are_just

Words are Just Words

Mary Oliver writes: "There is so much communication and understanding beneath and apart from the substantiations of language spoken out or written down that language is almost no more than a compression, or elaboration ... not at all essential to the message."
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Rumi writes, in Coleman Bark's translation: "Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing there is a field. I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase 'each other' doesn't make any sense."
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Ric Masten has a love song that ends up "Words may be pretty / As beads on a string / But words / Are just words / Would you settle / For the real thing?"
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Sometimes, we have to settle for words.

We have lots of words, and they are important to us. Watch a baby intently watching lips, learning how to make those noises with meanings. Look how we attach significance to them and what they mean, especially when they get strung together into contracts and laws, poems and songs ... and sacred texts.

We sang this morning that we find our holy writ "where'er a human heart / a sacred torch of truth has lit,/ by inspiration taught." And look at the Living Traditions We Share printed on the back of the order of service. In a faith community like ours, which finds wisdom and value and inspiration coming from many sources, including holy books of other religions, knowing the intended meaning of the words may just be important to our own spiritual growth.

Also, the interpretations of the Christian holy book have fundamentally influenced the culture we are a part of. That culture has found justification in its holy book for wars and empires, the excuse for slavery and for its condemnation. The supporting of monarchy. And democracy, socialism, capitalism, and so much more. So, what someone thinks words mean can affect many.

So too with the words of the sacred texts of Islam and other religions that help human beings decide how to live on this planet.

And then we bump up against what words cannot do, especially in matters of the spirit.

Let's talk about words.
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A few years ago a friend from Nigeria was visiting me here. His first time out of Africa.

Felix is my friend. He is a Pentecostal, Born-again Christian. He's very active in his church. While he was here, he asked if there were a church he could attend. So, we went off to an English-speaking Baptist church in Berkersheim.

After the church service we were invited to a potluck Thanksgiving meal in the church's basement. There, we learned that the minister had done missionary work in Nigeria. In the North, among the Yaruba. The religion there is a mixture of Islam and various nature-based traditions.

The minister in Berkersheim remarked that when he was delivering his message to the Yoruba, he had not allowed the word "god" to be translated. He did not want Islam's "Allah" to get any of the credit for the good the Christian "God" would bring into the listeners' lives.

And that set me to wondering. What word would Jesus of Nazareth, speaking Aramaic, have used to refer to God? What's the word in Aramaic for "god"?

Well, a book, The Hidden Gospel by Neil Douglas-Klotz, has come into my hands with the answer. The word is Alaha.

So the feared word "Allah" would have been closer to Jesus' word than the "God" word which the missionary insisted be used.

And in the same book I learn that Alaha means unity. Interesting, perhaps, to Uni-tarian Uni-versalists; we twice blessed with unity in our name. Interesting too when the teachings of this Aramaic-speaking Jesus became the basis of a religion that makes belief in a trinity, a three-part god, an article of its faith.

My own experiences with trying to learn another language have pointed out to me how bound to a culture a language is - how often I "can't say that" in the other language, but have to use an approximation. So, I'm not surprised to learn from Neil Douglas-Klotz that in Aramaic, and Hebrew too, there is only one preposition for the idea of "within" and for "among" - for matters of the interior, emotional life; and of the exterior, social community; it's the same word. In a language like that, how I would think about the "selves" within me is connected with how I think about friends, enemies, neighbors.

As it is, my languages and cultures are very influenced by Greek thinking that divides up human life into lots of little cubbyholes: mind, body, psyche, spirit and emotions. Semitic languages don't divide reality the same way. The words about the subconscious self are connected to those of the communal self - "they imply a continuum between what we call spirit and body, not a division," according to Douglas-Klotz.

In The Hidden Gospel are many examples of what the folks listening to Jesus' words in Aramaic would have heard - what the associations the words would have had for them.

As an example, the first line of the prayer often called the Lords Prayer or Our Father is given in the King James version as "Our Father which art in heaven."

Depending upon the listener's experience, that could be heard as "Our all-powerful, authoritarian, vengeful, judgmental, aloof old man with a white beard, who is far off in a place with gold-paved streets lined with mansions and peopled by harp-playing angles."

According to Douglas-Klotz, the hearers of Jesus' words, "Abwoon d'bashmaya," because of the associations of those words, and because of the Semitic view of the universe and each person's place in it, could have heard them as

"O Thou, the One from whom Breath enters being in all radiant forms."

Or "Oh Parent of the universe, from your deep interior comes the next wave of shining light."

Or "O fruitful, nurturing Life-giver! Your sound rings everywhere throughout the cosmos."

Or since father and mother are not separate words in Aramaic: "Father-Mother who births Unity, You vibrate life into form in each new instant."

But we are given to read "Our Father which art in heaven." It is different. And the words present to many a patriarchal, demanding, distant god in charge of the Universe. And that could well mean a different way of living in that Universe than in one where a nurturing life-giver is in charge.
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We come together here to talk about matters that often don't get talked about. Matters that can be very personal, so they don't get talked over with just anyone. Matters that are sometimes, by their nature, difficult to talk about. Matters that those who come together, as we do, think are important. Important to think about. Important to share.

And then, when we come together, we're faced with trying to use words to reveal subjects that words often don't adequately describe.

That doesn't seem to be the case in all faith communities. There appear to be some sacred books that, as some read them, manage to describe, unambiguously, how life is to be lived. This despite sometimes having different words in different versions of the same book.

The Christian Holy Bible, for example. A quick check of the English-language bookstore finds I can read the Revised Standard Version, Good News for Modern Man, The New International Version, The New American Standard, The New Living Translation, The King James Version, The New King James Version, The Twenty-first Century King James Version, The Worldwide English Version of the New Testament, Young's Literal Translation, and the Darby Translation. And probably many others.

I had the experience of sitting at a Bible-study session among expatiates in Nigeria and having the meaning of a word being central to one person's dearly held interpretation of a verse, and some of the rest of us, reading the same passage, saying "That's not what my Bible says." Different words.

And, as we said before, we can get into the translations of the Holy Bible into other languages, and all the culture-dependent interpretations that can arise from that.

I was sitting at a dormitory's dining hall table. A student from an Episcopal seminary was quite agitated. One verse of the Bible seemed to contradict another. This was a real crisis of faith for him - how can the Word of God be less than perfect? I began to give an explanation that had to do with the fallibility of the human beings who wrote the books. Others tried to show how the verses might not really challenge each another.

"But, but," the Episcopal student insisted, "verses that say the opposite can't both be true."

The Buddhist nun at the table looked up from eating a huge mound of rice and said "Of course." Of course words used to describe God, Ultimate Reality, Higher Power, the Great Spirit, the Ultimate Unity, Allah or Alaha are going to fail. They are words. A human construct. An abstraction of an abstraction. Limited by the human experience. Of course there will be contradictions.

The same Buddhist nun was writing her thesis around translations she was doing of the Buddha's teachings from the language Pali. It seems much of Buddhist literature is based on Chinese translations rather than the original Pali. She was finding some significant differences. Of course.

The Holy Koran doesn't have such problems. There are no translations or versions of the Holy Koran. Allah communicates in Arabic. I can read a translation into English, but it is not the Holy Koran. I am told that it is important to read the Holy Koran, in Arabic of course, but it is not important to understand Arabic. That there is connection to Allah through hearing or saying the words. Or even seeing them printed in Arabic script.

The Afghani students we see rocking back and forth as they memorize the Holy Koran in a school in Pakistan may not understand Arabic; they may rely on someone else to attach meaning to the sounds of the words they have in their heads. But it is still holy work, important to their spirits. And to how they live their lives on this Earth.

The Prophet Mohammed [, may peace be upon him,] was not one to talk much of miracles. But the Holy Koran is a miracle in his estimation. He says that he could not have produced the flawless, poetic, grammatically perfect book. But he did. It must be from Allah.

So, some will take this book to be the ultimate authority on what The One God wants. It's hard to argue with it if it is believed that way. And, since the Holy Koran can be read as giving instructions on all phases of life, including business and government, it can be hard to have a democracy in an Islamic republic. So much of democracy is based upon compromise - I don't get all I want, you don't get all you want, but we agree on something, and live together. But, if God has told you what is to be done, how can you compromise?

There are those who would read the Christian Holy Bible as a civil law book. When that has been tried in the past, there have been witch burnings, crusades, inquisitions and persecutions. Yet there are those who see it as their duty to bring God's kingdom to the Earth in a human-political way.

So, beyond any wisdom we may find in these sacred texts, it may be useful to know what others think they mean, and how they would apply them.
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The meaning of the words said centuries ago may have changed. And the words may still contain wonderful wisdom for us.

I once took a class on the poetry of Jalal-ad-din Rumi. It was taught by a professor from Iran. He read us Rumi's poetry in the original language. And told us of the many symbols in the poetry that Persian-speaking listeners, especially Sufi-Moslems, would hear.

But for all I learned in that class, I was most amazed to realize how much the words that a man spoke or wrote almost 800 years ago could move me, even without knowing the symbolism. Even without my knowing the language or appreciating the culture it all came from. Even reading them in any of several differing translations. The words, in some intrinsic, almost magical way that evaded all the possible confusion and distortion, and carried a wonderful message to me.

Maybe it's the same way with holy books. Somehow, perhaps, despite the scholarly and amateur interpretation and explanation, a wonderful message gets through. Of course.
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To take a look at the limitations of words, let's take a trip to Flatland.

[Blackboard]

This is Flatland. I was introduced to the exciting idea of Flatland by Carl Sagan in the TV series Cosmos. The idea comes from Edwin Abbott who lived in Victorian England.

So, this is Flatland. It is not a map of Flatland. It is Flatland. This is a world in two dimensions. Everything about Flatland is perfectly flat. Including the Flatlanders. The Flatlanders know left and right, front and back. But for them there is no up or down. They see each other and everything else edge-on.

I'll draw over some of the features of Flatland so they'll be easier to see. Here are a couple of Flatlanders. Here's a house with a door.

[Draw]

Now, the Flatlanders don't live in a word with up and down, so they don't have, or need a word for it. Well, the mathematicians and physicists talk about other dimensions, but you know how they are..

Let's suppose a visitor from another dimension, say this potatoe, comes drifting by. In a gesture of inter-dimensional amity, he says "Hello."

The Flatlander hears the voice. But, not being able to look up - where is that? -, cannot see where it is coming from. Actually, it will seem to be coming from all around her. And from inside of her.

The friendly potatoe, puzzled at being ignored, decides to drop down to pay a visit. What the Flatlander sees is the changing outline of the slice of the potatoe which is passing through Flatland. It has appeared from nowhere and is changing and eventually, disappears as the potatoe passes completely through Flatland.

Now, the potatoe picks up an edge of the confused and amazed Flatlander and sends her tumbling into another dimension. The Flatlander looks in a direction she has no word to describe and sees a view of her home and neighbors. But now she can see into the houses and people. She's never seen any of this from this perspective, and so will need a very good imagination even to recognize what she is looking at.

Now she floats down safely. To her fellow Flatlanders, she suddenly appears. And she tells tales of voices from all around and within and appearances and disappearances and seeing into closed houses and into her neighbors.

"Where have you been?" they ask. What can she say? There is no word for up. There is no way to point to where she has been. And no way for her or her fellow Flatlanders to look in that direction anyway.

Imagine the frustration of the Flatlander who has had this adventure into another dimension and is trying to tell about it. Imagine.

How will she be treated by her fellow Flatlanders? "Well, she's very imaginative." "She's always been a little strange..." "She's crazy." "She's a mystic."

Sagan writes in a footnote in the book Cosmos, "If a fourth-dimensional creature existed it could, in our three-dimensional universe, appear and dematerialize at will, change shape remarkably, pluck us out of locked rooms and make us appear from nowhere."

Sacred texts have similar accounts.

Well, there are many people who think and write and talk right out loud in public places about a fourth dimension. They use phrases like "time-space continuum." They can't point to it any better than I can, but they can recon with, build whole theories around it and, using it as real, try to understand better how this Universe works.

I believe our minds work wonderfully well in the universe of time and space and matter. And our words are adequate to describe that world. But, I believe there is more to us than that. That strange lights and sounds and shadow-like shapes can come into our lives that aren't just time and space and matter. I'm not suggesting the experiences of mystics are just encounters with 4-D creatures, but very once in a while we get little glimpses of other possibilities. Other parts of the reality. And it is exciting. And maybe frightening. It's confusing. And it's hard to share. But, oh, how we want to share those experiences.

Coleman Barks, who, among other accomplishments, has been involved with many of the popular translations of Rumi's mystic poetry, says something to the effect of a mystic is someone helplessly hurling words into the mystery around us.
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In the first meeting of a class on Advertising Art, the professor had each of us introduce ourselves. I said I'd been writing and reading news and advertising on the radio for the previous seven years. The professor said, "Oh, a wordsmith."

Like a whitesmith who forms useful and beautiful items from sheets of tin, or a blacksmith who heats and hammers iron into utensils and ornaments, I make something by putting words together. Not like a poet, not a word artist. Something utilitarian. Wordsmith, that's me.

I think a lot about words. What they mean and how they go together. How they affect us.

I've often wondered why language is so complicated. Why are there der/die/das, he/she/it articles in some languages? What more information do I have about a table if I call it a he-table? And then in some languages there is there no he or she pronoun - why is that? Why do I need different ways for a man to talk to a woman than for a woman-to-man conversation? Or a man speaking to a man? Some languages have them.

I'd have expected that language would have started with a human being with an idea in her or his head. That there would have been a need or just a burning desire to tell someone else about it. I would have expected that the way to share that idea would have taken the most direct path. That language would be simple.

Then I read the poet Mary Oliver, a wonder in her use of language, yet she calls it "something almost superfluous." Something "not at all essential to the message." She says, "Language is ... not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song."
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Then, if the words weren't trouble enough, it's getting someone to listen. Because this is too exciting not to share.

In one of my favorite movies, Waking Ned Devine, Jackie O'Shay is telling his good friend Michael O'Sullivan, about a dream he's had where a dead villager, Ned, repeatedly offers Jackie some of his chicken dinner. Jackie is sure the dream is a message from Ned about sharing his winnings in the lotto. Jackie yells through the rain and his enthusiasm "It's a vision man; a premonition!" Michael comes back with "It's a chicken dinner, Jackie."

Someone, it seems, is often there with a ready, very logical explanation for wonders. And the words of the prophets are misunderstood.
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Well, if using the best words I have I still can't tell you what happened that so excited my spirit, maybe I can at least tell you what has changed. Show you the evidence. The trails and traces it has left in my life. If I can't show you the invisible gamma rays, I can show you the tracks in the cloud chamber, and maybe you'll be convinced.

The theologian Henry Nelson Weiman in Religious Experience and Scientific Method, reports on what he calls a creative event.

He was studying in Harvard on the east coast of the United States. His family was half a continent away. He had just lost a job which might have made it possible for his family to join him. He writes

I spent about four hours in my room alone. It was not exactly thinking, nor exactly praying, although at times it was one or another of these quite distinctly. Most of the time, I suppose, it was a combination of these. Gradually there emerged within me a spreading sense of peace and rest. That almost unendurable pain of the mind that had possessed me for twenty four hours had passed away quite completely. I imagine it passed somewhat as a pain passes under an anesthetic. Then I found myself filled with a strange new exuberance. I was almost laughing and crying with joy. Joy about what? I could not tell. I only knew my pain was gone, and I was full of great gladness, courage, and peace. All the facts were exactly as they had been and I saw them more plainly than ever. My family was still as far away as ever and there was no visible means of getting them any closer. My failure to get the work I wanted stood as it had before. I cannot say that I had any anticipation of how my difficulties might be overcome. I did not even have the feeling they would be overcome. I simply knew that I was glad, and ready and fit to go ahead and do whatever I might find to do and take the consequences whatever they might be. There was no hysteria and no hallucination about it. The strong emotion of gladness gradually passed away in the course of days, but the courage, peace, readiness to meet any fortune with equanimity, and joy in living did not go away. The old anguish did not return.

What is different? What is Weiman telling us about? Where did the "strange new exuberance" come from? What words could he use to tell us? He doesn't try. He just describes the before and after and says that something, something he calls a creative event, happened. And changed his life. And, he says, and I believe, these creative events happen all the time - are how the Universe operates.
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So, we come together. We bring our experiences and ideas and questions and excitement. And our words. And others' words that ring true. And we share them. Trusting, beyond all the frustration of trying to point in that other direction, and the inadequacy of words. Believing that we share and cherish in our lives and in each other, that creative event, whatever it is, that calls to us, and changes our lives, all without words.
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Once more, from Mary Oliver:
Here in my head, language
keeps making its tiny noises.
How can I hope to be friends
with the hard white stars
whose flaring and hissing are not speech
but a pure radiance?
How can I hope to be friends
With the yawning spaces
between them
where nothing, ever, is spoken?
Tonight, at the edge of the field,
I stood very still, and looked up,
and tried to be empty of words.
What joy was it, that almost found me?
What amiable peace?
Then it was over, the wind
roused up in the oak trees behind me
and I fell back easily.
What can we do
but keep breathing in and out,
modest and willing, and in our places?
Listen, listen, I'm forever saying,
Listen to the river, to the hawk, to the hoof,
to the mockingbird, to the jack-in-the-pulpit -
then I come up with a few words, like a gift.
Even as now.
Even as the darkness has remained the pure, deep darkness.
Even as the stars have twirled a little, while I stood here,
looking up,
one hot sentence after another.

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