Why the right words never come

In the beginning was the logos--the word.

Written or spoken, a word is a symbol. As an aural stimulus, or as a visual stimulus, a word represents some thing other than the sound it makes on the eardrum or the squiggles on the page.

But words are more than a system of signs. They are a means of connecting minds, a pact between sender and receiver.

Logos: the word

Thus, spoken and written words are actions when they are received, and create a relationship between separate minds.

Kurt Vonnegut, writer, wit, and sometime Unitarian, said that reading a book was in effect 'meditating with the mind of another' and thus one of the most intimate relationships we separate selves can ever have. In reading (or hearing--yay audiobooks!) the logos, the words, of another, we surrender to the writer, allowing him or her to restructure our inner world, to create moods, thoughts, ideas, imagery. Reading literally generates an imagined world, full of real-feeling sensations, for a time. At the beginning of the world was the word, says John.

Words allow us to connect with the mind of another

The imagined inner world made by the connection between writer/speaker and reader/listener does not remain as vivid over time as when we are actually reading or listening in the moment, But it leaves traces in the neural pathways. Repeated encounters with the author builds up these traces in something like sedimentary layers. Reading or listening repeatedly thus changes you. So it makes sense to be selective about what you read or listen to over and over and over.

The logos thus assumes a bond of trust. Perhaps this is why every world religion comes down hard on bearing false witness (lying)--which breaks the logos' fidelity to the truth. They also come down hard on gossip, slander, etc.--words that can wound the tender mind of the one who has given their attentiveness to read or to listen.

So just be careful with them

It thus behooves anyone who would deal in words to offer words which are both true and kind. Or at least not untrue, and not unkind.

Words are actions. Words establish relationship.

In my work, I deal chiefly in logos:

I write.
I correspond.
I read aloud.
I preach.
I dialogue one-on-one.
I discuss in groups.

Funny when you look at them for what they are

In so doing, there is a constant search for the right words in each situation. True and kind, or not untrue and not unkind.

This full-time mental google-search reminds me of the myth of Tantalus, whose punishment was to stand neck-deep in a river under a fruit tree for eternity. Each time he bent over to drink water to slake his thirst, the water receded. Each time he reached for the fruit to fill his hungry belly, the branches of the tree lifted out of his reach.

Searching for the logos is a lot like Tantalus...

The exact, perfect, 'just right' words never come. The words of life that end the existential hunger and thirst. They never will. They do not exist, because they're only symbols for a world just beyond our reach. I have had to learn to live with their fundamental inadequacy.

With apologies and respect to my comrades who would dethrone the logos and replace it with silence, the answer to the limitations of words is not to remove them from worship. There is no silent meditation in existence whose context is not framed by words ('just breathe', 'let thoughts come and go', 'imagine a big ball of warm sunlight in your stomach...'). The answer to the limitations of words is not to ladle on more words through 'open discussion', like some directionless university dorm-room bull session (which verbal soup produces a white noise of multidirectional logos, and encourages competitiveness).

The answer is there's no escape from on-going discernment around the words we use to worship. Understanding that the logos is not what it describes, but is a living word-- it can be fine-tuned, clarified, interrogated, rewritten and resaid. The Logos is not insurance form boilerplate or Apple terms and conditions. The Logos opens like the lotus and invites connection. It does not close off and regulate.

We have to start somewhere. In the beginning was the word.

So it pays to be selective about who you read, listen to, talk with. Every word creates relationship. Every word is a feeble attempt to bridge the gap of our solitudes, a leap of faith that we can make ourselves known to another and feel we are no longer completely separate selves locked in the first-person kingdom of our own skulls. Everyone uses words; not everyone uses them well. You become the words that occupy and shape your mind. Not everyone deserves to be allowed into it.

Besides Vonnegut, I have meditated rather a lot with the mind of the poet T.S. Eliot, who put the problem (rather brilliantly) like this:

“So here I am...
Trying to use words, and every attempt
Is a wholly new start, and a different kind of failure
Because one has only learnt to get the better of words
For the thing one no longer has to say, or the way in which
One is no longer disposed to say it. And so each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate,
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope
To emulate - but there is no competition -
There is only the fight to recover what has been lostAnd found and lost again and again: and now, under conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.”

And so lately, when I am trying to offer comfort to one of my pastoral charges. Or when I am trying to encourage a young leader trying to get a new fellowship off the ground. Or even when I'm trying to tell my wife how utterly in love with her I am...I have to do more than be still (important though that is).

I have to bloody well say something.

Something true and kind, or at least not untrue and not unkind, something that will never be the magic spell we want it to be, wish it could be, or even expect or demand it to be.

But to keep reaching, keep discerning, and like Tantalus, accepting that the reaching is all there is.

The Art of the Swap

I will shortly be engaging in what is called a 'pulpit swap'. With a difference.

Normally, it's a straight-up like-for-like exchange. I go to another church; that church's minister comes to mine. And we do each other's jobs for an agreed length of time.

In my case, the minister I'm swapping with is retired and so has no permanent ministry. He has instead arranged for me to provide 'preaching breaks' for three congregations in the UK: Leeds, Glasgow, and York. My congregation gets three consecutive services provided by the retired minister and his wife.

Thus, my geographically isolated-congregation will get a rather deeper experience with a highly experienced minister, and this geographically-isolated, mid-career minister (me) gets a rather less deep experience, but of a variety of congregations.

This is therefore a win-win. My congregation, which has had me consistently for 6.5 years, gets another deep experience of Unitarian ministry in a place where there just aren't any. I get a breadth of experience that cannot be afforded in Australia. It should be educative for everyone.

I have not been on a UK pulpit since Dean Row in 2011. My congregation has not had a Unitarian minister other than me since 2010. Much water has, as they say, been passed under the bridge during these years since. I have changed and adapted to the local context. The local context has adapted to me. It's easy to get stuck in our perceptions of what constitutes the Unitarian experience and Unitarian ministry's shaping of that experience. The swap should address that by providing much-needed perspective for both me and my charges,

What about the three congregations I'm visiting? Since I'm only at each for one service, what might they have to gain? "Einmal is Keinmal" as the Germans say. "Only once is never" Or, that which only happens once, might as well never have happened at all. So is this swap a waste of time for them? They are not, as many UK churches are, lacking for ministry. Two of them are run by awesome permanent ministers; one is lay-led, but has retired ministers in the congregation who take services.

So in their door blows an odd species--an Australian minister who doesn't sound it, whose ministry has developed in a context very different from theirs. What can this offer?

First, variety certainly, and at the very least they won't be as easily able to sit back and let the familiar sensory and cognitive experience of their accustomed service wash over them. They will have to engage afresh, learn to listen to a new way of thinking and delivering. Kind of like reading a book by an unfamiliar author--you might never read the author again, but once will have stretched you some.

Second, the swap can offer a handy preaching break for chronically over-worked ministers. No one who doesn't grind out freshly-baked worship on a weekly basis can have the least idea of how welcome that might be.

Third, they're not just getting a peripatetic minister, a wandering preacher, I. They're also getting the Unitarian brand ambassador for the antipodean region. Switching to my ANZUUA President's hat (there isn't an actual hat as part of the role...), I plan to value-add by outlining the state of the market in Australia and New Zealand and, I hope, establish permanent links between our congregations, the better to close the wide gap of distance between us. Who knows? Sister churches perhaps, like the twin-towns scheme?

So, not just a win-win, but a win-win-win, lifting all our little boats.

That's the aim anyway. Wish me luck, and a spring tide.