If, in the Book of Genesis, the world was spoken into being (and the description of creation in chapters 1 and 2 contains the elements of speech: breath, water and flesh), it means that we ourselves are language, words in the making.

We have seen how the ego in English, I, is a straight line. It resembles the number 1. It could be taken to represent the line that isolates us as individuals, the line that we have used to carve up the earth and divide it into properties, the line that we fight over, the line that needs defending, the line that we use to package the products of the earth and trade in them, the line that we use to build roads and transport them. When we separate ourselves off from others, we lose our shared vision (we can’t see over the fence). We view other people, and the products of the earth, as commodities we can profit from, rather than as God’s creatures for whose spiritual well-being we are responsible. The line – I or 1 – isolates. It creates an illusion of self-dependency.

At some point, this self-reliance crumbles, and we realize that we depend on others. Our spiritual eyes are opened, and we begin to see the world not as “us and them”, but as one shared humanity whose needs (and fears) are more or less the same. We are not so different, our time on earth is limited, but we seem to think that if we keep busy (packaging and transporting goods with the line that alone enables us to count things), we can safely ignore our own mortality, or at least by the time it reaches us, we will be too exhausted to care too much about it.

And so we step onto the line, a moving walkway at the airport that takes us to our gate (which might be 2 or 41, we don’t know). That time (connected with line if we cross out the l and apply the phonetic pair m-n) enables us to safely view the landscape, the runways and planes, with the illusion that it will go on forever and what goes on out there won’t affect us.

But it doesn’t go on forever, which means that our own resources as individuals are limited. Instead of counting up and amassing wealth or memories, we learn to do what the Greek alphabet does and we breathe life into the line, turning it from I to O, omega, a long o, the last letter of the Greek alphabet (compare the Latin alphabet, which counts up from I to Z, or 2).

When the line is opened in this way, it is as if we reach a realization of something deeper at play, we tap into the hidden root system, the root system that was there the whole time, only it was not visible to our eyes, just as there are colours on the spectrum of light – infrared and ultraviolet – that are not visible to our eyes, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist.

And since, as we have seen, the world was spoken into being – the opening two chapters of the Book of Genesis can be understood as a description of speech, with the three elements of breath (h), water (vowels, voice added to breath) and flesh (consonants, breath obstructed by the lips or tongue, with or without voice) – this means that we are surrounded by language, we ourselves are somehow language, words in the making (I believe that this is what death is – to be spoken into eternity). And language can teach us.

So, count down from I to O, from the limitations of the ego to the eternity of God, and instead of live being read in reverse, being somehow distorted, and giving evil, it gives love – love for the other, love for God.

Perhaps you do not believe me, but love and other are connected, you just need to know where in the mouth consonants are produced, forming seven simple pairs, one of which is l-r. Then take a step in the alphabet (t-v, omitting the intervening vowel) and add breath (h). Love-other. The vowels are the same.

We have seen that if we take another step in the alphabet, r-s, other is connected to the Greek word for “God”, theos, and so the two great commandments Christ gives his disciples in Matthew 22 – to love the Lord our God and to love our neighbour as ourself – which together form the core of Christian teaching, are themselves confirmed by language:

love-other-theos

The ego has been taken out of them.

Similarly, we turn from the sin that may have characterized our youth and, having acquired spiritual knowledge, we become children of God, children of the light – son. Again, we achieve this by making the progression in language from I to O.

Even Christ did this by willingly going to the Cross. He counted down from I to O, even though there was no sin in him. He did it to show us the way, the answer to the questions we should be asking: who and how.

So, we have live (evil)-love, sin-son, Christ-cross, all examples of the path we must follow from the selfish demands of the ego to that wonderful moment of realization (and repentance) when we understand that there is more to life than we can see with our physical eyes. Our physical eyes can be used solely for the purpose of identifying and taking in the (external) objects of our desire. When we are subject to our desires, we become disconnected. Fragmented.

When we make the progression from I to O, we become whole again (in our brokenness), because while love is connected to other and theos (the two great commandments), it is also in whole (v-w, addition of breath). Love-other-theos, love-whole.

There is one other word where you will find love, and not surprisingly it is a word connected with language, because a word spoken in anger can destroy, but a word spoken with love builds up.

Again, we have to apply the pair v-w, the phonetic pair l-r and a step in the alphabet, d-e.

Then love gives word. It makes us whole (addition of breath). We are meant to love the other, who as Christ tells us in the Judgement of Nations is God (theos). This is the meaning of love in the English language. It’s the word itself that tells us. Unfortunately, we see language as a way of getting our message across – as something external (a tool) – and don’t realize it is bursting with meaning, like a bud in spring.

Jonathan Dunne

Heart of Language 10/15

Next: Heart of Language 11/15

Back to: Contents