Tag: earth

Posted on in Language

Harmony and Language

In the documentary film “Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision” being released on Friday, His Majesty King Charles III makes the point that we should be living as a part of nature, and not apart from it. We should not see nature as something out there to be exploited, rather we should see ourselves as being interconnected with the rest of nature and reliant on it for our well-being (both physical and emotional). In this short piece, I would like to suggest that language agrees with him.

Let us start by looking at where the idea of separation comes from. You can only see something, such as the environment, as being there to be exploited if you view it as being separate from yourself. If it is a part of you, you won’t want to exploit it. Separation comes from our ability to count. To count something, you must draw a line around it, otherwise you cannot count it. This is why we have uncountable and countable nouns. Uncountable nouns tend to be concepts, things that are too large or woolly for us to comprehend (to draw a line around). Countable nouns are things we can contain – in our imagination, or literally, in a bag or a bottle – and they are preceded by the indefinite article a or an. So, we might have rice and a bag of rice, or milk and a bottle of milk. The first is something that flows constantly, it seems to have no beginning or end; the second is contained (and note that it is the container, the bag or the bottle, that causes so many problems to our environment, it is our drawing a line around something in order to trade in it – in order to count it – that causes pollution).

God is uncountable. He is without limits. He is too large for us to comprehend. In the Creation, recounted in the opening two chapters of the Book of Genesis, what he did in effect was make himself countable. He made individual creatures and a planet for us to live on. Creation is the act of making the uncountable countable.

The name of God in Exodus 3:14 (the name he reveals to Moses at the burning bush) is AM. If we apply the phonetic pair m-n to AM, we get an. Language here – with a simple change brought about by applying a phonetic pair – is showing us how God made himself countable, because the indefinite article precedes countable nouns. Read these two words, AM and an, differently, and you get a man.

Man’s purpose was not to create. That is God’s job. We cannot create out of nothing, we can only give meaning to what already exists. We are not authors, we are translators, since nothing begins or ends with us, things pass through us (and we pass through them).

Read the word man in reverse and add a final e (very common in English), and you get name. This was man’s purpose: to name the creatures (Genesis 2:19). By naming them, he gave them meaning, he said amen to God’s will. All three words – name, mean, amen – have the same letters.

But we can go a different way. If I take a step in the alphabet, from m to l, and add the letter d, from man I get land. This is where man lives (hence the importance of nature). If I apply the phonetic pair d-t and add the letter p, from land I get plant, because this is what man must do in order to eat something, he is reliant on nature in order to survive. And if I add the letter e, I get planet. This is what the planet is for – for man to plant crops. God has given him a home.

But whereas God made us countable in order that we might have free will and make our own choices, we have taken this countability to mean that we can do with other people and things whatever we like. We have abused the relationship. We have put the ego first (not God). This is the relationship that we need to repair.

Exploitation is a result of countability (you cannot exploit something unless it is separate). So, we need to repair this breach, or at least to view it in a different light (as something to be respected, for example).

King Charles III explains how nature works in cycles; language also demonstrates this. We start with a seed. The first thing a seed does is sleep. I have rotated the letter d and added the straight line represented by the letter l. This is what we do in our lives when we are oblivious to our surroundings. That straight line represents the ego (it doesn’t matter whether it is written with a capital I or a lowercase l). Once it is in the ground, the seed dies (front vowels e-i). But it dies in order to bear fruit, to become something bigger (a tree). Nature is showing us the path to be taken by the ego – it must die to itself, to its selfish desires and fears, in order to grow in stature.

The seed puts out first a root and then a shoot. These words are connected (mid-vowels e-o, phonetic pair d-t, alphabetical pair r-s, addition of h). The root divides into two, while the shoot – which, as it appears above ground, looks remarkably like a tooth – becomes a tree and divides into three. The tree puts out branches (it doesn’t remain as a straight line), it grows leaves (to harness the power of the sun) and flowers (to attract insects), and the flowers give way to fruit. Fruit is just root with an f on it, and so we return to the beginning… Language is showing how nature is cyclical (in fact, the word return is in nature).

I think this is what His Majesty, with his attention to the importance of the environment, is encouraging us to do – to return to nature. Not to see ourselves as being cut off from it, but as a part of it, reliant on it not only for our physical needs, but also for our peace of soul. It’s like a neighbour – if you are at odds with your neighbour, how can you live peacefully?

The environment attends to our physical needs (without it, we will not be able to eat and we will die). It is beautiful to look at and it gives us peace. But this is not its ultimate purpose. I believe that nature, the environment, is an example out there for what should be happening in us. We also need to bear fruit, not just nature. We also need to die to our selfish impulses for the greater good, just as a seed does when it sprouts in the ground.

In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 13, there are two parables that teach us about this. One is the Parable of the Sower. This also is a metaphor out there for something that should be happening in here. A sower goes out to sow. Depending on the ground’s receptivity, the seed takes root or it doesn’t. This is really about our ability to hear the word of the kingdom and, having heard it, to bear fruit in God’s name.

If the earth is a metaphor out there for what should be happening in here, then what is our earth? The answer is very simple. Take the last letter of earth and tack it on the front. You have heart. The heart is the earth where the seed of God’s word has to take root and bear fruit. That is the message – of Jesus in the Gospels, but also of nature.

We have to be able to see and hear in order to bear fruit in God’s name – Jesus places great emphasis on our ability to see and hear – and for this we need to learn humility. The humility to admit that our sight has been imperfect, which ironically is what then enables us to see.

I mentioned the phonetic pair d-t earlier. Add this pair to see and hear. What two words do you get? Seed and heart. Language is telling us that when we see and hear the message of the kingdom, a seed is planted in the earth of our heart and we are enabled, through the intervention of the Holy Spirit, to bear fruit. Nature is a lesson out there for what should be happening in here. When we become spiritually healthy, then we will treat the environment as it deserves.

And just in case we were in any doubt, Jesus provides another example: the Parable of the Tares (again, in Matthew 13). Someone sows good seed – the wheat, the children of the kingdom – but an enemy comes in the night and sows weeds – evildoers. The slaves of the householder ask whether they should remove the weeds, but the householder says to wait until the harvest (the end of time), in case they uproot the wheat as well.

Weed and wheat are connected (phonetic pair d-t, addition of h). They look alike, just as people in society look alike and we cannot always be sure of their intentions. But there is one fundamental difference. There is something that wheat has that a weed doesn’t, and that is ears. Wheat is able to listen.

Nature is an example out there for what should be happening inside us. The seed is the word of the kingdom – to love the Lord your God, to love your neighbour – and that seed should be sown in our heart, just as a physical seed is sown in a field. When this happens, we learn how misguided we have been, we learn humility, and we redirect our priorities towards the kingdom (this is the meaning of repentance, metanoia in Greek). We also bear fruit, just as a tree does. And once we can see, the rest of creation rejoices. It recognizes us for the first time. We establish a relationship that is one of love and care, which is King Charles’s message in his film “Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision”.

Jonathan Dunne

http://www.stonesofithaca.com

Posted on in Sermons

The Nonduality of Christ

Readings: Isaiah 6:8-13; Psalm 138; 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Luke 5:1-11

The Creed, which we will recite in a moment, the Church’s Symbol of Faith, was the result of two ecumenical councils in the fourth century, the first at Nicaea in modern Turkey, and the second at Constantinople, the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire. Right belief, what the Church believes, took more than three hundred years to be written down. It was not a given. That is, it had to be defended, fought for, and there were several viewpoints, later declared heresies when they were seen to be inaccurate, that threatened the integrity of the early Church.

One of these is that Christ didn’t really become human, didn’t really suffer on the Cross, he only had the appearance of being human. This heresy was known as Docetism, from the Greek dokeĩn, meaning “to seem”. He only seemed to be human. On the other side of the coin, there was the false belief that Jesus was just a man – a very good man, to be sure, a man who reached an unusual stage of spiritual enlightenment that made him appear more advanced than others and become so spiritually advanced that God adopted him. This heresy was known as Ebionism.

These heresies – and there were others – served to force the early Church to delineate its beliefs. It took seven ecumenical councils in all – the first and last of which were at Nicaea in 325 and 787 – to establish what the Church believed. It seems that certain people could just not accept the idea that Christ might be both fully divine and fully human. And even when they did, there were those who claimed that he was fully divine and fully human in one nature. This is the Christological doctrine known as Miaphysitism, which is held by the Oriental Orthodox Churches and is the root of the far earlier schism between Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox (six long centuries before the Great Schism between Catholic and Orthodox).

So, belief is not so easy. We find it hard to accept that Christ can be fully divine and fully human, and yet be one person. Either he isn’t really God or human, or his two natures must be subsumed into one. It seems we are unhappy with what we take to be some kind of contradiction – if he is fully divine, then he cannot also be human. He has to be one or the other.

I would suggest that this inability or unwillingness to marry seeming opposites is still very much alive and well today, in the twenty-first century. And this lack of ability to see unity in difference can be dangerous.

It is only two weeks since this year’s Week of Prayer for Christian Unity ended. Most of us have forgotten about it by now. It’s a nice idea, but impractical. Those people over there are never going to agree to it, and I’m certainly not going to change my position. There is some hope that Christians on both sides of the divide are going to be able to agree on a unified date for Easter, though most of us would be hard pushed to state simply how the two dates are arrived at (something about a spring moon).

Yes, but how does God see this? How does he see his followers, some saying the liturgy, others singing it, some with white walls, others with frescoes, some crossing themselves from left to right, others from right to left? Does he say, “You’re right, you’re in; you’re wrong, go back to the beginning”? Or does he weigh up the intentions of the heart, the faithfulness shown sometimes over years by ordinary Christians? I know what I would do in his position.

One of my favourite TV series is Battlestar Galactica, about a group of humans, reduced in number, who are attacked by the machines that they themselves have made, known as Cylons. After an attack on their capital, Caprica, the humans are almost wiped out. Only a few ships manage to escape the holocaust and they are then condemned to wander space, jumping from one set of coordinates to another, as they endeavour to dodge the Cylon menace. Their ultimate quest is for Earth, a planet – a dream, Admiral Bill Adama calls it – where they can finally settle down and breathe fresh air.

The humans regard Cylons as machines. They have a visceral hatred towards them. They refer to them as “it”, not “he” or “she”, and do not believe that they have any real feelings.

And yet it is apparent that they do. Even when they lose the ability to resurrect, something that set them apart from their human counterparts, they are still willing to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. And it is only in tandem with their now Cylon allies that the humans, what is left of them, finally make it down to Earth. One of the Cylons is Bill Adama’s closest friend and colleague, Colonel Tigh. But they overcome their differences, their different makeup, because their friendship is too strong.

I sometimes think in the Churches we see each other as humans and Cylons. We cannot accept that both black and white exist. Those on the other side, who do not believe the same as I do – or do not express their belief in the selfsame way – it is as if they are machines. We never attend each other’s services. It is the same with nationalities. When I am in England, I am shocked by how much people hate Russians – people who have never actually met a Russian or set foot in Moscow.

I am afraid that this continued entrenchment is good for business. I am also afraid that it is not good for our souls. How can we possibly be one body if we are constantly wanting to cut each other off?

There is a strand of Christianity known as Celtic Christianity, Christianity that spread to the north of England, in particular the Kingdom of Northumbria, from the small island of Iona in Scotland. It is linked very closely to the names of such saints as Aidan and Cuthbert (the latter’s bones were the reason for the founding of the city of Durham, the city was literally founded on his remains).

In an afterword to Michael Mitton’s book Restoring the Woven Cord: Strands of Celtic Christianity for the Church Today, Ray Simpson, the founding guardian of the Community of Aidan and Hilda, talks of “an act of unity with Jesus in various focal places”. He goes on to say:

I make an act of unity with Jesus in scripture (the Evangelical strand) and in Holy Communion (the Sacramental strand); in the poor (the Justice strand) and in the deep heart’s core (the Mystical strand); in the spiritual shepherds (the Catholic strand) and in the Living Tradition (the Orthodox strand); in nature (the Creation strand) and in the group process (the Community strand). These acts of unity do not require me to be unfaithful to anything I have learnt of Jesus.

This is a wonderful statement of faith. Different, yes, but I’m not your enemy. Before we condemn the others, should we not get to know them first? Should we not attend their services? My father liked to say, if it was left to the common people, there would be no wars. How much of human conflict could be settled by a bottle of brandy instead of a bullet? The truth must be defended. It is not subject to my whim. But there is room for all of us in heaven, and I do not believe that the Jesus who spoke so tenderly and fiercely to the Samaritan woman at the well, a double outcast (not only was she a Samaritan, but she had been married five times, she was an outcast to her own community), will reject the person who gets down on their knees, takes responsibility for their mistakes, and tries to do better.

Christ is one person, two natures. He became human so that we might become gods, not through our own efforts, but by the action of grace. He became human so that he could translate us into the language of eternity, a language we have yet to learn to speak.

Amen.

Jonathan Dunne, www.stonesofithaca.com

Posted on in Heart of Language

5. Seed

The life cycle is reflected in language; all the words connected with creation, fertility, reproduction, have aer (air) in them, the same aer that forms the basis of speech.

In order to grow and bear fruit, a seed must be planted in the earth. Yes, but how is this process reflected in language?

A seed must be planted in the ground in order to bear fruit. It must be buried. That is, it must disintegrate (not remain whole) in order to give rise to new life. This is surely a metaphor for our own resurrection.

So, a seed dies, and that is why the two words are connected in reverse if we interchange the front vowels e and i. We cannot bring forth new life except by being put in the ground (our ego, that is). We become dead to our selfish demands. And out of that deadness comes a new, unrestricted potential.

Alternatively, we can add the letter l to seed and get sleep (by rotating the letters d and p). Seeds have been known to sleep in the ground for hundreds of years before sprouting and giving forth new life. In the ancient world, early Christians referred to burial sites not as “graves”, but as “resting places”, because the people buried there were not dead, but asleep.

The seed dies and puts forth first a root and then a shoot. Do you see how these words are connected – seed with root (phonetic pair d-t, step in the alphabet r-s), root with shoot (step in the alphabet r-s, addition of h)?

A shoot appears above ground (reminding us of the seed’s existence), and as it does so, it closely resembles a tooth (step in the alphabet s-t) emerging from the gum. Language is often graphic like this.

As the root divides into two (too, addition of r), so the shoot divides into three and becomes a tree (addition of h). It cannot become a tree except by dividing, by putting out branches, as cells divide in the human body. This division, paradoxically, leads to increase.

One is three, as in the case of the Holy Trinity. The tree harnesses the power of the sun (Son) through each leaf (phonetic pair l-r, pair of letters that look alike f-t). It produces a flower, which wilts, giving way to a fruit (froot) with the seed in it. And the whole process begins anew.

So, we have: seed (dies/sleep)-root (two)-shoot (tooth)-tree (three)-leaf-fruit (root), all perfectly reproduced by language.

It is the earth that enables this, and perhaps it is time we notice the presence of air (written aer in Latin and Greek) in so many words that have to do with creation, fertility, reproduction: aer-earth-water-breath, bread, breast (all three sources of nourishment that share the same first four letters with the phonetic pair d-t, addition of h/s)-create-father.

They all have aer in them, just as language is impossible without breath (we add voice to our breath to form the vowels; we obstruct our breath, with or without voice, to form the consonants). This again provides a link between the physical world (we cannot live without breathing) and language (aer is in many words connected with creation).

And by taking a step in the alphabet, r-s, as we did with God-ego (d-e) and father-gather (f-g), we find aer in sea (imagine a sea without aer in it, it would be dead).

This brings us back to the account of creation in the Book of Genesis. On day three, the earth was created (spoken into being), together with the sea, plants yielding seed and the fruit tree.

All reflected in the words we speak.

Jonathan Dunne

Heart of Language 5/15

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Posted on in Heart of Language

4. Earth

Our bodies mimic the physical environment – our heart is the earth, our soul the soil, where spiritual seeds can be planted.

Father also contains earth. And heart.

In Genesis 1:9-13, we read that the earth was created on day three, together with the sea, seed and tree (words with which it is connected).

We have seen that the vowels emerge from the throat, where language originates, in a different order from that in the alphabet. The back vowels are u and o, the central vowel is a, and the front vowels are e and i; u and i are close vowels, o and e are mid vowels, while a is an open vowel (this is why a doctor asks you to pronounce this vowel when she wants to look down your throat, because it is the most open vowel there is). So the vowels as they proceed from the throat form an inverted pyramid, according to where in the mouth they are produced:

u                                             i

o                      e

a

Now, vowels are fluid. I have already explained that they equate to water (water forms in the mouth when you hold one for long enough). This is why a vowel can be said to flow (phonetic pair f-v, addition of e). Languages like Arabic and Hebrew don’t even write them down, they only list the consonants. This means it is fairly easy to change a vowel in a word connection, especially if they are pronounced next to each other, such as a and e.

If we maintain the digraph th, then we can see that earth in reverse gives three, the day on which it was created. It also happens to be the third planet in order of increasing distance from the sun. And, in Christian theology, it was created by the Trinity (God in three persons) – the Father (the origin of breath, from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds), the Son (Christ the Word, begotten of the Father) and the Holy Spirit (breath or wind, pneuma in Greek, the basis of all speech). So we can understand why the number three might be so important for earth.

While a seed is planted in the earth in order for it to grow, a spiritual seed has to be planted in another kind of earth – our heart. This is why the two words are connected. It is not enough for us to hear a spiritual message, we have to take the message on board, to let it into our hearts, where the seed of an idea can grow and bear fruit.

We might then remember the layer of something that surrounds the earth like a shell or a circumference: soil. We cannot place the seed on a rock or among thorns if we want it to grow. We must place it in the soil.

Again, when it is a question of a spiritual seed, there is another kind of soil where we must plant it – our soul. This is where the spiritual seed will bear fruit.

So, earth-heart, soil-soul (containing the close vowels, u and i).

Language is drawing a comparison between the physical environment and our own bodies, in which the heart takes precedence (and where the soul is perhaps a layer around it, as soil is a layer around the earth).

Jonathan Dunne

Heart of Language 4/15

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Posted on in Language

I and Me

The line divides. The line is a wall or a tower. It defines. We use it to mark the borders between countries. To cross the line, you need permission, although nature will cross the line at will. This is a human invention. We use it to indicate private property and enact laws that will punish anyone who trespasses the line without permission. We use it in a sense to make ourselves out to be authors, as if the land, the products of the land, somehow belonged to us. We have misunderstood our role as translators. Our role is to take what is there and to transform it, hopefully for the better, to make it useful (to ourselves and others). But we cannot do anything without the earth and its gifts, as we cannot cook without ingredients. We are recipients.

But we do not like this idea, because it takes away our sense of control. We like to pretend that things begin with us, when they don’t, they pass through us. We cling to the line, because without the line there is a hole, we feel empty.

The ego in English is a line: I. And so is the number 1. We count up from 1 when we do business. We teach our children to do the same. We forget to count from 0. Once you start counting from 1, there is no end, there is no knowing where you will get to, so it produces a sense of uncertainty, not control. We feel the need to produce things (despite the obvious harm to the environment), to make a profit. We put ourselves in control, in the driver’s seat. We make ourselves the subject: I think, I do, I decide. But this is an illusion, or at least it doesn’t last.

A verb has a subject and an object. The subject carries out the action of the verb, the subject is in the driver’s seat (where we want to be). The object is acted on, the object is the recipient of the action. As we grow in the spiritual life (as we grow older), we begin to realize that perhaps our role is more to receive than to do. We receive help, we receive healing, we learn (we receive knowledge). We embrace that hole we avoided earlier, the circle (0), and find it actually makes us whole. Where is the difference between “hole” and “whole”? It is in the letter “w” at the beginning of the second word.

Language, like nature, wishes to tell us something. It is full of spiritual knowledge waiting to be seen, deciphered, harvested. A tree when it begins life is like the ego: a straight line (I). But it does not remain a straight line, otherwise it will be fruitless. So it branches out. It blossoms. And bears fruit. The tree is a lesson in what we have to do with the line, the ego, in our lives. It is an ego turning to God. The line (1) acquires branches and becomes 3 (think of a child’s drawing). This is why “tree” is in “three” (the only difference is breath, the letter “h”), because if it doesn’t branch out, it is not a tree, it is just a stick.

Nature and language wish to tell us something, but we are completely blind to this aspect. We think of nature and language as a tool to be used to our advantage (in short, to make money). But we are not here to make money, we are here to grow spiritually, so that we can prepare ourselves for the life to come. We are here to gain experience. Experience teaches us, it makes us more humble, it make us realize that not everything depends on us.

“I” is a subject. But God does not want us to remain as a straight line (we will not be able to bear fruit if we do). What is the object of “I”? If “I” is the nominative, then what is the accusative, the one who is acted upon, the one who receives? It is “me”.

I-ME. This is the same process undergone earlier by the tree. If we turn these words into numbers, we will see that “I” closely resembles 1, a straight line, but “ME” (written with capital letters) closely resembles two 3s (all I have to do is rotate the letters). When we cede control, when we accept that control was never really with us, when we allow ourselves to be acted upon, when we embrace the hole, the uncertainty, that is at the centre of human existence, then the process of spiritual growth can begin. Then we open ourselves to healing.

We become like the tree. We branch out.

This can be seen in other ways, too. What word sounds like “I”? “Eye”. An eye when it is closed is a straight line. What happens when we open our eyes? The eye becomes a circle. We count down. I-O. This process of opening the line is what God requires of us. We open our eyes and begin to see (“see” is in “eyes”). We open our ears and begin to hear (“ear” is in “hear”).

And it can be seen in language. Take the word “live”. In reverse, this word gives “evil”. That is what happens when we distort the purpose of human life and act selfishly. But if we count down and replace the “I” with “O”, we get “love”. It is the same with “sin” and “son”. Again, the line has been breached, we have accepted that not everything is under our control and have made ourselves receptive to healing (note that this takes an act of will on our part, it is not the response of an automaton, we have free will).

Now, in language, the consonants, the flesh of language, are divided into phonetic pairs according to where and how they are produced in the mouth. One such pair is “d-t”. These two consonants are produced in the same way, with the tongue against the front of the roof of the mouth. The only difference is that “d” is produced with voice, while “t” is voiceless. So they are a phonetic pair.

And what happens when we add this phonetic pair to “see” and “hear”, the result of opening our eyes and ears? We get “seed” and “heart”. So a seed is planted in the earth of our heart, in the soil of our soul.

On this Good Friday in the Orthodox calendar, when Christ himself counted down (I-O) by going to the Cross, I would like to suggest that while we think of language and nature as being at our service (which they are, but not to be exploited), their real purpose is to teach us. They are not tools to make money, they are tools for learning. We become like the tree and branch out (1-3). Away from the line that divides us. Or we count down (I-O). Proof of this can be seen in the landscape that surrounds us, in the language we use every day and in the Christian understanding of the Trinity (3 in One).

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

Gallery
Posted on in Poetry

Water

It is remarkable that water has four of the same letters as earth. And where would the earth be without water? Earth has the same letters as heart. Without water, our heart would shrivel up.

What amazes me is the way it flows constantly. Even in the night, when I am not there. During the week. All the time until my next visit, it flows.

Sometimes it is blue, like the sky. Sometimes it is reddish brown, like a brick. Sometimes it takes on the colour of my shadow.

It is whatever is thrown at it. But sometimes it becomes a blur – too fast for my eyes to distinguish.

In the night, it is black – unless there is a moon, I imagine.

Water always finds a way – even if it has to go underground. Or fly through the air.

On Vitosha, I have seen it so calm it resembled a mirror. But I have also seen it rage after a storm. Then it is no longer transparent, it seems to boil.

We step on the land; without water, we would sink, as in a desert. Too much water, and we swim.

Water lies on a bed of gravel. And rests its head on rock pillows. It rises up from the rock. It slips through gaps. It causes us to build bridges – that is a good thing.

When it enters the air, it is smashed into smithereens.

Later, in the sea, it evaporates to fall on my head. Then I walk through a sauna. The water is so prevalent it climbs up my legs. I have sat in the car as it beat down with unusual ferocity. Still I got out.

I like it when it’s the mountain and me. Today I walked through the hordes, as if I came from another planet. Another age.

Water is most beautiful on the mountain. It is like a curtain. Or a seam. The mountain shudders. Sends the water tumbling. It resists – for now.

I know a secret place where I sit and watch it gleam.

27 August 2022

Text and photographs by Jonathan Dunne, photograph selection by Tsvetanka Elenkova.

Vitosha is the mountain that lies just south of Sofia, the Bulgarian capital.

Video
Posted on in Theological English

Theological English (6): Connections – Vowels

In this seventh video on “Theological English”, Jonathan Dunne continues looking at the spiritual content of language. Speech, like creation (Genesis 2:6-7), is made up of three elements: breath (the letter “h”), water (the vowels – hold a vowel sound and water will collect in your mouth) and flesh (the consonants, made by obstructing the passage of breath with the lips or tongue – that is, with the flesh). Here we see examples of word connections made by changing the vowels according to where they are pronounced in the mouth.

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 (9): The Fall

The story of the Fall of humankind is related in chapter 3 of the Book of Genesis. It is generally understood to mean that the woman, Eve, was tempted by the serpent and persuaded Adam to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which the Lord God had told the man not to eat from or else he would die. The serpent – a representation of evil, or the devil himself – tells Eve that they will not die, but their eyes will be opened and they will be like God, knowing good and evil. The man and the woman eat and then become aware of their nakedness, which causes them to hide when God comes visiting ‘at the time of the evening breeze’. The Lord God asks Adam how it is he knows that he is naked, and he replies that the woman gave him fruit from the tree to eat; she in turn blames the serpent. God pronounces their punishment, and the man and the woman are expelled from the Garden of Eden.

 

I should perhaps point out one of the most remarkable word connections you will ever find, and that is when we rearrange the letters of GARDEN OF EDEN. I used to do this, sitting down in the early morning (between 6 and 8) while the house martins screeched around on a level with my eighth-floor apartment in Sofia, Bulgaria – rearrange the letters and see what I could find.

 

GARDEN OF EDEN gives DANGER OF NEED. This is surely a coincidence, language telling us something.

 

Adam and Eve were in danger of need. But what exactly is wrong with having a knowledge of good and evil, and why should that cause them to die?

 

I would like to suggest an alternative interpretation, one I thought was unique to me until I discovered that it had been offered and accepted before. This interpretation – which is only that, an interpretation – gives rise to several conclusions, which I would like to list at the end of this article.

 

I imagine Adam and Eve playing in the Garden of Eden, in innocence, as children do, without a care in the world and with not much to do except to admire God’s handiwork in themselves and the animals and plants that surrounded and delighted them. They must soon have become friends. Life must have seemed like an ‘Eden’ to them – no great responsibilities, no great amount of work, no aches and pains to bother them. Just an eternity of today.

 

Except, as children do, they began to grow, to become sexually mature, and their curiosity must have been piqued. Eve began to have these bumps on her chest; Adam began to grow hair around his genitals and his long thing got longer. And they must have begun to experience the first sexual stirrings, perhaps in the night, when they were asleep, lying among last year’s fallen leaves. Perhaps they began to experience pleasure and to wonder what pleasure lay in the other.

 

There is an obvious correlation between the serpent and the man’s penis. The snake has traditionally been associated with the penis and sexuality. So perhaps it was the man who, feeling aroused, suggested they acquire carnal knowledge, knowledge of one another. Certainly carnal knowledge can be for good and evil – good in a loving, committed relationship and in the procreation of children; evil when it treats the other as an object and seeks only its own satisfaction. Undoubtedly, in the history of humankind, sex has been a force for good and evil – on the one hand, a demonstration of love, two people coming together in wonder and amazement; on the other, an abuse of the other person when it is not consensual or merely pleasure-seeking, seeking a meaning where none is to be found.

 

So we have identified the serpent with the man’s penis, but what of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the apple? The apple can be related to the woman’s breast, that object that mystified the man and that he is now suggesting they eat of. After all, a fruit has flesh. It also has ‘the seed in it’, as we read in chapter 1 of the Book of Genesis, in the first creation account.

 

God had said that if they ate of the forbidden fruit – had sexual intercourse – they would surely die, and this is true, but bear in mind that the verb ‘die’ has two meanings: to expire at the end of our earthly lives, but also to expire in orgasm. This latter meaning is well documented.

 

What is the connection between these two meanings, and again why should the knowledge of good and evil be such a bad thing?

 

I think the answer is to be found in an article by a Greek bishop and theologian, Metropolitan John Zizioulas. In ‘The Consequences of Man’s Fall’, he writes, ‘In beings with organs – especially mammals – the ageing cycle begins from the moment that the organism reaches the point of reproductive maturity.’ So when we reach sexual maturity, we begin to die (in both senses of the word).

 

And this ties in with a teenager’s behaviour, because a child who reaches sexual maturity changes somewhat. They become more bashful, more private, they are no longer prepared to appear naked in front of their parents. Isn’t this exactly the behaviour of Adam and Eve when God comes looking for them ‘at the time of the evening breeze’? They hide themselves. They have become aware of their nakedness. And what is it they use to hide their nakedness that now causes them such shame? Fig leaves! Figs are another symbol of sexuality and the male organ.

 

So they have acquired carnal knowledge, they have slept together, and now they do not want God to see them because they are ashamed of their nakedness and they know that he will see it in their eyes. Their eyes have been opened.

 

But if sexual maturity coincides with the beginning of the ageing process, there is no other way to have children. So God – who so often is seen as inflicting punishment, as being vindictive, something that is as far away from his nature as it is possible to be – performs an act of charity, of love: he banishes them from the Garden of Eden in case they eat of the tree of life. He wants them to have children (I’m quite sure he knew perfectly well what was going to happen, just as any parent does), but he doesn’t want the ageing process that comes with sexual maturity to last for ever, that would be terrible, so he sends them out of the Garden of Eden to till the land they came from.

 

He does this in order that we might have children. In order to have children, we must die. This is the meaning of death – it is so that we can have the unparalleled blessing of procreating, of giving our life to another, who is then ‘the apple of our eye’.

 

This is a great thing – ‘Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends’ (Jn 15:13) – but it also serves another purpose: it builds up the body of the Church. It prevents God from having to create all the creatures, all the men and women, himself. He involves us in the process (albeit our involvement is slightly different, because life passes through us, it does not begin with us – we are translators, not authors).

 

In this sense, the earth is a spiritual womb, it is a womb in which a spiritual body – the body of the Church – is being formed, just as we are formed in our mother’s womb. We have not realized this. Just as there is spiritual blindness as well as physical blindness, so there is spiritual birth as well as physical birth. We are still in the womb, but now it is not the body of an individual that is being formed, it is the collective body of the Church, a body made up of many members (in 1 Corinthians 12 and Romans 12, Paul compares us to the different members of the body, each performing his or her own unique function, with Christ as the head).

 

And this is where we get into the realm of Christian paradox: life passes through us when we receive life from our parents and pass it on to our children; but we also pass through life, in the sense that we are not here for ever and we move on. We form part of the body of Christ, the body of his Church, but in the sacrament of communion it is his body and blood that form part of us. We lose our life and find it. I begin to think the Christian message is true precisely because it is paradoxical.

 

Is there an indication of the world as a spiritual womb? I think there is, because if we read the first creation account in chapter 1 of Genesis, we find that God created the day on day one (already we have the progression AIO in the word DAY, remember the correlation between O and D and between i and y) and then, on day two, he created the dome of the sky by separating the waters from the waters. Doesn’t that sound like a baby in its mother’s womb, surrounded by water? Perhaps this is why SKY can be connected to KISS and SICK, because for procreation to occur there must be a kiss, but sexual maturity is also the beginning of the ageing process, of what makes us sick.

 

Is there anything in language to connect the serpent and the man’s penis, to connect the apple and the woman’s breast?

 

Well, if you allow fluidity to the vowels and change one front vowel for another, you will find that PENIS is in SERPENT, with the addition of r and t. And applying the phonetic pairs b-p and l-r, you will find that APPLE is in the first four letters of BREAST, with the addition of s and t.

 

This interpretation – and it is only an interpretation – has three consequences:

 

  1. The Fall was a good thing. Otherwise, we couldn’t have children and the body of the Church could not be formed.

 

  1. Perhaps the woman is not entirely to blame; in fact it would seem that Adam was the prime mover in response to his sexual desire. We could at least speak about shared responsibility.

 

  1. While in the Church great emphasis is placed on monasticism, on abstinence and asceticism, it would appear that the purpose of life on earth is to have children, and this would give the option of marriage far greater importance than it is sometimes credited with.

 

So Genesis, that most remarkable book, is not just the story of the creation of the world and the Fall of humankind, but also the story of each one of us, of human life. We are born, just as the world (the body of Christ) is. We reach sexual maturity in order that we might give that life to others. We then have to die (we have now fast-forwarded to the Crucifixion) because it is the only way to give life – to die, to expire. But there is a greater mystery here. This is not the last word.

 

The word ‘die’, if we apply the physical pair b-d (a pair of letters that look alike; in this case one is the mirror image of the other), clearly contains ‘I’ and ‘be’. It is a very life-affirming word. The word ‘live’, if we remember the closeness between b and v, contains two ‘I’s and ‘be’ – this may refer to our physical and spiritual selves, to our human and divine natures (the latter acquired by grace in a process known in Orthodoxy as theosis), or to our fallen and resurrected selves. Anyway, it is manifestly not the end.

 

If we could only see this world for what it is, a place of spiritual growth (not a place to make money!!) – a spiritual womb – we might realize our connectedness. Having been born from our mothers, we are now – all of us, outside the constraints of time – in the process of forming another, spiritual body, one that has Christ as its head and one that will last for all eternity. The world is a spiritual womb. We must die in order to have children, participating in this way in the formation of the Church. And having died, we have no choice but to be born again, but this time without the straitjacket of corruption, without the ageing process. We will be ‘like angels in heaven’ (Mt 22:30). With one great difference: we will not be alone.

 

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

Posted on in Word in Language

Word in Language (3): Seed and New Life

In the Gospels, Christ is in the habit of saying, after a parable, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’ When he explains to his disciples that the mysteries of the kingdom are revealed to them and not to others, he quotes the fulfilment of the prophecy contained in Isaiah, ‘They may indeed look, but not perceive, and may indeed listen, but not understand.’ It is obvious that there are different forms of seeing and hearing, of looking and listening. It is not enough to open our physical eyes, we must open our spiritual eyes also.

 

This is the great problem facing humankind because a large majority think it is sufficient to open their physical eyes, this means they are not blind, but we are all blind to some extent and it is only faith that will cleanse our sight and unplug our ears, so that we can hear. It is remarkable that EAR is contained in HEAR, and EYES contains SEE in reverse.

 

It is also remarkable that ‘ear’ can refer to an ear of wheat. We find this in the Parable of the Tares (Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43), where wheat is taken to refer to the children of the kingdom, while weeds (or tares) refer to the children of the evil one. Again, we are saved through hearing because wheat has ears.

 

One of the phonetic pairs is d-t. A phonetic pair is a pair of consonants that are pronounced similarly in the mouth, often with voice and without voice, as in the case of d-t – they are pronounced in the same way, only d is voiced and t is voiceless, as you can see if you hold your throat while you pronounce them. If we apply this phonetic pair to SEE and HEAR, we get SEED and HEART. If we rearrange the letters of HEART, we get EARTH. So a seed is planted in the earth of a person’s heart and it depends on that person’s reaction, their receptiveness, whether they listen or not.

 

We might think this connection between EARTH and HEART is just a coincidence. Well, that’s exactly what it is. Coincidences are hidden roots that come to the surface. But we can confirm this coincidence by looking at another word connection, this time between SOIL and SOUL. Soil is a thin layer around the earth, but it provides untold riches, all the food that we can eat. In terms of economics, we focus on another kind of black stuff, OIL, but I would suggest that it is SOIL that provides the real riches and enables us to live.

 

A seed is planted in the earth. It sprouts roots, which in a child’s drawing always divide into two, and a shoot that breaks through the surface (rather as a tooth breaks through the gum) and divides into three – the trunk and branches of a tree. The branches put out leaves, which photosynthesize, and then flowers, which metamorphose into fruit. So the end result of a seed sprouting in the ground is the growth of a tree and the bearing of fruit.

 

This is the process of life and it takes place right in front of our eyes (though we may not see it). A SEED becomes a TREE. Have you seen the connection? Phonetic pair d-t, alphabetical pair r-s. ROOT and TREE are also connected (we only have to substitute one mid vowel for another). ROOT is also connected to SHOOT by the alphabetical pair r-s, addition of h. And SHOOT is connected to TOOTH by the alphabetical pair s-t.

 

This is because language, like nature, is interconnected.

 

I could go on (for example, how FRUIT contains ROOT, which is indeed the case, without roots there are no chances of the tree bearing fruit). But I would like to focus on two word connections.

 

The first is between TREE and THREE. A tree in a simple drawing has a trunk and two branches. There is an obvious correlation here with the Holy Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Would it be surprising for creation to speak of the Holy Trinity, by whom it was created? For that matter, should we be surprised that language contains information about God and human life, when Christ himself is called the Word? Is it not possible that when we speak, we are handling sacred things, just as when we till the earth? Should this not encourage a sacred attitude to everything around us, inasmuch as it refers us to the Creator?

 

But there is another word connected with THREE, and that is EARTH (we only change one vowel). In fact, EARTH is THREE in reverse (if we keep the consonantal group, th, together). Again, we might see a connection with the Holy Trinity, but it also so happens that the Earth is the third planet in order of increasing distance from the Sun – and it was created on day three, according to the creation account in the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, together with ‘plants yielding seed, and fruit trees of every kind on earth that bear fruit with the seed in it’ (that is so that the whole process can begin again). Earth is intrinsically linked with the number three, and we see some of the other words we talked about – seed, fruit and tree.

 

Yes, but what about ‘plant’? That doesn’t fit your system, does it?

 

Well, actually it does. If we apply the phonetic pair d-t to PLANT and remove the first letter, we get LAND. If we remove the final letter of LAND and apply the alphabetical pair l-m, we get MAN. Language is telling us something – it is genetically encoded, just like plants. If we put it under the microscope, we will discover wonders, because these are not things a single human being in a single generation could have installed in language without our knowledge. We have adopted the kind of speech that reflects our Creator, just as we bear his image and draw our breath from his existence.

 

Why is this so hard for us to admit?

 

Some might also find it hard to admit of the possibility of a resurrection from the dead. How could a body laid in the ground ever possibly return to life? And yet, don’t we have an example of this in front of our very eyes? The seed that is planted in the ground – is it not an example of resurrection? To all intents and purposes, we cannot see it, it is not there. And yet it gives rise to towering trees, microcosms of life that support insects, that communicate in a way we are only beginning to decipher.

 

There is another connection with SEED, but we will see it better if we use lower-case letters: ‘seed’. Do you remember how we took the ego, I, from ‘gold’ and ‘slave’ and got ‘God’ and ‘save’? If we add the ego to ‘seed’ and rotate the letter d by 180 degrees, we get ‘sleep’. Isn’t that what the seed does in the ground? Sleep the big sleep before rising to new life.

 

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