"Words, Words, Words"

The title above is taken from the second act of Hamlet. Polonius asks Hamlet what he’s reading, and Hamlet answers with the above. I think it shows that Shakespeare, speaking through Hamlet, admits that words are provisional, and then goes on using them very skillfully. 

    A few years back, I took Arabic at Harvard Extension. There were several reasons for this, but among them was the idea that Arabic was somehow magical, so that a translation of the Qur’an from the Arabic wasn’t really a translation, and so forth. I’d heard it so many times that I was getting tired of it.

    What I discovered is that Arabic seems indeed magical. If you can spot a word’s root and pattern, you can kinda guess what it means. Take a word like maltafa (and I don’t know if that word really exists). The root of l-t-f is recognizable and usually has something to do with refinement. The pattern of the word seems to make it a place, so I would guess it to be a place where refinement happens. Very literally, an oil or metal refinery or, less literally, maybe a girls’ finishing school. It’s spooky.

    I was telling this over the phone, to a friend who is a Sanskritist,  and she said, “Oh yeah, Sanskrit is magical like that, if you go back far enough.”  But then she stopped herself and said, “All languages are magical. They, basically arise out of nothing in an effort to describe what we see to others, and they are all inadequate” (Arabic and Sanskrit are not exceptions). 

    The weird thing is that you have to understand all the inadequacies before you can use it wisely.  Like, you can write poetry only when you understand that the words of your language are futile at best.

    In seminary we were taught to use the word panentheism. This basically means that, while God is truly everywhere, he remains, through it all, other than us. I’ve been told by Catholic seminarians (my seminary was Eastern Orthodox) that they were taught the same word. It’s supposed to be the word that makes Christians different than folks of other religions, and that keeps them from entering true dialogue, which always keeps both parties vulnerable. The Christians are never vulnerable. Because their god is always someone not completely known, someone to be appealed to.

   A much more useful word is pantheism, which means there is no difference between me and God. There are a few Christians who, through experience, have learned to use that word, among them, the late Fr. Thomas Keating. You have to make a distinction between you and God in order to pray or say thanks.  But then your practice shows you there is no solid distinction.

  But pantheism is just a word too. And subject to idolatry like all words are. It’s truer than panentheism, but if clung to too hard, it becomes untrue, and the best word (or phrase) becomes “oak tree in the garden” as Zennists always say.