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yes, and no. Let us not become like reformers who in their zeal for reform burned the monasteries and desecrated the insides of the cathedrals. I have been guilty of the sin your essay describes- of offering only words when more was needed; and I have been hurt by this same sin from others. But there have also been many times when someone has said something to me or when I have read something in a book that was so perfect, so exactly what I needed to hear at that moment, that I knew that words, these mere marks on paper, these mere sounds, had become the vessel for something far greater. Something I would not have experienced if someone had not risked speaking or setting words to paper.

I, too, have struggled with the seductive nature of words to be simplistic. I have written about this myself. Where it plagues me most is in my attempts to do regular scriptural reflections. I can never find a way to not make things sound as if it's not cut and dried. It is a frustrating thing to have so many things floating around in your head (whether they are worthy or not) and not be able to get them out in an appropriate fashion.

The only thing I know to do is carry on, and pray that my message gets through in spite of my medium

Man, that was brutal.

I produced a "Man on the street" segment for the recent Men's Retreat at our church. The segment ended with the question "What is the best thing one man can do for another man?" The last guy in the segment was a very "unusual" guy. He pondered the question for a moment and answered "B" . . . long pause . . . "B With" . . . . longer pause . . . "B There".
The guy said volumes with the least amount of words possible.
I love words, the way they sound, the way they look, their weight, their heft even their meaning. But sometime they are insignificant compared to just "B" ing with someone, "B" ing there for someone.
"Preach the gospel at all times - if necessary use words". A great quote from Augustine or Assisi - can't recall and don't have the time right now to google it but someone will surely add the words that will provide that information :)

ooops - forgot to sign in. That last comment about the "B" guy was me.

Words are fine things as long as they are backed up by actions. It is the difference between speaking and doing that shows us whom we can count on, and who our true friends are. One of the things I try to teach my children is the importance of keeping a promise, of being true to one's word, of being honorable and doing the right thing.

Gee, this one caught me off guard. The postscript, describing the context, helped.... Words are precious and powerful. Our world was created out of chaos by just a few spoken words. On the other hand, it's true that words are so often tossed around today like used gum wrappers.... You got me thinking, preacher.

It's a truly thought provoking post, meant to be a little severe in response to a particular situation as mentioned upthread..

I think of times when words were the very thing needed most- I am in a 12 step program, and there have been times when some very blunt words, said with love, kicked me out of the rut of rationialization.
Clearly this is not the purpose of your post, but it started the stream of consciousness babbling..

I taught a seminar last semester in which I was trying to get the students to both recognize the incredible power of words and their utter lack of force. The seminar was on paradox and riddles.

Hume wrote something about the surreal potential of words in Treatise of Human Nature at the begin of Book III, "Of Morals"

"There is an incovenience which attends all abstrue reasoning, that it may silence, without convincing an antagoinist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closeet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and 'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attain'd with difficulty. This is still more conspicuous in a long chain of reasoning, where we must preserve to the end the evidence of the first propositions, and where we often lose sight of all the most receiv'd maxims, either of philosophy or common life."

I took the class out into the brisk fall air. I said, "Feel that cool air against your skin. That's real. So are the words we speak, but at times we have to remember that words can come to dominate and prevent us from seeing the world as it is."

But once the word was made flesh and dwelt among us. The very emptiness you speak of in words makes the beginning of the Gospel of John even more powerful -- that God could take the word, the Logos, and make it into a back that would not only push against the cruelty of the world, but a back that would bear the burden of all our sins.

I think you're being hard on yourself...sometimes the only thing we have to give is words. They are frail, but they aren't useless. And the good thing about friends is that they're forgiving. Plus, the times I think I'm the most useless to my friends sometimes don't seem so useless to the other person. The other day, a friend told me that I'd been a help during a hard time, when I felt like I was a proverbial third wheel.

Let me chime in here. Someone above mentioned that this is a purposely severe essay in response to a particular situation. That is correct.
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Look, no one can read much of my writing without realizing that I am a man who ADORES words. I love them in ways I cannot even explain. And let me be CLEAR ABOUT THIS: Words are powerful and can be good and can bring goodness to those who read them, no matter what the motives or weaknesses of the writer. Of course that is true. We all know that.
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This was written as a message to those of us who are gifted with words. Hollow words may be a force for good when someone reads your words in a book or magazine, but if you try to let your words live for you, you will become a slave to your own words. And your own life will become as hollow as they are.
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This is a warning to myself. It is one that I need to hear...a lot.

I'm familiar with both wanting/needing more than words could give and giving/living less than words I have uttered.

I agree with all you have said here and I pray that I will heed the warning.

I actually hear this as a word of comfort rather than a word of conviction. Every week I tremble in my chair as I try and come up with a sermon for Sunday. And, every week the words feel so hollow rather than hallowed. I put my head down but cannot hear the heart beat and I ache to say whatever it is that I must.

RLP- you have pinpointed what it is that petrifies me. Thank you.

Perhaps words are inefficient...perhaps they fail us.

But your words, and others, have carried me through some very difficult moments.

Maybe eeyore said it best, "It's not much of a tail, but I'm kind of attached to it."

Bless your struggles...they strengthen me.

love,
"Pepe"

i am glad you wrote this for yourself, because it's really none of our business if you live what you write. I am trusting that you want to live true to your words, but i know it's hard, because words are so much more beautiful than reality--and i believe you have written about that before in one of your essays. Your words terrified me at first because they triggered a memory of someone who preyed upon others using his words. But, alas, i worked thru the trigger and it was my problem,not yours. Sometimes, though, the more honest you are, the more distrusting i become...again, my problem. Peterson wrote in his Intro to Jeremiah: "there is no dissonance between his life and his book. SOme people write better than they live; others live better than they write. Writing or living was the same for Jeremiah."
Maybe if someone's words help others so much in so many ways, then occasionally when they don't match up to our lives, it's Okay. There is beauty in the word itself and a life that is trying. Staying aware of the dissonance is probably the key. thanks for your words....and your honesty.

as a writer, i often place an undue burden on my words to be the container of my life. because the use of words comes easy to me, i am inclined to conjure a life for myself (and others) out of words that doesn't yet exist.

it's at these times i feel like a balloon whose ribbon has slipped through the loose grip of a child's fingers. floating high above the earth, i can describe everything perfectly from my bird-eye-vantage, but the distance reveals just how far i've let my life-in-words abstract me from the grit of life at ground zero. that distance makes attempts at human connection, as well as consolation, seem futile (though they're not necessarily).

this is sometimes how i describe the depression that, as a one who feels called to chronicle the world in words, i am prone to.

thanks, rlp, for your words of warning to us fellow users of words. word up.

-chris
inkslinger

I love words, and in my hands they are powerful tools. During the last three days I have helped free someone of a terrible burden, with words, and now she will use words to do the rest of the work to return from hell. Sunday, I will use carefully chosen words to share the greatest gifts ever been shared with me, and hopefully a few echoes will sound in those who hear me. But I was challenged by your statement -- "If you love words, you must renounce them", and thought about other ways I would do things, if I gave up words for a while.

I've also been thinking about what blogging does. Sometimes I scan my favorite blogs too frequently, because I am bored. Then, the words are your captivity. I, the reader, am thinking, "I'm bored, you need to write something. Entertain me." I apologize, Preach, to you and to others, for I have bidden your words for my amusement. Yes, they touch me and get me thinking, but it seems like a pretty exploitive relationship. I am a word vampire.

Brilliant essay, in my opinion this is one of your best. It is so easy to be seduced by words, and forget the meaning behind them.

BuddhaBoy

Words for you would be a scream, writing on your post a release.
Feeling with you, with love,
M in G-town

I think you are 100 percent right with this and it is an old battle for those who love and those who love to write. Some people choose the words and some choose the living and some fortunate few find a way to serve both well. (May you be in this camp!) The difficulty has scalded the souls of women for centuries and forgive me if I take it as a good sign that a father is struggling with the choices one makes when one is unwaveringly in love with words, yet committed to the needs of others, in a deep, real way. (And forgive me if I've read too much into your words.) Cooking breakfast can be a poem, and we need other poems too, to live by.

You sound depressed. Sometimes words are all we have to give. --Joe.

I would like respectfully to venture that no-one should confuse words with writing, since one is a tool, the other a vocation. I suggest that a writer should view his words with the same feelings as a carpenter his chisels. Or perhaps, The Carpenter, us.

A friend reminded me tonight, "Remember the Real Live Preacher? I had almost forgotten about him. I went on his web site and had fun refreshing my memory...Anyway, it was like running into an old friend!" I replied, "funny you should be mentioning him, I'm reading his book now (finally) and have been checking up on him at CC". Words, where would be without them (sign-language is good too!). Anyway, your "words" made me think of another author that wrote (and I actually went to my bookshelf to look it up), "The right word spoken at the right time is as beautiful as gold apples in a silver bowl" (says the proverb, and Jane Kirkpatrick) I love "words", even though we so often say, words cannot describe how I feel, as was printed on a sympathy card I sent just last week. Pictures can create a thousand words, but a "word" can create a thousand pictures too!

Recent experience teaches me:

Good words.

I still hold that man is inherently symbolic, and that words (like everything else) ought to be used to symbolize and praise God and His love. Even so...

Very good words.

(Though one other point, I feel, must be made...)

As Paul writes about the Gospel, good words are good even in a worthless life. Just doesn't make the life worthwhile.

Speaking of words, have you read the speech that Bono gave at the national prayer breakfast? His words to our president really reminded me of you RLP.

And it was somehow comforting to know that someone had said those words to Bush, that he had to sit and at least pretend to listen to them.

Yeah. You're right. The need for real attention and care never ends.

This one hit home.I rely heavily on words to weave persuasion, to comfort, to support, to attempt to inspire and aspire. I love words, and I simmer in them ike a steamy bath, pour them over others, wrap them around my clients, but lately, I've been sick of them. They aren't enough, and while my words are still- despite my career selling information-sincere, they've had more power over me than I have over them, and the words others have been feeding me have not been as satisfying as they might have been in the past. I've needed physical viscral confirmation.
Thanks for this,
Marya

I love words. Love, love, love them. But sometimes a hug is better.

There are times I think that there are only a certain amount of words in this world and we are going to be held responsible about how we use them.
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And there are times I am sick and tired of words. They seem cheap and useless.
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Our words exist at temporal level, ephemeral -- flitting and resting on nothing. Augustine noted a long time ago that creation was spoken into being. In fact in the beginning God only began to speak and the Word is still being spoken.
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and so our love affair begins. We are enchanted by words, beguiled by them because we want to and yearn to participate in creation. And then we see our failure and how cheap our glittering pyrite is next to the gold of the Logos. We dwell in that disappointment for a while.
___
And then we begin to speak again. Because God's Logos is irresistable.
___

http://reverendmommy.blogspot.com
If God intended us to be vegatarian, why did He make His critters so dern tasty?

I hear you, RLP. Language, honed and surgical, too often cuts deeply. The scalpel turns on the surgeon, clumsy bearer of powerful words. Like depth charges; once released we can't take them back. What great gift isn't a great and terrible responsibility too? Don't you wish you were mute sometimes? But then you wouldn't know the other face, the other cheek... how wonderful words can be. How they can be used to restore and heal, help illuminate the dark places, how they can join with actions to reclaim what was lost... I don't think there's a definitive answer, but I think you carve out good questions with your scalpel.

Richard Lischer's book, The End of Words, seems appropriate here. There is a wonderful review of it by Barbara Brown Taylor at Christian Century. Sorry, but I can't quite figure out how to imbed the link in this reply. I'm especially interested in Brown's notion of being "conscientious objectors in the war of words." Words are tools by which we can build up or tear down. How we utilize them makes all the difference.

So what stopped you from throwing your sholder against the load or bending your back? Maybe thats too much of a personal question...
“...you breathe your spiritual life into the atmosphere as you do your breath, and someone else breathes it in...and all live in it and receive from it according to their unfoldment.”
a mere disciple