Let’s start today with a little quiz. Look at the following list and see if you can guess what one thing I am describing.
1. Frozen biscuits.
2. The teeth on a backhoe’s shovel.
3. Dollops on a painter’s palate.
4. Legos
5. Glyphs
6. Blossoms
7. Dynamite
8. Damp cloths
9. A sledgehammer
10. A mink massage glove
What am I describing? Words, of course. Words.
Which in the right hands (read: coming from the right tongue or the right pen) can have immediate and long-term effect. Words can (moving backward up our list): 10) arouse the epidermis and imagination, or 9) bust-up concrete; 8) soothe a fevered forehead, or 7) blow up the place.
Words, can 6) add color and aroma to make almost any exchange seem warmer and more cozy, or 5) upon receipt cut your stem, drain the color from your face and make you paranoid about your tap water, your prescriptions, your ATM, your phone and computer and your long-time neighbors. On the other hand, words 4) can be the blocks by which you begin to design and rebuild your life when you step back from the crazy.
The best words 3) can turn any- and everyone into Bob Ross, whose most predictable landscapes still fascinated the sedentary spirit. And if, by now, your own paint is drying, as it were, those same words are sharp trowels to cut through the hardening carapace so that soft brushes can collect what is left to paint for your spirit a canvas pathway away from the chaos.
The 2) teeth on a backhoe’s shovel is not a gentle image, but it is my favorite, as a skilled operator can dig deeply, quickly, precisely—producing both foundations and graves; to unearth buried treasures or discarded trash; to dig out around the burst pipe that is flooding your psychic basement or to tap again the wells of your heart’s natural springs—and in either case, find the source of your sudden tears.
As to 1) frozen biscuits—you can throw them, or you can thaw them. Even thawing however, is not enough to make a frozen biscuit edible. Just as no one would de-tube the layered dough of Pilsbury’s counter-whomps and peel off a piece to eat it (unlike cookie dough), no host or hostess would put a frosty hexagon on their guest’s plate and expect them to enjoy. Instead, the cook would thaw, bake, glaze or slather with a thick gravy, maybe, to water a hungry mouth. Similarly, words need to have been retrieved from the cold, come to room temperature, heated till brown and tender, buttered with context and served on a plate of nuance. It takes time and preparation, but those kinds of words produce the stuff of delicious conversation. Or good sermons.
Let those with eyes see and those with ears hear—words are wonderful, but they are not exact. Denotation is no match for connotation, in other words, and each tongue and each ear are fixed with filters installed by history and lived-experience.
Bottom line, just because you think you heard what I said, what you don’t know is that what I said is not what I meant. Not precisely.
Exhibit A: “Puppy food.” You hear “puppy food,” and you think of Pet Smart or Chewy and you make a note to stop on the way home or order online because your little dog is running out of kibbles. I hear “puppy food” and I remember how, long before the Waffle House got the idea to put it on their menu, my grandmother would crumble boiled eggs, buttered toast and crisp bacon into a bowl for my breakfast.
Exhibit B: the secretary I mentioned last time: When she said, “I don’t care to do that,” what I heard was, “That’s not my job.” Instead, what she meant was, “Of course!”
You don’t need me to tell you that translation is hard, even when people are speaking the same language. In any given conversation, there are several degrees of separation between what you want to express and what actually gets said. The first distance is created by “encoding”—how you put “it” into your own words and speak it.
What I hear adds more distance still. While I may understand your words literally, my “decoding” them into my way of thinking may not translate “it” exactly.
When it comes to matters of the heart, things are worse. Say I have great love to express, but I can’t quite put it into words (and I am not Jim Croce). It may be that I have great hurt that needs sharing, but I can’t name it for myself… so what hope do I have of making you understand?
So, if we cannot understand what another says about “earthly” things, when we find ourselves trying to discuss, God, say, how frustrating is that? Sometimes, very.
Just ask the disciples who tried to tell Thomas what they had seen and heard Easter evening.
Just ask our brother John, about what he saw and recorded in the book we call Revelation. He wanted to he understood, but his encoding is hard to decode.
Just ask Jesus, who seems constantly to have been asking, “If I tell you of earthly things and you do not understand them, how will I speak of heavenly things?
And when it comes to God’s Word?
Next time: thought to thought