Since I write on “leap day” 2024, I’m allowing myself some leaps – from two short notes to what I hope will be a longer and fuller chord. (Hope I’m getting the music terminology correctly.)
So it’ll be: Don’t Vote; then Diminishment; then Books and The Word.
1. Don’t Vote; It Only Encourages Then. That’s the cynical view I heard expressed by some politically astute colleagues at a different university a long time ago. If they’re still living, I doubt they’d change their opinion. Myself, I’ve always followed the platitude from Fr. Ted Hesberg of Notre Dame fame: “Voting is a civic sacrament”. This year I’m going to be more cynical. Not much reason to vote for two bad (one evil) candidates. Not much need for me to talk about Trump, the evil one, since most of my reasons for rejecting him are probably held by any who’ll read this. And he is evil, though not perhaps as much as Netanyahu, the man who is killing thousands of children simply to hold on to power. You know, kinda like Hitler, or Stalin, or Mao. (I’m not at all sure there can be grades of evil. And I should perhaps leave Judgment to God. But I’m not gonna do that this time.)
So why not Biden? Joe’s done some good, perhaps good and bad (emissions) things with infrastructure, and keeps stumbling to find something right to do at the Border, and carries rosaries. But he too is guilty of genocide in his stupid and vicious support for Israel. So no for Joe.
Maybe, if he’s still on the ballot, I’ll find some third party or vote “undecided” if that’s an option.
2. Diminishment. This note could be quite long, but I’ll make it short. While it’s true that most folks my age experience significant diminishments – in seeing and hearing, memory and other strengths – it’s more important that we attend to the growing diminishments in public and cultural life.
I don’t want to make a “gnostic” overstatement here (that the entire “world” sucks and is shrouded in darkness), but the realities are hard to ignore. The polarizations and diminishments in politics (not just around Trump). The constant emphasis on entertaining excitement in our arts and letters. Dionysian ecstasies and fantasies abound, but far too little of significant human substance. At least that’s how I assess TV (even most of the “news” and most of the “shows” – what, indeed, do they show us? – and much of the advertisement noise). So too most cinema, though I am looking forward to “Dune II” and do find some really good cinema on Netflix. Probably in theaters as well were I willing to get off my butt and go.
One may enjoy entertaining fantasy so long as one knows what it is. Yet its pervasiveness seems to me to overwhelm that knowing.
3. Books and The Book; Words and The Word. Hereafter my attempt to sustain a long and fuller chord, hopefully without too many false notes.
I find myself addicted to writing. Even more to reading. I sit in my office space surrounded by piles of books (even though, as part of the diminishment, I’m constantly giving away books I’ve treasured for years). I look at the remaining piles with hunger for time and energy to read them. As a librarian friend said when I asked him if he ever hoped to get to the many books shelved in his house: “These I imagine as a key dimension of my bit-part in eternity” (or something like that). And I keep pecking away – picking up books half-read decades ago; switching between books I’m presently into and those demanded by very “wordy” zoom conversations; finding the right books to read with a friend before we gather for conversation; even continuing to buy books which I know I want to read even as I know I’ll probably never get to. And so on.
In the beginning, we’ve been told, “is the Word” and that the Word is both within God, as well as central to Wisdom’s ongoing creation or playing through the universe, and then with us in Gospel stories and their many re-tellings. (I’ve seen some episodes in “The Chosen”, the latest and critically acclaimed cinematic re-telling. And I’ve really found them inspiring.)
Yes, with us in The Book read at our very wordy and song-y liturgies (Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant). As well as in the many books flowing from the original word.
My master Lynch asks us to think about the first Promethian era in mythic or pre-historical time, when that demigod brought not only fire and the wheel to we humanoid ape-lings, but the alphabet. Think, Lynch says, about the virtually endless flow of words and writings even from the first “A” of that alphabet, to say nothing of all succeeding letters. (I presently have the joy of a third grandchild singing her way through the alphabet!)
How to continue; where to stop?
I read a book some time ago by one of our master writers, Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury. Actually I’ve read many of his books, one on that great wordsmith Dostoievski (whom the Archbishop is able to read in Russian!) In the book which emerged from his lectures about the existence of God (I forget both the name of the book and of the prestigious lecture series), I seem to remember his argument moving from the origins of language in bird song and then through the babblings of apes and neanderthals unto the emergence of the various forms of human language. Thence unto the Idea of “The Word” which is GOD who is beyond words. (Go figure that!)
I remember with regret, having been required to take a course on the History of the English Language as an undergraduate, that at the time I found it immensely boring. We called it the “Hell” requirement. Now I wish that I’d at least saved the textbook, for I have no saved class notes, and probably only took just enough notes to pass by course exam(s).
Yet I’m fortunate to have bought the very condensed version of the Oxford English Dictionary when the NY Times was selling it’s two-volume set. I’ve of late turned frequently to its pages, visible only with the accompanying lens, to look up the history of this or that word – words like “grace” and “salvation” and even the word “word”. And many others. The OED is a kind of bible of the growth and development of the English language. There’s both a book and a film about its creation titled something like “The Professor and the Mad Man”.
And did you know that early Jesuits are responsible for the creation of dictionaries for many different languages (I forget the exact number)? Assembling and teaching words so they might teach The Word.
And I must also pay due deference to Matteo Ricci, the Renaissance Jesuit genius who brought the word of the Gospel to Confucian China by adapting Confucian customs, even adding some of his own spiritual writings to the Confucian canon. I try to imagine what our world would be like had his experiment with a Chinese form of Christianity, a truly “catholic” thing, been allowed to flourish. Instead, in what historian’s refer to as the “Chinese rites controversy”, Rome squashed Richi’s effort by insisting that the language of the missionary gospel must be Latin or (memory fails me) some other Western language.
Yet I’ve hardly written about writing, except for that rather specialized form of writing dictionaries.
And I find myself almost equally addicted to writing – and inflicting it on you, dear reader.
Yet writing is perhaps the most refined form of rhetoric, of using words to communicate. And it’s a difficult task.
We had a “writing across the curriculum” requirement at Regis (Denver), and were thinking about a “speaking across the curriculum” requirement. As have many other schools – perhaps from pre-schools to grad schools. You don’t take a course or attend a lab without having to do a significant amount of writing which was graded.
Why? Because writing is one of the greatest disciplines for learning to use words effectively, and justly, and truthfully, and persuasively, and beautifully. I believe all that because I’ve always been a writing instructor (and grader!) since my earliest years of high school teaching.
Dostoievski and Dickens and many other great writers (think of your own “greats” list) are important because of their ability to find words with which to enrich our imaginations about what is good and true and beautiful, richly human even in its imagining of human poverty and violence.
You may know that in German the word for your vocabulary is Wortschatz or your “word treasury”.
There are many more words which I could spill across this page. But enough is enough, probably already too much.
Addressing God’s Word/Wisdom, I pray that each of us (across our cultural divides) grow in our understanding of the importance of words, grow in our vocabularies, learn understanding of different words and languages, and thereby further enabling the Word of God to be embodied in human communities at every level of communication.
That great foundational word: comm-uni-cation.
