Words Create Worlds
Photo by Mark de Jong on Unsplash
I am a lover of words.
I love what words are, and I love what words do.
When I was a child,
my three favorite books were
the white dictionary,
the red thesaurus,
and the green book of rhyming words.
I spent countless hours
trying on new words for size,
tasting them in my mouth,
savoring them in my ear,
and settling them into my mind.
Words, you see,
seemed to crack open a window
into worlds as yet unimagined.
I especially liked big words
with lots of syllables
that rolled around in my mouth
like a marble in pinball machine,
just for the privilege of being spoken out loud.
But then in high school,
I had a teacher who taught me
to never use a 50-cent word
when a nickel word will do.
“Think,” he said
“about the power of what most people would call
‘throw-away-words,’
like prepositions.”
To prove his point,
he had each of us choose one preposition
about which we had to write
a poem,
an essay,
and a short story.
His directions were so simple
that they seemed impossible:
“see what kind of world a preposition can create,”
he said.
“If you can grasp the power of the preposition,
you will begin to scratch the surface
of the power of words.”
The preposition that I chose
was “with.”
I remember nothing that I wrote,
but I do remember the feeling of the exercise,
something akin to a
life-changing “aha.”
Words are not neutral –
even the little ones,
I learned.
Words are laden with inherent power.
They can be a weapon,
or they can be shield.
They can create,
or they can destroy.
Regardless of the moral dictums of “good behavior,”
words cannot be taken back.
They cannot be un-spoken.
The exhale cannot be inhaled.
And users of words?
Well, users of words
bear both the privilege
and the burden of that power.
It seemed,
in that “aha moment,”a weighty thing,
that power,
to be thrust upon the shoulders of anyone,
but especially high school students,
Several years later
When I read
“Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity,”
by Abraham Joshua Heschel,
three words leapt off the page
and returned that adolescent
classroom exercise not only to my memory,
but to the everyday living of my life.
“Words create worlds,”
Heschel’s daughter, Susannah, wrote
of the wisdom her father taught her.
Words.
Create.
Worlds.
Indeed they do,
and theologically we say that it is so.
In one creation story,
God speaks –
God utters words –
Breath-given-voice -
and all that is
comes into being.
It is through the breathed-out creativity of God
in and through words –
“and God said” –
that creation comes into existence.
It is through the expelled breath of God,
uttered and blown across the face of the deep,
that the imagination of God comes to life.
One could assert
That without words –
all would still be formless void.
Words create worlds.
In the other creation story,
When God gives away God’s breath,
the human creature comes to life.
And with God’s breath,
God gives away God’s voice,
God’s ability to utter not just sounds –
But words.
With this holy generosity,
the human’s life becomes inspired with power,
animated by God’s own dynamic breath,
God’s own dynamic Word.
Hence,
the holy privilege of the spoken word -
of breath-given-voice -
is an imitative act of creative,
imaginative gift-giving,
breathing out power
to give life away.
Words create worlds.
But what kind of world do we create with our words,
with this holy, creative power?
I return often to these musings,
but they have especially been on my mind as of late
as each day seems to widen the chasm
in our ever-increasing divisive way of being –
and way of speaking –
with one another.
And in my musings, I keep returning
not just to the weighty privilege
and the holy burden of words –
but to that little, nickel word
through which I chose to fulfill that high school assignment,
oh, so long ago –
With.
With.
For you see,
we who are cross-marked
and Spirit-sealed
have been both gifted and tasked
with speaking not just any words –
not carelessly or thoughtlessly
tossing about words
as if they are nothing;
rather we have been both gifted and tasked with
words that are in the service of the Word –
the Word -
through whom all things came into being,
through whom we have all received grace upon grace.
We have been both gifted and tasked
with the holy exhale that
brings to life among us
God who is –
with us always,
even unto the end of the age.
We have been gifted and tasked
with witness –
by and through our words -
to the withness of God –
a withness that not only makes
a withness with one another possible,
but that indeed is our call as human creatures,
tasked with stewarding our planet home.
Now, I have no magic wand to wave
that will somehow
bind up the wounds and bridge the divide
of our fracturing common life,
but I do wonder,
and I imagine,
and I hope
that maybe –
just maybe
a reminder that
words create worlds
will beckon us again and anew
to remember that the same Spirit
who went out in the rush of mighty wind
bringing forth speech –
that same Spirit
fills each of us –
and all of us
so that
when words come forth from our mouths,
they might be filled with the creative power of life,
rather than the destructive force of death.
They might imitate the holy act
of imaginative gift giving,
breathing out power that gives life away
and cracks open a window to yet unimagined ways
of living –
truly living –
with one another.
speak Word
into the chaos
over the void
in my now --
with me
to me
through me
bring me to life
that your breath might voice speech in me
breathe into me your Word
that I might breathe out your life in speech.
Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox
Rev. Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox (affectionately known as “Char”) holds a Doctor of Ministry Degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia, with an emphasis in Spirituality; a Master of Sacred Theology Degree from the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg, with an emphasis in Preaching and Worship, a Master of Divinity Degree from Luther Seminary, and a Bachelor of Arts Degree from Augustana University, Sioux Falls. She has served as a pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for over 28 years, serving in seminary, collegiate, and congregational settings. She loves reading – especially memoirs and historical fiction, and enjoys writing poetry, travelling, and all things winter.
Facebook | PrChar
Website | Charlene Rachuy Cox
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