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Permalink Reply by Tom Smith on 5th mo. 3, 2010 at 7:34pm

I have struggled with scientific and religious/spiritual language for a number of decades now. The "new language" of quantum physics, quarks, black holes, even "big bang" when I taught at Holmdel, NJ where the residual background was first detected, etc., have all come in my adult life.

On the other hand, I have been accused of using the old trite terms of early Friends so I must not be open to growth. In some ways I would like to see new metaphors, but I am not sure that we need to change concepts but rather definitions of the specifics. I suspect that religious/spiritual terms become defined and then "frozen." In science the comparison I think of is the atomic model that is shown in so many high school texts and even in a good deal of scientific discussions. It is credited to Bohr, but within a few months of his proposing this model he found that the orbiting electrons pictured as planet-like objects in orbits around the nucleus was not accurate. Thus "energy levels," "orbitals," etc where used in descriptions. However, ATOM did not get changed although the make-up was totally changed. Then came the Quarks and the change from atoms as solid particles not only changed to being made up of sub-atomic particles but later became a collection of "points with no dimensions but "only" energy. I have severely simplified this tracing of atomic language, but I do have a reason for using this "metaphor."

Maybe our language of atoms, as strongly influenced by Friend Dalton, or of spiritual reality needs more and more experiential/experimental language ("This I know experimentally." G Fox) but I believe we need to be willing and able to maintain some basic terms with more clearly delineated parameters while developing a deeper understanding of "that of God" as people examine the basic "tenets" of faith.

Too often, it seems to me, that we develop "new terms" for what we believe to be "new concepts" rather than maintain the major underlying terminology with the use of more specific terms which then are taken as "THE ATOM" rather than various aspects that help clarify.

I have come very close to deleting this vague, obtuse, confusing, rambling comment, but I felt led to try and explain my view and have decided to let it stand with a strong feeling of inadequacy, not so much of my experience and knowledge, but rather a feeling of total inability to put into words my feelings and beliefs.

I still feel to a large extent "That those who know do not speak and those who speak do not know." Maybe that is one reason I have chosen "open worship" as my preferred manner of community worship, and that I remain a Friend.

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Permalink Reply by Rosemary Gould on 5th mo. 3, 2010 at 10:54pm

Tom, your post may have been rambling, but it was full of interesting ideas.

When I first came to my meeting and started reading about early Friends, I loved most of what I learned. But I was coming from a Catholic church I had loved, too, and I felt offended by Fox's insistence that old prayers and rituals were dead and only spontaneous new words could be from the Spirit. (That was how I understood his ministry, anyway.) It seemed to me that my experience of the presence of God in Mass had deepened because of the repetition, though I can understand that for someone else it would seem just endlessly repetitive. So I don't mean to suggest that everyone ought to find the traditional Quaker phrases tired, only that maybe some people do. I notice some Friends don't use many of these.

At the same time, I think that a good sign of religious renewal is ministry and writing which digs into the language and makes experience feel new. The early Quakers didn't so much come up with their own words for God as take metaphors and quotations from the Bible and find new meaning and instruction in them. They took "concepts," (to use your word) such as the Seed, the Lamb, waiting on the Lord, the light shone in the darkness, and so on, and read them with new depth of feeling and insight.

What you write about Physics is very instructive. I've noticed that some religious writers today would like to use ideas from particle physics as metaphor about the Spirit, but then physicists say those writers haven't really understood the physics very well. It's probably impossible to take a set of theories that language doesn't describe very accurately and try to apply them to explain a mystery that language also can't fully describe. But I don't agree that "those who know do not speak, etc." Surely if that were true there couldn't be any vocal ministry at all?

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 5th mo. 4, 2010 at 12:34am

Refreshing religious language is an important side effect of any renewal of faith and religion; it can even help trigger the spread of such renewal from one person to another. But the most important aspect of a renewal is that some people become, at least until the new language ossifies, better able to know and respond to God.

Steven Gaskin used to talk about the modern secular model of communication: as if one person writes his message on a piece of paper, wraps the paper around a rock, and throws the rock over the fence to the intended audience-- who must then pick it up, unwrap the note, and decode it.

The problem, he says, with this model is that in actual communication there's also an element of telepathy, what the Buddhists would call direct transmission. The coded form of a message is not the whole content of it, but rather a hint, serving to help a listener attune himself to the actual understanding a speaker wants to convey.

"New language about God" comes down to finding better ways to encode somebody's improved sense of what God is like and how God acts in the world. It prepares people for a shift in their vision of God, makes for better understanding-- not forming a better understanding "of" God as if God were an object, rather being given a better understanding "with" God.

"If you bring forth what is within you" as the Gospel of Thomas has it, you will find that the very nature of that is creative, profoundly creative, not merely dressing the same truth in new words but giving birth to whole new configurations of meaning even in the old words... Ask to be taught, and expect to be shown whatever mix of prayer and effort God finds appropriate for now...

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Permalink Reply by Tom Smith on 5th mo. 4, 2010 at 6:12am

Rosemary, I agree with much of what you say actually. I was not suggesting we use science metaphors for spiritual ideas, but rather that language needs to change with new explorations to reflect new experiences and discoveries, however, many of the Old general terms that were new in previous experiences need not and probably should not be discarded due to growth in knowledge and experience.

I regret that many of the older terms used by early Friends have been discarded or substituted not for clarification purposes, but rather as somewhat of a denial of the "concept" behind the term. I agree that Seed/Light/Lamb etc. were renewed after "the long night of apostasy, but some adaptations such as the "INWARD Light" "That of God in everyone including the Jew and the Turk" (slight paraphrase I believe) were meant to express very basic experiences that have been reinterpreted in many ways.

I have been told that I really need to write much longer pieces, or maybe a book, to express my thoughts that seem to try and incorporate many "tangents(?)," subtleties, abstractions, etc. in too few words.

For instance, I interpret "those who know do not speak, etc." as expressing what I have heard from several strong influential people in my life. It seems that those who have learned the most are the ones who have expressed their awareness of how much further/deeper they can go in understanding "God," human relationships to "God," and interpersonal relationships. "The more I know, the more I realize how much more there is to learn." My reference was to those individuals who are sure they KNOW what is right and true and make no bones about SPEAKING to you about their truth as compared to those who speak more humbly about sharing their deep experiences but find that their Truth is almost inexpressible in human language.

Thanks very much for reaching beyond my words to try and understand what I am expressing. It is with continuing dialogue, including challenges for clarification (which I appreciate very much), that understanding of one's own interpretations and those of others becomes more of the communication that resembles "Deep answering to Deep." (MLKing and others have used that phrase).

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Permalink Reply by Forrest Curo on 5th mo. 4, 2010 at 10:28am

The rationale I see for the "Those who know don't speak" phenomenon is that listeners usually can only follow a short ways past whatever they've already been able to realize themselves. That the only message that's helpful is one that someone actually does come to realize themselves; even believing that someone else knows something you don't... while it might serve as motivation to learn more, it doesn't really give you their knowledge.

The classic Quaker preaching practice, despite a great deal of specific doctrinal baggage, ultimately came down to "turning a person to the Teacher Within." After that, people could benefit from sharing whatever they were given, but that inward focus was the essential message.

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Permalink Reply by Rosemary Gould on 5th mo. 4, 2010 at 12:59pm

Tom, communication is so difficult, isn't it? But I love the phrase "Deep answering to Deep," I hadn't heard that before. I think I did understand what you meant about the atom. You were using it as a sort of anti-metaphor to show that even scientists find, when they put their discoveries into language, that what people take away from that may be worse than useless--so simplistic as to be misleading. And that's what so often happens when people try to talk about God.

And now I understand what you meant about speaking and knowing. I find that when I'm led to speak in meeting for worship I often want to wait and work on the message, make it into a neat discursive package designed to impress. The last time I spoke (months ago now) I finally understood that all of that was just ego and I should go back to the original few words (the lyrics of an old song) that had been the real message in the first place. It was amazing (but not really surprising) how much it spoke to others in the meeting. Now I have to learn the obedience to just stand up when the message comes.

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Permalink Reply by Rosemary Gould on 5th mo. 4, 2010 at 1:16pm

Thank you, Forrest. That seems to explain so much, especially when you say that that which is within is "profoundly creative."

Direct transmission is what often happens in silent worship, isn't it? When we come to meeting we often find that many of us are feeling moved in the same way at that moment, and then someone will speak the message that moves us all forward. A Friend in my meeting often says that even if she doesn't deliver the message, she trusts that if it's important someone else will and she sees it happen again and again. And one of the things that is often most moving to me during silent worship is just a physical sense of oneness with the Friends around me: that we're all hearing the same bird singing outside, the same person sniffling or shifting on the bench, breathing the same air. It's something I already "know," so it shouldn't be such a profound revelation, but Love changes that knowledge into something that is alive.

It's very helpful to see that in comparison with a piece of paper wrapped around a rock!

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Permalink Reply by Ron Czecholinski on 5th mo. 4, 2010 at 2:59pm

Great discussion - part of the motivation in my interest in an alternative model of church planting is to be able to work at conveying meaning from the heart rather than staying stuck in old cliches or "triggers". My take is that words are only relevant if they are able to convey meaning between people. When the meaning has become overly distorted, it seems the time to change words.

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Permalink Reply by Rosemary Gould on 5th mo. 4, 2010 at 3:43pm

Or refresh our understanding of them. I found Liz Opp's blog, that I linked to above, very helpful about that. It's possible to find new meaning in the old words. And that's what T. S. Eliot thought poetry was for also, refreshing language so that words are more precise and resonant again. It makes sense to me that a community would do that far more successfully than individuals trying to do it alone (unless they're great poets!)

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Permalink Reply by Ron Czecholinski on 5th mo. 4, 2010 at 4:16pm

I agree - the problem, the way I see it, is that many people have become dulled or damaged to the degree that the old words only provide triggers that block any potential meaning. It might take new words, especially to get through the blocks and cultivate healing.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Camp on 5th mo. 4, 2010 at 8:36pm

Everywhere I do my activist work we run into the same quandary. For example, within Feminist circles much discussion currently rages as to whether the very word "Feminism" has been so damaged and so defined by its opposition that it needs to be scrapped altogether. The question then begins whether we are being cowardly for doing so and precisely what we would use in place. Would the whole process of stigmatizing just begin again?

This phenomenon could well apply to "Christian", too. I claim both labels for myself but, depending on my audience, at times I use other, less politically and emotionally loaded terms like "women's rights" or "Christ-centered". Am I lacking in courage, or am I seeking to avoid needless conflict?

My response, in part, is that English is such an adaptable language that a word which might be pejorative and offensive in one generation might be reclaimed and made acceptable. Again, referring back to my Feminist work, "Queer" is the first word that comes to mind. In an LGBT context, this is an umbrella term that denotes all that is not strictly heterosexual. Still, I have a difficult time using the word, regardless of whether it is now socially acceptable, since I still hear it as a word of hate. Sometimes we don't have to invent new words and phrases. Sometimes we can give existing terms a new meaning.

I think it's inevitable that any phrase or term will lose its fresh, inspiring quality. It seems to me that this an unavoidable process. We can invent more terms or specific language, but if we do so we need to understand that it too will become stale, or, worse yet, perverted by opponents to mean something hurtful and negative. Much of what happens is up to fate, though I do believe we have a collective role in shaping meaning, also.

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Permalink Reply by Rosemary Gould on 5th mo. 4, 2010 at 10:21pm

Yes, the problem does crop up everywhere. I have the sense that it is a somewhat different problem when you're thinking about how other people are going to react to the words you are using than it is when you are searching for words to describe the ineffable as well as you can.

Or maybe they are two branches that come from the same tree. I think one of the gifts of Quakers to the world was to take speech so seriously from the beginning. In any case, I don't think you are lacking in courage for taking care over how your audience will feel about the words you choose. Surely it's a primary skill for an activist.

Since my son is autistic I've been thinking a lot about the euphemisms for disabled people lately. First there were words like crippled, blind, and lame, but then those became pejorative, mostly because they were used as metaphors for negative human qualities. I'm starting to see the word "autistic" used in the same way. But it seems to many people that the words have to be changed so frequently that there's a feeling of absurdity to the whole enterprise. If pejorative associations follow the change of word this quickly, there probably is no use in continuing to change and change. Somehow the feelings behind the words have to change. In other words, as you suggest, we need a change of heart which the change of language can't produce. It gets back to what Forrest wrote about communication not being just tossing a rock but a connection of minds and hearts. I agree with you that the future of the words we use is beyond our control.

I'm getting very tired so I hope this post isn't incoherent. Thanks for bringing up another facet of this question.

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