A question of language

Language plays a big part in defining our reality. Our words seem to make things real, as if the things we see would only be phantoms of our imagination without the words we use to shape them. Like how a pile of wood can make a chair real.

Language itself only works if the words convey the meaning they were meant to. Thus how we define our words and whether the recipient of our words shares that definition determines whether we are just making noises or making talking pictures.

Let’s play with the word God. god. YHWH. Allah. The same Word. Idea. Essence. Power. You wouldn’t know it just by looking around in today’s world though. Because, although we have the word to describe that mystery which has haunted some and illumined others since the dawn of time. We have a hard time defining it has humans, and somehow tied into that, we have a difficult time defining “human”. (There was once a country, a beacon of liberty in the world, which defined some men as only 3/5ths human. Our language has played tricks on us before, and I’m sure it will again.) We hear one of those words, or a word from a hundred other languages, a billion other mouths, and it carries the connotations that we attach to them. And they carry the weight of the ages, the brand of their accompanying religion. We fight over which name is right. Proper. True. And those who try to tell the story fight as well, and are fought over.
Because as with any other story the storyteller spins bits of themselves into the web they weave.

The tragedy I think is that although nearly every god, and nearly every thought, command, decry, deed and book attributed to them tells us that this thing is unknowable,  indefinable, and most mysteriously, except perhaps to saints, sinners, animists and their ilk, that this grand mystery is within us, without us. And we are it surely as it is us.
Many would say that their particular dogma is different, and doesn’t tell us of the universality and interconnectedness of everything. Well then how do they define god if not “all”? (Is their god so small?) I would love to know who to crunch this huge wide world and all of its enigmas into a nice little ball and name it. And then tell others how to define it, but not how to understand it to make it definable. God™, all you need is a bright package, a logo, and a talking point or two. (I hear eternal damnation, and hell are great selling points.)

I will not be told who my god is, what my god is, or if my god is.

I can think of another people who seem to understand that - the Jews. After billions have shared the books of their prophets, and found a messiah, and 6 hundred years later, another messiah still they do not share the view that the messenger has come. They will not let themselves be told who their god is.


This game of defining god is ultimately destined for defeat, but of course will continue to be played until we can look inside and define it for ourselves. Would any of the gods people pray to for grace and guidance share their fervor for destruction in the pursuit of righteousness? I remember the son of one who had anger for nothing but self-righteousness, and shiver when I think of the pain, the “disturbance in the force”, caused by those who deliver that self righteousness with his name on their lips as they kill and die to prove that their language, and their “beliefs” were right.

How far must we travel, how much must we destroy, how much must we buy, how much must we consume, how deep shall we dig to satiate that question that burns in our souls? Do we even know the question? Are we even aware that there is a question burning within us that we feel impelled to answer?

I see people and I see the hints of these questions, begging for attention. I look in their eyes and I see the fires, the pain, and the endlessly unfulfilling pursuit of substance. It is frightening, the lengths we will go to fill our holes, while rarely reaching into the void to see if its darkness can be lit by our own divine presence, to see what answers we have in our depths.

Perhaps in time, the words shall rise from the depths to our lips, and the deeds shall follow. Perhaps we can define what is means to be hu-man. And just what god means to us.

Or perhaps our insatiable needs to quantify, label, conquer, and put a price tag on everything will define us.