Stand in the gap

 

{Monosyllabic guttural utterance, expressing surrender, peace, weariness, resignation, acceptance, and contentment}

The long words are easy – it’s the short words – the words that actually have meaning, which are harder.  Words that require understanding, understanding to compile, and to arrange.

Would it be a better world if words were adequate – if words could sufficiently express all that we felt, and knew.  What would we gain?  What would we loose?  Would we understand each other better?  Would we understand ourselves better? 

 

What would happen to those things which stand in the gap of understanding?

 

What would happen to music?  What would happen to art?  To theater, storytelling, and coffeehouses?  Maybe communication is complicated because we are complicated, and that which we are trying to understand is complicated, and even more complicated than we suspect – maybe there are things which cannot be broken into syllables.  Things vaster, deeper, truer, grander, more awful, more wonderful, more beautiful, more terrible than we can tell.

 

 

Look a sunrise – can you tell it’s whole story?  Look a rain drop – do you know it’s tale?

 

 

Now look at your parents – your siblings – your spouse.  Can you explain them?

 

 

 

Now look at yourself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now get in your car and go for a drive – don’t worry about the words . . . words will fail you. Thank goodness we can hear beyond the words of our friends and loved ones – that we can hear their hearts, their hopes, and their dreams. 

 

Don’t rely on words.  Rely on time – shared experiences, shared trials, shared meals, shared laughter and smiles, shared tears and brokenness – you want to know and be known? It is in this ground which that plant grows. 

 

And the words? Well they just stand in the gap . . .