Word Power

I did this a while ago for a St. Olaf College "Chapel Talk".   The college has a daily chapel service, just twenty minutes or so, with a couple of hymns, a reading from scripture, and sort of homily by a member of the community. They ask for twelve minutes and it can be more difficult than you might think. Anyway, I tell folks I'll do it when they absolutely can't find anyone else, and this past April that was true one day. I'm a deist at best these days, but I try to see what I believe the really nice things are about all faith traditions, so it's even  more challenging for me sometimes. 

I think this is pretty topical these days:

Our perpetual election season is going full blast right now, and people are using language in new, interesting, and sometimes scary ways, so I’ve been thinking about words a lot recently.

Words are powerful, and it is way too easy to throw them around without imagining all of the ways they can be heard.  I cannot attribute this quote, it’s from an old NBA coach as far as I know. “I was miserable as a coach until I realized it didn’t matter what I said, the only thing that mattered is what they heard.” 

In the current political environment it is clear that the candidates are being pretty careful about making sure they throw in words that will be heard even if the context is babble.  We can all think of some of these pretty quickly, but this is apolitical and so you’ll have to think of your own examples.

Maybe it’s sort of like the old “Far Side” cartoon where we learn what cats hear and what dogs hear. Cats hear, “blah, blah, blah, blah.” Dogs hear, “blah, blah, blah, Trixie!!!” If we have to be anything I guess I’m happier being a dog than a cat, but I promise to try to get the context too.

A local blogger recently wrote a post about a story that had appeared in the Twin Cities newspapers. The original story was about a Tibetan Buddhist family in St. Paul whose young son was recently identified as an incarnate Lama.

The blogger’s post characterized the belief and the situation as “goofy”. I thought it was a really nice story about a family circumstance that none of us could even imagine. 

As I get older, if not exactly more mature, I try to rise to the bait less and less over inconsequential things. At the same time, I’ve been trying to be more responsive to consequential things. Things of importance to me.  

This one hit me sort of hard and so I did rise and go after the bait, posting a comment that asked something like, “Who are any of us to characterize the tenets of an important spiritual tradition and world culture as goofy?”

  

 That started off an interesting set of exchanges with other readers and the writer.  Some folks tried to offer reasonable observations about the nature of various faith traditions, others argued that because reincarnation can’t be proved it is sketchier than Christian beliefs, which are of course all proven because they are in the bible. 

The off-handed use of the word goofy in this context is what’s important about this to me, but I should share that the final exchange asserted that I should feel lucky Martin Luther thought the Roman Catholics were goofy, or I wouldn’t have a pretty good job at St. Olaf College today. 

I’ll leave you to judge which of these ideas is goofy!

There were many ways to respond to that one, and I wrote a few out, but thankfully came to my senses and didn’t push send on any.  I would have said that I was pretty sure that Martin Luther, Jan Huss, and others probably weren’t thinking in light hearted terms during their phases of the reformation.

Huss in particular didn’t have any fun.

Kent Nerburn is a writer from Bemidji Minnesota, who has been active over time working with people on the Red Lake Ojibway reservation. He got some notoriety in Indian Country through a history project he did with Red Lake kids. This experience led him, through a series of circumstances, to write “Neither Wolf Nor Dog, On Forgotten Roads With an Indian Elder”. Forgotten Roads is a biography, maybe a biographical novel of sorts, about a Lakota elder known to us only as

Dan.

Dan had written little notes to his creator nearly every day for much of his life, and reached out to Nerburn to see if he’d help put them into book form.  Dan had been a sort of normal guy, not a chief or other leader, but thought long and deeply about life and wanted his work and ideas to be shared with young people.

There is a very important section in which Dan is trying to explain to Nerburn how white Americans’ use of words and language negatively impacted his people.  Like most reservation kids in that day, Dan went off to a boarding school with no English. They went to class the first day, the teacher spoke English, and they just had to figure it out.

Dan speaking to Nerburn:

I remember how funny it sounded when I first heard it.  The teacher could talk for an hour and not even stop. She could talk about anything. She didn’t need to move her hands, even.  She just talked. Some days I would sit and watch her just to see all of the words she said.  One other boy once told me he thought she said as many words in a day as there were stars in the sky. I never forgot that.

When I learned English I realized it was a trick. You could use it to say the same thing a hundred ways.  What was important to Indian people was saying something the best way. In English you had to learn to say things a hundred ways. I never heard anything like it. I still watch white people talk and I’m surprised at all the words. Sometimes they will say the same thing over and over and over in different ways.   

They are like a hunter who rushes all over the forest hoping to bump in to something instead of sitting quietly until he can capture it.”

Dan goes on to an elegant description of the way language in general, and some words in particular, were used to the detriment of Indian people, but I’ll go on to a concluding idea:

“We didn’t see the big ideas behind the words you used.  We didn’t see that you had to name everything to make it exist, and that the name you gave something made it what it was. You named us savages, so were savages.  Without even knowing it, you made us who we are in your minds by the words you used.  I hope you will learn to be more careful with your words. Our children don’t know the old language so well, so it is your English that is giving them the world. Right now some of the ideas in your words are wrong. They are giving our children and yours the world in a wrong way

There was on old man who told me when I was a boy that I should look at words like beautiful stones. He said that I should lift each one and look at it from all sides before I used it. Then I would respect it.

I think he gave me good advice. Those words are like stones. Even if they are very beautiful, if you throw them without thinking, they can hurt someone.”

Language was also a huge issue in Jesus’ time and he was probably conversant in two if not three languages. It’s hard to imagine doing his work while dealing with all of the subtleties of multiple languages. Nevertheless, maybe no one used language so well before or since. In a day where we constantly see the short hand for What Would Jesus Do, it’s good to really think about that when we see things that disturb us.

Jesus, for instance, would not thoughtlessly throw a stone at a Buddhist family simply for believing differently than our mainstream.  I believe Jesus would confront that kind of behavior, and rebuke the stone thrower.

Words are powerful and can really hurt, but let’s not forgot the good that they can do in the world as well. What could you say to someone today to make a difference? What beautiful words could you use to describe another human or another group of people?

I recently came across a simple prompt: “Write the message you deeply long to receive.” I love this sentiment, and whether the message is written or spoken aloud, I encourage you to share some beautiful stones today.