Word made Flesh

We created language to fulfill a need, a need to communicate. Underlying the need for communication hides a need to connect, understand, and grow.

Lately, I have been thinking about words and their use in language. Language, a systematic method of stringing symbols and words together to create meaning, is often seen as an end-all to every form of communication. However, language is a limited and inadequate attempt to make something naturally intangible become tangible. Language can never become completely synonymous with our thoughts and experiences. So much more is left untouched beyond the grasp of our ability to harness language. I would consider language as more akin to an artistic rendering of thoughts; it is in no way an all encompassing objectivity.

I love to write because I consider it a form of art instead of an objective means of communicating my understanding. My affinity with words stems deeper than a need to fulfill communication. In fact, my love affair with words draws from melody and music. It is often lyrical and it always relies heavily upon the ebb and flow of words artistically building of each other.

But our society puts too much emphasis on language and learning. "In a world where education is predominantly verbal, highly educated people find it all but impossible to pay serious attention to anything but words and notions. There is always money for, there are always doctorates in, the learned foolery of research into what, for scholars, is the all-important problem: Who influenced whom to say what when?" Aldous Huxley raises this statement in his book, The Doors of Perceptions, when he talks of ways to perceive things beyond what our five senses typically let us understand. He argues we can learn so much more through our internal understandings of experience.

Words are sometimes inappropriate but they are almost always inadequate.

I was reading a book by Parker Palmer today. He began talking about a time in his life when he was going through severe depression. He mentioned how the people who were able to get through to him were not the intellectuals or opinionated, but it was those who quietly offered their physical presence without the offering of advice. As people lined up and waited to share their advice on how he could get better, it was a gentle touch that spoke volumes. It was a simple silence that allowed Palmer to acknowledge someone's willingness to just be there with him, nothing more. Most people tried to apply empathy; they tried to apply what they had been through in their lives to his life. The only problem was that no one is ever going to have the same exact experience, so their attempts seemed distant and unhelpful. It was in the silence that humility and acceptance spoke more than words ever could.

When thinking of a simple presence that can speak so greatly I am reminded of a song by David Crowder Band. It is called I Need Words.

I need words
As wide as sky
I need language large as
This longing inside
And I need a voice
Bigger than mine
And I need a song to sing you
That I've yet to find

I need you
I need you
I need you to be here now

The humility of the song cries out for words that enable the artist to speak. However, the song ends with a request for presence. The song ends with a begging for the words to be made flesh. "I need you to be here now."