Opening Words
The singer Paul Robeson said, "I shall take my voice wherever there are those who want to hear the melody of freedom or the words that might inspire hope and courage in the face of despair and fear. My weapons are peaceful, for it is only by peace that peace can be attained. The song of freedom must prevail."
May we all find here the melody of freedom and the words that inspire hope and courage in the face of despair and fear. May we find here peace for our spirits. So be it.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made. (John I.1-3)
You can tell that the writer of the Gospel of John, had a deep reverence for the Word, for everything that is meant by "Word" -- expression, language, message, speech. To him, the Word was the creative power of God. I want to suggest today that the power of words is indeed very great. Words, like the people who create them and use them, deserve respect, if not reverence; language has a sacred dimension. You can murder the language with bad grammar or misuse of words, but I mean something deeper than that. What we write or say can literally change the world, for better or worse. The pen is even mightier than the sword.
In the story told in the first chapter of Genesis, God creates the world by speaking: "God said, Let there be light, and there was light." And in that story, Adam was given two tasks to begin with: he was to till and keep the garden, and he was to name things. Genesis Chapter II: ".....whatever the man called every living creature, that was its name." There's no suggestion that the names were tentative and could be changed later if they didn't work out; the word was decisive. "Whatever he called it, that was its name." (You notice that Eve had not yet appeared on the scene. That may account for a lot. Human language, according to the Bible, was entirely a product of the male imagination. No wonder it's so male-oriented. Adam also got to name his wife, to define her, in fact. He called her Eve "because she was the mother of all living", and for thousands of years motherhood would be seen as the primary woman's role.)
The Bible is full of stories of men getting too big for their boots and trying to be gods. The Greeks knew about this tendency too, and called it hubris; most other cultures also have stories about the same kind of thing. In Genesis, a few chapters after the naming of things there's the story of the Tower of Babel (or babble, if you prefer) in which some enterprising people decided to build an incredibly high tower "with its top in the heavens" which would "make a name for them". When God saw this, he became nervous that they would be rivals to him, and he decided to devastate the greatest power that they had, their language:
"And the Lord said, Behold, they ..... have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; and nothing that they propose to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another's speech."
And it worked. They abandoned the project, because it was impossible without being able to understand one another's language. Once the language is confused, we're in deep trouble. When it's clear, and understood in the same way by everyone, it packs enormous power.
It's not only in the Jewish and Christian traditions that language is seen as important. All great religions and philosophies recognize that the words we use have profound effects on our lives. In China, about three centuries before Jesus, the followers of Confucius taught that the chief functions of the human mind were selectivity and decision-making, and that these were seen in action in the process of naming things. If we can understand something about language, we will have come some way in understanding the human mind itself, they said. When we look at our language, and particularly the names we give to things, we see that for names to be possible, the discriminating faculty of the mind has to be used.
Names are the labels applied to the various groupings of things which the mind organizes; they depend on agreement, because they're only useful if people generally accept that they mean the same thing. (Can you imagine what it would be like if we all started calling each other by completely different names in the coffee hour today, or called the coffee "cake" and the table "postcard"?) One of the horrible effects of a stroke and some other illnesses is the inability to remember the right words for things. Communication through language can only happen if there's some minimum agreement about what words mean. One of the great Confucians said,
"Because one understands that different realities must have different names, one sees to it that they are given different names. There must be no confusion about this, any more than about the necessity to see to it that all things which are the same in reality have the same name."
A few thousand years after those words were written, our languages are so confused that even in just one language, even without getting into the relationship between French and English here in Canada, or the gap between English and American usage, we may still mean a dozen different things by the same word, and the person to whom we say the word may have another dozen interpretations for it. To illustrate this, I'm going to run some words by you and ask you to notice what images come into your mind, how you respond to them. Your first response, which is spontaneous, may be different from what you think the actual meaning of the word is. But perhaps the real meaning is what you spontaneously imagine, or what you want it to be -- like Humpty Dumpty in Alice in Wonderland, who said "When I use a word, it means just what I want it to mean -- neither more nor less." Anyway, try these words:
is that wonderful capacity of the mind which enables us to distinguish among things which are not entirely alike, to tell the difference between the real and the artificial, for example. But discrimination is also, for us, treating people differently because they're different. It's become equated with prejudice. Discrimination, which the ancients thought was one of our highest abilities, has gained a low and shameful meaning.
really, originally, only means whether you're male or female, but to most of us it suggests something more specific -- and we all know about the person who filled in the line on the form, Name: Mary Jones, Age: 37, Sex: twice a week.
You probably saw a woman in a white uniform -- our images lag behind our education and experience in most cases. On the other hand, you most likely connected "politician" with a male image rather than with Madeleine Allbright or Alexa McDonough. But I'm glad if I guessed wrong about how you hear these words.
is an interesting one. For a long time, and even to some extent today, it was what some philosophers call a "hooray" word (the opposite of "static", which is a real "boo" word) and progress was a favourite concept among Unitarians. But in light of AIDS and nuclear weapons and environmental disasters and replacement of people by computers, it's a little harder to attach good images to the word progress. I wish we could redeem it somehow, give it back its good name.
I don't even like saying the word nigger, it's so full of bad feelings. But you probably know that it's just a dialect form of "negro", which in turn only means black person. So is it all right to talk of people of colour as niggers? No, of course not. The associations which the word has, its meaning for us, is much more important than its derivation. Words don't keep their original meanings for ever. The language evolves.
our reaction to these words depends almost entirely on our background and experience. God carries with it for me all my experiences of searching for the truth about what's most real, and has many different faces or aspects, from the traditional bearded patriarch to the earth mother to the abstract moral ideal to what the word means for me now -- the Being to whom I relate on an everyday basis as well as in my highest and lowest moments. For some of you the negative associations of the word are so heavy that it's a real turn-off. That makes for a little tension in our communication -- but tension can be creative!
Church was originally a Christian word and I'm not a Christian. For some people, the negative associations of the word "church", like God, are so strong, the memories and symbolism so overwhelmingly bad, that it's almost impossible to relate to a place or a community which carries that name. It's a bit like the child who's been constantly abused by his father being asked to pray to God as "our Father". The words become real barriers, even though the words are only our fumbling efforts at describing the reality, never perfect, always approximations. "Amen" is similar -- although it just means, "so be it", it suggests for some people the heavy authority of a religion they've rejected. Since it's not terribly important to me, I'm trying to avoid it as much as I can, but it may slip in every now and then!
Shakespeare asked, "What's in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet." I'm not sure he was quite right about that, even though he was the great master of language -- would a rose called "stinky" smell as sweet as it otherwise might? Psychologists have found that allergic reactions can be triggered in some people by the name or image of what they're allergic to. Present them with a silk flower and they start wheezing and sneezing. The name we give to something fixes an image of that thing in our minds along with the name. This is why the name "rapeseed" was changed to "canola", and why language can become such an important political issue, as it is in the feminist movement, for instance. Let's look at that issue for a moment.
Women know perfectly well, without being told, that the word "man" used to be intended to include women. A phrase such as "the history of mankind" is not specifically used with the purpose of excluding women, even though that exclusion often happens. But in a way it's the very fact of the intended inclusiveness that's the problem. The word which applies inclusively to everyone is a masculine word. It's identical with the word used exclusively for males. And it's this very identification of "everyone" with "men" which reflects the feeling, and perpetuates the feeling, among women and men, that women somehow don't count. Just to say that the word "mankind" includes "womankind" isn't enough, any more than saying that the word "nigger" is all right because it only means "black person." And by the way, if "men" includes women, does that mean that men's washrooms are really unisex?
The solution obviously isn't as simple as just changing the words or observing political correctness. It's the underlying attitude which matters most, but that attitude is expressed in the words we use. Practical steps towards equality won't necessarily clear up the destructive power of language which labels people and things wrongly. Chauvinist language remains, and must be changed if women are to assume full equality with their male counterparts. Words reflect how we think about things, and they affect how we think about things, too.
We run into resistance in some strange places. Eleanor Farjeon's hymn "Morning Has Broken", which we'll be singing in a few moments, has the line "Where God's feet pass", but it was originally "where his feet pass", and there was some confusion whether "his" referred to God's feet or the blackbird's. The executors of Farjeon's estate weren't very eager to let the word be changed. I feel torn between respecting a poet's right to have her work reproduced exactly as she wrote it and wanting to improve it. And then, there's the resistance from those of us who prefer things to be grammatically correct and smooth-flowing. We find it too repetitive to keep saying he or she, his or hers, him or her, and so may slip back into using masculine words generically for convenience' sake. (Feminine words are hardly ever used inclusively for the same reason, which would at least be fair play.) I think we should get into the habit of using plurals instead. For example, "If a child is sick, keep them away from school." It may sound incorrect at first, but a few centuries ago we did the same thing with you and yours which used to be only plural. We now find that thee and thou sound odd. Going back to the hymn, I recognize that to talk about God's feet is a bit funny anyway, isn't it? Language is never exact.
Words change, and need to be changed, both to reflect a change of consciousness and to help that change further along. The process is circular and cumulative. Changing the language gradually affects our sense of how things are, just as our raised consciousness gradually affects the way we use words.
Have you read the studies that show the name a child is given affects their whole life? Teachers and friends and employers react differently to a person with a name they find difficult or ugly or ridiculous than to a person with an easy, pleasant name. That's language controlling behaviour. You may think it doesn't happen to you, but you may also have noticed that when you meet someone with a name that makes you think of your mother or an old school friend or someone you love or hate, your attitude to that new acquaintance is already slightly conditioned, not entirely neutral. As long as we're aware of what's happening it's not so likely to be a problem, because we can counteract it. But if we don't recognize why we have a negative reaction, it can control us and interfere with our relationships.
The power of words is hugely appreciated in the worlds of advertising and propaganda. Advertisers certainly know how important it is to choose the right words, the persuasive words, the ones which have just the right connotation. In the past an even greater significance was attached to the right words, the correct formulation of a religious creed, the exact translation of a text. Even now, you're not legally married unless certain particular words have been said -- the state of your emotions is less important in binding you together than the words which are read! We mostly don't believe in that kind of verbal magic any more, and yet there's a kind of lingering respect for what words can do, and I think it's a proper respect.
In the Bible story of Babel, God knew what a difference it made if people all used words in the same way; and the writer of John's gospel described God coming into the world this way: "The Word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us". Words are powerful. If we have a proper respect for them, we'll recognize the impact of the language we use. We'll realize that when we want to be inclusive it's counterproductive to use limiting words and expressions. We'll acknowledge the power of the things we say to produce wonderful and terrible effects. We'll try to become more aware of how we've already been affected by language and always will be. But if all that sounds like a struggle, it's as well to remember that language can give us amazing pleasure, too, -- can take us into other worlds, can cause us to think deeply and can provide the means of opening our hearts to other people.
It's no wonder that ancient peoples have been wary about using the name of God or referring to a new-born baby by name. They've recognized that words have power. And it's no wonder that those of us with roots in the Jewish and Christian traditions centre our services around language, around talks like this, and readings, and words that we sing. It's extremely powerful stuff, and I'm always elated and honoured and a bit scared by the chance to do it. Thank you for listening to me, which is the only way sounds can become real. And I'll end with words from a great teacher: "Be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only."