On Mother’s Day, I was standing in front of the mirror, watching myself as I put in my earrings. My 13 year old called out from the other room “Oh mom, I wrote on your wall this morning! Don’t forget to read it”. It struck me what a different world she and I grew up in. My mother might have grabbed a towel and some cleaning spray, had I said that to her. And then I got to thinking about the mercurial world of words.
Ernest Hemingway once said “All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.” That intrigues me. When I think of the account of the Tower of Babel, in which our language was “confused” for the very first time, I’d imagine those there that day felt very much like Mr. Hemingway. Anyone who’s ever gone to a country where a language other than your own is spoken , knows the frustration of trying to ask for something, the vulnerability you feel at not being able to communicate. It occurs to me that even when the same language is spoken, we live in a world of Babel.
Words. We mince them, play on them, eat them and hang on them. We sometimes can’t find the right ones or we loose them altogether. Some of us have a way with them, others of us use them as weapons. Words can echo or fall on deaf ears. There are careless words, idle words, words fitly spoken. Sometimes they’re priceless, sometimes they’re a dime a dozen. We can write them, yell them, read them, whisper them, sing them, rhyme them or keep them to ourselves. We can start fires with them. We can put fires out with them. They can be gifts or they can be death sentences. We can mislead with them or point others to the truth with them. Those of us who believe, have a relationship with The Word.
When I think of the electricity surrounding words, the power that they hold, what our world would be without them, what it is with them, it gives me pause before I consider adding to the fray. But only for a minute…..because I have something to say.
Pentecost — the day the curse of the Tower of Babel was reversed.