READ!
Just yesterday I asked my seven year old if there was anything he wanted me to get from the grocery store. He said, “Yes. Mom. Can you get more of those things, you know, that we sprinkle sugar on?” I ran through the list of the many, many options that this could be referring to, and then looked at him quizzically. “You know,” he said, “ you cut them in half, and they look like this,” he cupped his hands in a circle as if he were holding a ball. “Oh,” I said. “Grapefruit? Is that what you mean? You want Grapefruit?” “Yes. That’s it,” he said. “Ok, buddy, I can get some grapefruit.”
Earlier that day, my eleven year old was telling me all about some theory he has about Fortnite. It was something about portals and bounty hunters and frames per second and “hp” and fashion shows and “back bling” and aim bots and the loop and Agent Jonesy. Most days, if you walked in to my house you’d hear him shouting something about “flaming garbage!” and “what the barf!” and “that’s sus” while he’s one-v-one-v-one-v-oneing long distance with his cousins. We can barely keep up with half of this new language that he’s developing. Just when we think we’ve caught up, he’s shouting “yeet!” And laying red stone in the nether to avoid the ender dragon in survival.
Every day is a process of getting to know my kids. And helping them get to know the world around them. Lots and lots of this is done through language. Words. Naming.
One of the most exciting and anticipated moments, or series of moments, of being a parent for me is watching my kids develop language. When they were babies, I was desperate for them to start to talk. And I’m desperate for them to keep talking, even when it’s relentless talking about Ninjago cartoons and Minecraft and Fortnite video game conspiracy theories. When both of my boys reach a level of frustration where they begin to lose their minds, we try to remind them to “use their words,” to express how they’re feeling in language, to put some meat on the bones of their emotions with words so that we can better understand what is going on inside of their ever changing brains.
Both of my boys were slow talkers. There was a lot of “ehh ehh”, and “AAH AHH,” and “ack! ack!” and plenty of “waaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh” for the first two years of their lives. There was pointing and head nodding, running away from and running to, we even taught them some sign language, all in desperate attempts to communicate. “Please, just tell me what you want!” I’d say. “Use your words.” “What is it?” “How can I help you?” “What’s wrong?” “Tell me.” Words were the way in to their little brains. Words were the keys to unlock their thoughts and dreams and personalities and fears. I mean, there are lots of ways to get to know someone, but language, talking, using words is a big one.
And the process of learning language is so fascinating to me. First, we have to come to some understanding that there are symbols for real things. That a series of sounds strung together represents some kind of concept or idea or feeling. We have to figure out that that uncomfortable rumbling in our bellies means we’re hungry, and we have to figure out that that thick white liquid will make that rumbling go away, and then we have to figure out that that thick white liquid has a name, and then we have to figure out and remember the name, “Milk.” And then we have to ask for it.
“What’s that?” “What’s that?” They ask as toddlers, always pointing, swallowing up names for things as fast as they can move their eyes from one thing to the next. Once they figure out that everything has a name, they are hungry for all of the names. They begin to categorize and organize. They put things in file folders or boxes in their brains. Truck, Milk, Cookie, Cat. And then their categories fall apart when some new piece of information enters in. “What’s that” my kid asks as he looks out of the car window. “That’s a cow,” we tell him. “They go moooooo.” “Ahhhh," he thinks, “ok, so brown, four legs, bigger than me, belongs in the box labelled “cow.”” And suddenly, cows have a universal meaning. The existence of “cow,” goes beyond that one quick encounter of a brown four legged animal that he glimpses as we zoom along the highway. Suddenly, “cow” exists. There is now a concept. A name. Something he can take with him wherever he goes. If he ever wants to bring up that idea again, that idea of a big brown animal with four legs grazing in a field, all he has to do is say “cow,” and poof, there it is! Amazing. The concept has a name. The name is “cow.” Now, he has access to that concept, has a kind of relationship with that concept.
So the next day we take him for a walk. “Cow!” He says, pointing to the fenced in backyard. He’s so excited. He’s thrilled. There it is! Four legs. Brown. In a field of grass. He goes through all of his limited boxes and their labels and finds the right one. Not truck. Not milk. Not cookie. “Cow!” He says. And we say, “No. No. Silly. That’s a dog. They go ‘bark! Bark!’” And suddenly, there is a dramatic reshuffling in his brain. The boxes all fall apart as he has to, in a split second, reconstruct new boxes, more boxes, this time with separate labels on separate boxes, one labelled “cow,” and the other labelled “dog.” And he has to see how they’re different. And he has to see how they’re the same. “Ok. So both dogs and cows have four legs. And lots of times they’re brown, but not all the time, and most of the time cows live in big fields and barns and most of the time dogs live in backyards and houses, and cows go moo and dogs go bark. Ok. I’ve got it. Cows go in one box. Dogs in another.” And on and on it goes, this cycle of language, things coming into being as soon as he learns the name of a concept, and then that concept changing, becoming more refined, morphing into something else as he starts noticing the differences between things, as he starts to learn the names of more and more things. “Truck” becomes “bulldozer” and “front end loader” and “cement mixer” and “excavator.” His understanding of the idea of “truck” has expanded, deepened, intensified. But not without a whole lot of rearranging, resorting, deconstructing and reconstructing again.
It’s a disturbing and jolting and disconcerting process, language building. It’s a process of disequilibrium and then righting oneself again. You get stuff wrong, you adjust, correct, rename, and try again. Over and over again. Losing your balance, finding your balance, losing your balance again, with each step and each cycle of language building and learning.
And in a way, that’s how things are created. At least, in our minds. I mean, sure, the thing itself, the “cow,” has existed as a material thing outside of our brains, but it isn’t until we have a name for it that that concept has a meaning to us, in us, with us. When we finally have a name for a thing, we can start to have a relationship with that thing. And the more specific we can get, the closer we can get to what we actually mean, what we actually want, and what we actually experience.
When we name the things that we experience, we gain a better understanding of that experience. When we encounter something originally unknown to us, naming it helps ground us, it literally gives words to the experience, helps us relate it to other things we feel and know and experience, and then, we’re off to the races, we’re able to understand and comprehend and relate to and experience that thing on a deeper, more relational level.
That’s why it’s so important to name God. Not because you’ll get all of who God is in the naming. Not because you’ll understand all of how God works or what God does or fully experience God in the naming, but through the specificity, you can have something to hold on to, something to relate to, a box to help you sort the things that are “of God” and “not of God.” By looking in closer, we can expand our view.
In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John’s Gospel introduces us to a name. A thing. A concept. A new box with a new label. And this box is huge. It’s the box that all other boxes fit in to. It’s the thing that creates all the other things. It’s the Word. Logos. It’s the thing that surrounds us and penetrates our very being to such an extent that we don’t even realize its existence most of the time. It’s the air we breathe. It’s water to a fish. And John’s Gospel gives us a word for it: the Word.
The Word.
Christ.
The name of the thing we don’t fully understand or fully comprehend but with whom we want so desperately to be in relationship. To know. To better understand.
To know and understand us.
So we name some more. We zoom in closer. We name and rename and understand and misunderstand and adjust. Emmanuel. Son of God. Messiah. Son of David. Jesus. Of Nazareth. From the first century. Son of Mary. The carpenter.
The Word is the thing through which all the other words are created. The Word is the thing to which all the other words point. We have all of our boxes and our labels and our different names for things, but ultimately, they all, all of it, point to the one through whom all things have their being. Cows and dogs and milk and boxes and barns and boys and concepts and fields and video games all have meaning because first there was The Word. First, there was Christ. They, like John the Baptist, are not the light in and of themselves, but they testify to the light. They are witnesses to the light. And that means, so are we. Every thing in its own particularity, in its own specificity, is a testament to the light. And the closer we get to the dogs and the friends and the husbands and the tree limbs and the blades of grass and the shaft of light that comes through your bedroom window in the morning, the closer we get to The Word, the thing in itself from whom all things emanate.
Each time we learn the name of something new, it is recreated for us, in us, through us. Once we learn the name of something, suddenly it exists in a newer, more real, more tangible way than it did before. Dogs become cocker spaniels and labradoodles and mutts and mixes. Plants become flowers and trees and crops and weeds and grasses and shrubs. Flowers become carnations and violets and irises and orchids and dandelions. Trees become birches and aspens and oaks and maples. Each time we get closer, each time we zoom in, we actually get to know the thing that holds them all together, the Word, the one who created and is with and is in it all.
And sometimes, that’s pretty jarring. It can be a disconcerting experience to have to shift and sort and adjust and alter our worldview. Because up until we learned the name for “dog,” they were all “cows.” But now we know better, we know more intimately, we can discern more clearly, and that affects everything else. Once we know the differences between cows and dogs, between fields and backyards, between car rides and walks through the neighborhood, we can know about cats and rats and birds and fish and Volkswagens and tardigrades and cheese pizzas and quantum physics and symbols and metaphors and the one through whom and in whom and with whom all of this has its being.
The Word embodies. The Word enables relationship. The closer we zoom in, the more words we have, the more we know, the more we understand, the stronger the relationship.
When we put words to new things that we encounter, suddenly those new things become real to us, we can relate to them, we have something to hold on to, and a place to dig deeper.
Ok. Ok, Jenn. Come back to earth. We didn’t enroll in remedial philosophy class.
I’m sorry. I get carried away.
What I am trying to say is: get yourself a box. And find God in it. I know, I know. That’s not the cool thing to say. And many of us have been hurt by others shoving God in a box and throwing it at us. But I’m NOT saying stuff God in a box and say that’s the only box. I’m NOT saying that we’ve got the box completely and totally 100% right. I AM saying that God came to us, in the flesh, in language, through The Word, and that means that God can be found in the boxes.
I guess all I want to say is that The Word, capital T capital W, creates. And words create. The Word came to be with us, in relationship, in the dusty, sweaty, gritty, eating, drinking, swearing specificity of a man named Jesus. And when we learn his name, when we use his words, we get closer to The Word, closer to God.
So let’s use our words. Let's use our boxes. Our words and our boxes can lead us to The Word.
Thanks be to God.
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