Tag: death

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Posted on in Theological English

Theological English (9): Connections – Appearance

In this tenth video on “Theological English”, Jonathan Dunne looks at the shape of letters in the alphabet and how this can be used to make word connections. Just as the order of letters was borrowed in part from Egyptian hieroglyphs, so the shape of some of our capital letters was taken from here. This video focuses on the similarity between lower-case letters, which can be turned back to front, upside down, or continued. This enables us to make connections between birth and death, the Old and New Testaments, opposites such as “north” and “south” or “east” and “west”, and love and money. Language is full of information, words carry spiritual meaning, we only have to have “eyes” to “see” it.

To access all the videos in this course, use the drop-down menu “Theological English (Video Course)” above. The videos can be watched on Vimeo and YouTube.

Posted on in Word in Language

Word in Language (21): English Course (0)

In this and the next three articles I am going to look at the rules for making word connections. In this article we will look at connections between words that have the same letters, be they in the same order or in a different order. We have seen examples of these, how HUMAN is a combination of HU and MAN, for example, or LISTEN has the same letters as SILENT, but the letters have been rearranged. We have also seen contractions (I’LL-ILL, WE’LL-WELL). In this section I include words that sound the same (for example, EYE and I), also changes that involve the semi-vowels (i-j/y, u-w), the letter c (pronounced k or s) and the letters ph (pronounced f). Sometimes it is necessary to double a letter, as in the example BELIEVE-BELLY EVE, which we saw in the previous article.

I worked out these word connections simply by taking a pencil and writing down the words on a piece of paper, jumbling up the letters to see what I could find. When the words have the same letters in the same order, we need to divide them at some point to find a deeper meaning. Others are homophones (they sound the same, although they are spelt differently). We may change the letters if they are i, u, c and ph, as I mentioned above, or double a letter. You may like to have a go before looking at the connections I made, so here are the words we are going to look at that involve keeping the letters in the same order. See what you can find:

APART   PASSION

HEEL   SOLE   (homophones)

PHARISEE (f-ph)

And here are the words that involve the same letters, but in a different order. Again, see what connections you can find, bearing in mind the semi-vowels i-j/y, u-w, the correspondence c-k/s and f-ph and the doubling of a letter:

ANGEL   DOGMA   DUNE   HADES   MIRACLE   NOSTALGIA

CRIME   GUIDE   (i-j/y)

ANGER   BAA   BE   EARTH   GERM   POISED   SUMMER   (double letter)

Words contain meaning. This may or may not be the meaning that we give them. They have something to tell us about human life, about God, about the purpose of our existence on earth and our ultimate destination. They are encoded. Just as the body has DNA, so words have DNA. We need to put them under the microscope and to see what we can find. In this sense, language is like the human body or the environment. They reveal things on closer inspection, we discover wonders if only we pay attention. Unfortunately we spend much of our time thinking that words, like the human body, like the environment, have been put there for our use and we are far too busy to consider that they may have a meaning of their own, a message they wish to transmit, a testimony they wish to give. This is a sign of our spiritual blindness. We are born into this world physically blind, but we soon overcome this. Our spiritual blindness remains, however, and it is some time before it begins to go away. This usually coincides with a spiritual experience. We become aware of another level to existence. It isn’t just what we can see with our physical eyes, it isn’t just two- or three-dimensional. There is another level, one we hadn’t been aware of before, and this conditions our behaviour. We start to repent of our previous behaviour, when we took what was there for our own benefit and enjoyment, without a thought for the consequences. The other takes on a new importance, we understand that they are intrinsic to our salvation and deserving of our respect, they are not put there for our benefit or enjoyment, just as language, the body and the environment are not purely utilitarian things for me to exploit, for me to express my opinion, for me to get what I want. We are in a relationship, and it is that relationship with the other that will save us. Difficulties are inevitable, because the world doesn’t necessarily see things the same way we do. Some still believe we are here to make money, to make a profit, to make ourselves as comfortable as can be. For some, this existence is all there is, and their aim is to extract as much as possible. The philosophy ‘live for the day’ – carpe diem – can easily lead in this direction. But the world is a spiritual womb. We are here to learn, to grow spiritually, and this necessarily involves some suffering. We are to receive the good times joyfully, but to endure any difficulties that come our way patiently. This engenders a sense of humility. This planet wasn’t put here for my sole enjoyment and it doesn’t revolve around me, much as we may resent this. We are here to learn to love, to turn the EGO to GOD, to count down from LIVE/EVIL to LOVE, to fulfil our potential and become the person we are meant to be. The world is a spiritual nursery. And death is perhaps not the end – that is only our perspective – rather it is a second birth, a spiritual birth, when we are forced out of the spiritual womb we have been in for three score years and ten into new surroundings. Death, for me, real death, is separation from God, not the end of our physical existence on earth, which is a tunnel, an opening, a new beginning, just as the exit from our mother’s womb was.

So we may take ourselves APART, but we are still A PART. What I do influences others, and what others do influences me. This is surely obvious at the time of the Coronavirus, with which I started writing these articles. LOCAL is GLOBAL – literally, because the two words are connected by the alphabetical pair b-c, addition of g. PASSION leads to spiritual death – PASS I ON. If I indulge the passions, I will come to a spiritual dead-end and then I will have a choice: either I perform a U-turn (repentance) or I insist upon my actions (spiritual death).

Life is a pilgrimage. We are here to learn. This involves walking, placing our weight first on our HEEL and then forwards on to our SOLE. What is the outcome of this process? That we HEAL our SOUL. For this, we need help – the action of the Holy Spirit; participation in the sacraments of the Church, most notably confession and communion – we must be careful not to think we can achieve this on our own. This was the attitude of the PHARISEE: FAR I SEE. They believed more in themselves than in God, sought recognition, strict adherence to a set of rules, even if these rules were not life-giving.

But what are we to believe? The Church has held seven Ecumenical Councils to write a Creed, to decide what people must believe. This is important – to establish the tenets of faith (for example, that Christ has two natures, divine and human), as a way of averting heresy (the suggestion that Christ might be anything less than fully both, a man adopted by God or God who took on the appearance of being human). But the word DOGMA itself, if we read it in reverse, says AM GOD. A simple statement that reminds us of the name God revealed to Moses at the burning bush: I AM WHO I AM (Ex 3:14).

We are sensitive, sentient creatures. We have feelings. A slight breeze, and goose pimples arise on our flesh. We are naked. Look around and see where nature seems most naked, and you might come up with DUNE, the letters of which rearranged spell NUDE. Is there any part of nature that is so bare, so open to the wind?

In Greek mythology, HADES is the place where a SHADE goes. It is the place of spiritual death, of insubstantial beings who have insisted on the road of the passions. HADES is also connected to DEATH by a step in the alphabet (s-t). It is very close to EARTH (same vowels, phonetic pair d-t, alphabetical pair r-s). We must be careful. We can find ourselves in this state of spiritual death while still on earth. The important thing is how we react. And this is where a MIRACLE is performed. We look for signs and wonders. But we are surrounded by signs and wonders every day – our own existence, the existence of others, the world we inhabit, the breath of wind, the taste of food, a sudden realization, a moment of mutual recognition, the moment when a dog on a lead freezes, his body freezes, but his ears flap in the wind, young people in the stadium – a time capsule – play football against the backdrop of a mountain on which the observatory is a golf tee. How many moments are there like this in every day – the crunch of bread, the return of someone, sitting down on a sofa to watch a film that will transport us, the sip of hot tea, the sheer beauty of a newly opened rose? The true MIRACLE, for me, is when we RECLAIM ourselves, we defeat the enemy, we snatch ourselves back from the grip of sin, we present ourselves to our Creator, we dedicate ourselves to him. We don’t look back because, if we were to return to the GARDEN OF EDEN, we would only be in DANGER OF NEED again. Looking back is not the answer. This is why NOSTALGIA spells LOST AGAIN.

We have a GUIDE in Jesus Christ. He is our Saviour. He is our friend, the one who looks at me every morning, I look at him. But at the Last Judgement, when he comes again, he will be our JUDGE. These two words are connected (i-j). We mustn’t lose hope, however, because in the CRIME itself there is MERCY. All we have to do is repent of our sins and confess them to a priest. This is what we are here for, to make spiritual progress – not to make money, not to amass possessions, but to amass spiritual wealth, the virtues. ANGER won’t serve us, bearing a grudge against our enemy; if we are not careful, our ANGER will turn to GANGRENE (I have doubled the three middle letters). ANGER is also clearly connected to CANCER (phonetic pair g-k/c).

ANGER is also connected to ANGEL (there is righteous anger and it is possible to change, just as someone with a STAIN can become a SAINT). At the Second Coming, Christ will send out each ANGEL to GLEAN the field, to gather in the weeds and the wheat (we read about this in the Parable of the Weeds in Matthew 13). WEED and WHEAT are connected (phonetic pair d-t, addition of h), but it is interesting that only wheat has ears. This is why Christ ends the explanation of this parable with the words, ‘Let anyone with ears listen.’

We must hope to be counted among the sheep (Mt 25:32-3). What sound does a sheep make? BAA. And what other word involves these letters? ABBA. When we are sheep in the sense that Christ speaks about them, then we form part of the Father’s flock (abba is the Aramaic word for ‘father’). But it is always possible to make a mistake, to veer off in the wrong direction. If we add the letter that represents the ego in English, I, to ‘baa’, we get ‘Baal’, the name of a false god. Even here, though, even when we make a mistake, it is possible to find help if we acknowledge our need – as in the CRIME, there is MERCY, as when instead of calling upon God, AM, we say I’M, but can always add an initial h, a small puff of wind, and say HIM, so with BAAL, if we apply the phonetic pair b-p and add the letter h again, we can make the change to ALPHA and begin again.

AM-I’M-HIM. BAA-BAAL-ALPHA. CRIME-MERCY. The world is our chance to offer repentance, to fall down and get to our feet, every day if necessary, so long as our wish is to improve, to acquire the virtues, to learn to love not just our neighbour, but our enemy as ourself. Truly to love. Without a hint of lust, of self-interest, of what is in it for me. Is it so difficult? ‘All the world’s a stage,’ wrote Shakespeare in his play As You Like It. Well, if we double the letters, we will see the EARTH is a THEATRE, thereby confirming Shakespeare’s words. We are on the stage for a while, in the womb of the theatre (don’t forget the world was created by separating the waters from the waters, Gen 1:6, it is a kind of womb), but at some point the lights will go up and we will have to leave.

This is why BE in reverse reads EBB. Like the tide. Like our breathing. It is part of life. Things come and go. We must beware of those that would do us harm, especially at this time of the Coronavirus, when a GERM would MERGE with us. Spiritually speaking, we must try to avoid these germs, to wash them off with the water of renewal.

It is like when we watch television. An EPISODE is left POISED to keep our interest.

It is like when, after nature has had the chance to REWIND during WINTER (phonetic pair d-t), we RESUME in SUMMER.

Language would teach us. It is full of information. We just have to have EYES to SEE, an EAR to HEAR, so that a SEED can be planted in the EARTH of our HEART. It’s not difficult. Not really. Every day has its moments of beauty.

In the next article, we will look at word connections made by changing the vowels and the consonants – the water and flesh of language – according to phonetics, to where they are pronounced in the mouth.

Jonathan Dunne, http://www.stonesofithaca.com

Posted on in Word in Language

Word in Language (13): Hate

Hate is the opposite of love, it is the dark side of love. All the shoots we have put out in order to communicate with our neighbour, in order to interlink our life to theirs, we begin to withdraw, to take away, to withdraw our favours. And at the same time, our sight, which was focused on those we love, begins to wander, we begin to entertain temptations, even though we know that they will destroy us, so hate engenders self-destruction.

 

If hate engenders self-destruction, it is a form of death. We are slowly but surely heading towards death, but not death as a portal of life, not DIE so that I can BE, as we saw in a previous article. This is death with no continuation. This is THE END of the film (these two words are beautifully connected: phonetic pair d-t, physical pair – pairs of letters that are an extension or a reversal of one another – h-n). This is the death of the popular imagination, where there is no continuation or, if there is, we don’t want to know about it.

 

So hate is a negation of God, because if we deny the existence of heaven, we deny the existence of God; if we deny the possibility of good (in ourselves quite apart from anyone else), we again deny the existence of the GOD who is GOOD. Do you see how language, the Word, wishes to teach us? GOD is GOOD, but the DEVIL is EVIL. If you look up these pairs of words in a dictionary and search for the etymology, you will find that their roots – horizontal, over time – are different. Not so in a vertical understanding of language. They are very close for a reason.

 

So hate makes us first withdraw into ourselves, reject contact with those who are close to us, and then seek to scatter ourselves further afield, to disintegrate, in what may be a call for attention or a means of revenge or a wish for self-annihilation.

 

But there is always the call of God, the call of our conscience, if we can only overcome the barrier of our ego, of our pride. PRIDE is in DESPAIR, and it is despair that robs us of our willingness and strength, as Saint Porphyrios points out in the book of his life and sayings Wounded by Love (p. 98).

 

Hate leads us to despair, while love gives us hope, hope of a better future. This is why HOPE is connected to OPEN (that same physical pair I talked about earlier, h-n). Hope keeps us open to the other, to their love, which is calling us, just as a dog hears the call of its owner. Hope keeps us open, but of course this means we can be wounded – the Wounded by Love of the book title.

 

Dark thoughts explore our mind. They can be a little frightening, these thoughts, even overwhelming. Where do they come from? Are they really ours? Well, given that the whole theme of my writing is that we are translators, not authors, and things pass through us, I am inclined to believe that thoughts also do not start with us. What belongs to us is our reaction, the choices we make, whether we choose to ignore these thoughts, to exercise self-control, to seek the good, or to enact the thoughts, to give free rein to our baser instincts. Does this really mean that no thoughts belong to us, only our reaction does? I am inclined to believe so, and thoughts are like language, roots travelling underground, in the subsoil of our minds.

 

In which case, we should be able to take a dark thought and simply make it good, turn it around, do the opposite, embrace the one we want to hate. This will hurt, though. It will hurt in that place we have opened up in order to embrace the other, in order to apologize, in order to see it from the other’s point of view, in order really to lessen our own importance in the grand scheme of things. Will anything really happen if I let go of my hatred? Will the world collapse if I forget to maintain my resentment? No, the world will carry on as normal, and I might even feel a little relieved – also a little sore perhaps – the hatred like a mole popping up its head from time to time, breaking the soil, trying to remind me of its existence, trying to draw me down again into the dirt of non-existence.

 

These thoughts, I let them go. They are nothing. Thoughts are insubstantial, a monk once told me. They have no substance. If they have no substance, they have no reality beyond the reality I choose to give them, even if it doesn’t feel that way when they assault me and seem to control me, not the other way around.

 

Perhaps I just stop thinking. THINK, after all, is connected to NIGHT by the phonetic pair g-k. It may be over-rated. It may be better just to WAIT. What word connections can I find for WAIT? Well, DAY is in there (phonetic pair d-t, addition of w). So is FAITH (f-v/w, addition of h). Isn’t the meaning of FAITH to WAIT? Maybe God doesn’t expect me to achieve something every day, to justify my existence all the time. After all, he has the bigger picture. He envelops time. Time is an envelope, and he sticks it down, says when it is finished. Perhaps he will put it in the post, send it to the outer reaches, open it later on, while we are all busy or asleep, and see what it is that everybody did with the time allotted to them. Take out the letter of our actions, intentions, good deeds. The desert fathers say that God always sees the intentions behind our actions, our motivations. What is it we are trying to achieve? Are we just trying to get his attention? To call him down, to force him to intersect with our lives because the horizontality of living got too much, too boring, too monotonous, the street, the cars, the coffee, the cake, get up, work, eat, sleep. So much going in and out of ourselves. Things passing by. Ourselves sometimes ineffectual, unprepared, unable to influence events. WAIT, whispered FAITH. Look at me. I am here.

 

Christ, I am in the night of hatred. Will you love me even down here? Will you see a speck of goodness in me that is worth saving? Is my breath anything to you? Of course, it is. You gave it to me. You are the Word. My breath is yours and the Holy Spirit’s. I beg of you, hold me. Deliver me. See how DELIVER contains DEVIL. Our Father, which art in the heavens…

 

DEVIL in reverse reads LIVED. Past tense.

 

DEATH with the letters rearranged spells HATED. Past tense.

 

There is no future in either of these. If we apply the phonetic pair d-t, we will see that HATE is connected to HEAD. DEATH contains both of them. Perhaps thinking, calculation, is not the way. But where does that leave us?

 

It leaves us in the moment. In the moment, there is no time. It is the only place where we can escape time. The moment is, in effect, the nullification of time. We are not controlled by past memories or future fears. We simply place ourselves in the O of repentance, the star in the night sky, the pinprick of existence.

 

A star is not light coming from a long way away. A star is a window, an invitation, a ladder of ascent. It is where the threads of our garments do not meet, where the air passes through, it is the interstice, it is the light, it is the way we slip through the net. It is a hole in the fabric.

 

Even the flame of a match banishes the night. ‘Flame’ contains ‘I am’, the name of God in Exodus 3:14. It enables us to make a hole in the line of time. We use the flame as a nib, a bubble, a leaf, and begin to write.

 

Jonathan Dunne, http://www.stonesofithaca.com