Humbled before the Word

“Human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.” 
Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

Words frustrate me.  Historically, I delighted in them. I thought that if I used them well enough, learned enough about them, or arranged them in the perfect way, that I would hold the keys to the kingdom.  I just knew that the secrets to life were found in words.  Later, I grew disillusioned with those miserable little excuses for expression.  I am sure that in this frustration I was being arrogant.  It seems that most of my frustration is rooted in some kind of pride. What is more arrogant than thinking that you are “above” human communication? In my anger with language, I grew angry with the Bible.  This seems intuitive. What follows frustration with words but frustration with the Word of God? Ultimately, this would lead to frustration with Christ, the highest Word of God.  It also followed that I would boycott writing, hence the four-year blogging hiatus. Who blogs when they hate language? This anger at language was something that I had never really felt before.  When you get right down to it, what do you have to stand on if you cannot stand on language and spoken word?  I am no linguistics expert, and I cannot pretend to be one.  I have never really studied the philosophy of language.  Ironically, in my anger at language, I tend to be a grammar tyrant.  I guess that we hold onto some form of structure even when we question.  What is more terrifying than a formless void?  I find the idea of a black hole of absence of expression pretty difficult to reckon with.

To me, our language seems derivative.  It is also representative.  Words represent objects or experiences.  The objects or experiences precede the language that is used to represent them.  The concept or idea communicated through language is nothing without its embodiment.  Or is it? There is a need or a longing to be communicated, or “named.”  I am currently reading Madeline L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time.”  In this series, life comes from being “named.”  Beings exist in her universe, called Echthroi, and their primary job is to rob creatures of their names. As the Echthroi un-name, they destroy.  The connection between word and life is mysterious to me.  In my animosity toward the spoken word, I believe that I inadvertently became an enemy of life.  I cannot decide that words are void without on some level claiming that Christ is nothing.   Who is He but the Word, or the logos? Christ, the word, the Logos, was with God in the beginning.  So really, is language truly derivative? God SPOKE the universe into being.  God chose words to communicate and endow life into nothingness.  What greater God-expression is there but the Logos, Christ, the word?  Who am I to choose silence? This human communication that I thought that I was so far above?  Where is this birthed but in God’s communication?  Surely there is more to it than meets the eye, or more aptly, the ear, but on this planet, in this lifetime, it seems that language brings us into greater understanding of God.  Our proclivity toward verbal communication seems to be a reflection of the Imago Dei within us.  The frustration with our limited range of language should point me to the hope of heaven, where I am sure that the Word is much more complete.  At this point, however, I am pretty sure that this awareness should not prevent me from communication and expression through language. So for now, I suppose, my vow of silence is broken.  I will join my Creator’s song in the language that I know, with eager anticipation of the Word that will be unveiled when I see Him face-to-face.