Tag: eternity

Posted on in Sermons

The Gift of the Church

Readings: Acts 5:27-32; Psalm 150; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19-31

The Sanhedrin! Even the name sounds intimidating. One can imagine a row of austere, displeased faces, probably seated on thrones or a podium, certainly higher up, in ornate clothing, with ornate headdresses, peering down at these upstarts, Peter and his gang.

This was the Jewish legislative and judicial assembly. It met in the Temple in Jerusalem, in the Hall of Hewn Stones. It wasn’t disbanded until 425. It wasn’t so long ago that Peter and the other apostles had been beholden to such people, had owed them allegiance.

But now the situation seems decidedly unfriendly. The apostles “were brought in”. They were “made to appear”, in order to “be questioned”. They were informed in no uncertain terms that they had not being doing what they had been told. This small community was challenging the established order!

I wonder how Peter felt as he confronted them. Was he trembling at the knees? Was there a quaver in his voice? Did he feel belittled? Or was he so full of the recent experiences that he had cast all caution to the wind?

He says some things that must have sounded truly shocking. We must obey God over human beings (i.e. not you). He refers to Jesus, this man from Nazareth who had just been raised from the dead, they couldn’t find his body – “whom you killed by hanging him on a cross”. That’s a pretty direct accusation. He has been exalted so that he might bring Israel to repentance. The great House of Israel, of whom I’m sure the Sanhedrin felt like the legitimate representatives, the only ones qualified to discuss such matters. Not only that, but also to forgive their sins. They must have been reminded of the paralyzed man who was let down through the roof, so that Jesus could heal him (Lk 5:17-26). When Jesus told the man his sins were forgiven, there were murmurings among the Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting nearby. To indicate his authority, Jesus then told the paralyzed man to stand up and walk, which he promptly did, shocking them even further.

Peter ends with a reference to the Holy Spirit, “whom God has given to those who obey him”. That doesn’t sound as if it includes the Sanhedrin.

The whole of their world has been shaken, just as the foundations of the earth were shaken at the Crucifixion. Don’t we need something like that to waken us spiritually? I didn’t learn to drive until I was 48. My grandmother didn’t learn to drive until she was fifty, and I wanted to follow in her footsteps. So, I cadged lifts or walked everywhere for thirty years! I was the fourth child, and I think my father was a little exhausted of taking his children out for driving lessons. Anyway, I was more interested in books.

It took me until I came to Bulgaria to learn to drive, and I’m very glad I waited. My instructor, Mr Gujev, really woke me up. He made me realize that I wasn’t in an armchair, watching a film with popcorn, but I was in control of a machine that could kill people. He made me into a very responsible driver. One time, we were on Tsarigradsko Shose in the east of Sofia, driving towards the centre, and he told me to go up to fifty. I was quite happy going at 35, thank you very much, so he pushed his hand down on my right knee and forced the car to go faster. I was petrified initially, but then I began to enjoy it.

Isn’t that how it is with new experiences? To begin with, we’re reluctant, but then, with a guiding hand, we realize there are lessons to be learnt, boundaries to be pushed, and we’re often grateful afterwards. We realize that we have grown.

These men and women have certainly grown as a result of their allegiance to the Nazarene, the one who calls himself “the Alpha and the Omega” in John’s Book of Revelation. The appellation appears three times (also in 21:6 and 22:13), though it’s never quite clear if it refers to God the Trinity or to Jesus Christ.

The name “Alpha and Omega” refers to the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. He is the beginning and the end. He is the white space behind the language of matter. There is not a time when he was not, to refute the Arian view that Jesus was created.

In our culture, we are very keen on straight lines. We use them to package things. We use them to parcel out land, to create borders. The ego in English is a straight line: I. As is the number we teach our children to count from: 1. The line separates. It is a wall or a tower and liable to fall down.

I can see three ways to escape the line. We can make reference to a third point and form a triangle (a pyramid, which is much more stable). We can delete the line, draw another line through it. This forms a cross, but a cross is also a plus-sign (the meaning of losing your life in order to find it – Mt 16:25). And we can breathe air into the line, open it out – as when you breathe air into a plastic bag or inflate a balloon – and form a circle, in effect counting down from 1 to 0. The triangle, the cross/plus-sign, and the circle.

These three symbols, if you can picture them, spell the name of God in Revelation, Alpha and Omega (A+O). The triangle closely resembles a capital A. Then you have the plus-sign and the letter O. This is the spiritual meaning of the name – it is a call to escape our individuality, our selfishness, and to place ourselves in God’s service, which is the fullness of life.

It is a way of believing, and when we believe, we receive. The Holy Spirit, in the reading from Acts, “whom God has given to those who obey him”. “Life in his name”, in the reading from John. “Eternal life”, in the post-Communion prayer we will hear in a moment.

Jesus says to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” He is referring to us, the Church across the ages. He breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” This verse might be taken to support the inclusion of the filioque clause in the Creed, to say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son. But this is not the Orthodox view. This clause was included after the Creed was composed in the fourth century, and it was included unilaterally, at the Third Council of Toledo in 589, not by the Church as a whole.

I believe that Jesus here is offering the disciples the Holy Spirit (“whom God has given to those who obey him”), so that they can forgive others their sins, just as a priest does in the absolution. This doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit proceeds from him, simply that the Holy Spirit is in his gift, and I think we would be very wrong to go against the authority of such an important theologian as Gregory of Nazianzus, who contributed to the writing of the Creed at the Council of Constantinople in 381.

Christ is the Word. The Holy Spirit is breath. Breath is in the Word, but it comes from the lungs of the speaker.

Do you see how Peter and the other apostles have filled Jerusalem with their teaching? This, despite the fear they felt of the Jewish leaders, which caused them to lock the doors. It is the Holy Spirit that releases us from our fear, that delivers us from the death of sin and enables us to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness. That, and participation in Communion, where we receive the body of Christ and his blood – “him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood”, as it says in Revelation.

Along with Thomas, the doubting one (and who hasn’t doubted? It is a part of faith), we should count ourselves blessed for these gifts – the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist, the institution of which we celebrated only ten days ago, and the reception of the Holy Spirit, which the Church marks at Pentecost. This is a time of giving, like the air we breathe, the food we eat, the blossoming of spring, not a time to count the cost. Christ has already done that for us when he went to the Cross.

We are language – breath, water, and flesh. Our purpose is to have meaning. We are words on a page, living in eternity. Our job is to believe, so that the Holy Spirit can work through us and we can be imbued with meaning.

Jonathan Dunne, www.stonesofithaca.com

Posted on in Reviews

Review of “Songs of a Lost World” by The Cure

“Songs of a Lost World” is The Cure’s fourteenth studio album and was released on 1 November 2024. It has created a lot of expectation among diehard Cure fans, such as myself, because it comes sixteen years after their last studio album (“4:13 Dream”, 2008). But I think it’s more than that. Who among Cure fans of the eighties remembers an album called “4:13 Dream”? I certainly don’t. For me, there’s the first four albums – “Three Imaginary Boys” (1979), “Seventeen Seconds” (1980, with the epic “Forest” intro, though I was always very partial to “M”), “Faith” (1981, my God, that album got me into Oxford, no, not the album, the 12” version of “Faith” with “Charlotte Sometimes” on the other side, listening out of my bedroom window before going to bed), “Pornography (1982, somehow I feel this should have been their earliest album) – plus “Disintegration” (1989). I left off listening to The Cure after “Disintegration”. Was it that awful album “Wish”, or just the fact my life took another direction, I went abroad and had other things to think about? “Songs of a Lost World” has reunited us all with our past.

And it was an epic past. Robert accompanied us through adolescence and into adulthood. He formed us, somehow. Most of my university friends will remember me for liking The Cure. That was a defining characteristic, something that set me apart. It may even have taken me off the rails. I underperformed at university, and I think that is due, in part at least (add in the fact that no other decade has surpassed the eighties in terms of quality music), to my obsession with The Cure.

Now, “Songs of a Lost World” makes all of that (and believe me, there has been some soul searching along the way) worthwhile. Robert gifts us a look into our past, just as with the epic “Endsong” he himself looks into his past, standing outside in the garden with his father at the time of the Moon landing in 1969 and wondering if there could really be people up on this white, blood-red orb.

What sets Robert apart as a musician is that he doesn’t mince his words. He doesn’t claim that there is some small light at the end of the tunnel most of us find ourselves in. There is simply “nothing”. That old world, the world we felt comfortable in, the world of the eighties, has disappeared and, much as we might wish it would return, it won’t. We are faced with economic instability, environmental degradation, and not enough time for anything really. It’s like time, which used to be so generous, suddenly became stingy. We are rationed. We grab some release here or there, but soon it’s back to the grindstone, trying to keep up, without the possibility of taking a step back and considering where our lives are headed because they seem to just be going round and round in circles. We are donkeys chasing our tails in a pathetic attempt to pay the bills.

Robert gives us time. He makes that time available. He hasn’t changed. Even if he says he is “left alone with nothing at the end of every song”, he carries on writing them. He can’t stop himself. The creative urge is irresistible. We know we’re not going to succeed – life, that hungry animal, is going to get us in the end. But we continue regardless. Because what other choice do we have? We can’t just down tools, go on strike. We have responsibilities.

There is a moment in this album that makes the last thirty-five years of waiting worthwhile. It is the instrumental bridge in the middle of “Endsong” (7:59 mins). I think at this point Robert and his fellow travellers – Simon, Jason, Roger, Reeves – grasp something of eternity. Damn, they take hold of it by the tail and fly off into the night sky, laughing inanely as the sparks scatter all around them. So, for all the times we have been fucked, all the times we have been treated badly, all the times life has let us down and there hasn’t been an answer, we have our moment of vindication, our moment of glorious, exploding hope.

Yes, tomorrow it will be back to the grindstone, to all the bureaucracy and demands that humans impose on each other because they can’t think of anything better to do. But now, even though we know the whole system is flawed, a human construct based on the desire to possess, we have our secret weapon. We have seen.

And this is what Robert gives us – vision. One of my favourite tracks on the album is “Warsong”. Honestly, it reminds of my late wife’s family. “All we will ever know is bitter ends for we are born to war.” This message could be taken to be pessimistic. Much of the album could be understood in this vein. It doesn’t seem to hold out much hope – of a better world, of kinder relationships (which is all we really hanker after), of a better understanding of our environment, the nature that gives us life and should be at the top of any political programme. This is why older people become so attached to animals. They see the goodness in them, the lack of deceit.

And yet it gives hope. It gives strength. And this is what Cure fans are so grateful for. Thank you. That rocket-speed launch into eternity is all I need. To know that it exists. What every human being is waiting for, and not getting, is a just world order (and perhaps not to have to die). This is the basis of all world religion – that we can be better than this, that we can act with kindness, that someone out there cares about us. Life is a journey towards the realization that greed, self-interest, the desire to possess, needs to be reined in. What life is there without forgiveness? Without mercy?

“Left alone with nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.” This is how the album ends. Yes, but it’s not “nothing”, is it? It’s something better than this.

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

Posted on in Heart of Language

15. Atom

Christ became human so that he might translate for us the meaning of life through parables (Braille, writing for the spiritually blind), but also so that he might translate us when we die. The process of translation, when a word in one language disappears in the translator’s mind in order to reappear in another language, can be likened to death, when someone disappears and is spoken into the language of eternity.

Christ became man in order to show us the road to salvation. He entered his own creation through one of his creatures, Mary. He came to translate for us the meaning of life, because we were at a loss and it needed explaining. He did this by means of parables. We have seen examples. Parable is connected to Braille through the phonetic pair b-p – it is writing for the spiritually blind, for those whose spiritual eyes have not been opened.

But I believe that there is another reason for God to become human, to enter his creation. God is the Author, the source of all that is. We are not the Author, much as we would like to be, because we cannot create out of nothing. We need what already exists, and our purpose is to take this and to turn it into something better, to translate it, just as the translator of a text takes a text written in one language and converts it into another through an unseen, and highly spiritual, process that takes place in the person’s mind as they are translating.

When we are translating a text, there is a point, once we have understood the original (read it, looked up any words we do not know, consulted with the writer or an expert in their work, all the horizontal work of preparation), when the original disappears, it evaporates, the words dissipate, the letters fade away, and out of the translator’s mind, through their fingers as they type on the keyboard, appear new words, words written in another language.

That momentary disappearance, that disembodiment, can be likened to the process of human death. We also seem to disappear, our bodies are put in the ground, and we are no longer seen. We also evanesce, cease to be discernible by the five senses. But in whose mind are we?

I think that Christ became man not only to translate for us the meaning of life by means of parables and his example, but also literally so that he could translate us at our death. An author is the source. A translator acts as a conduit, just as the Virgin Mary did when she acquiesced to bear Jesus in her womb. By becoming human, Christ became the Translator.

We are a text being written. Everything we do in this life takes us in a certain direction. And when we reach the end of our lives, we will be spoken, having been taken up into the mind of the Translator. We will be freed of the constraints of time, and we will enter eternity, the white page on which words are written.

This is why eternal gives two connections. For the first, we must take a step in the alphabet, e-f, and use two pairs of letters that look alike, i-l and n-h (one is an extension of the other). In this way, eternal gives father and I:

eternal = father + I

I think this is because, once we have been spoken, we will have left the speaker’s mouth and be able to see him.

It also spells I am free (phonetic pair m-n, pairs of letters that look alike, i-l and f-t):

eternal = I am free

We will be free of corruption, of the bondage to sin, free to express ourselves without fear (free – the fine line between fear of God and the fire of purification, if we allow fluidity to the vowels; the good news is that it lasts for ever, f-v).

Language contains hidden meaning. The whole of human existence is contained within it. We haven’t realized this. We treat language like an external object, a tool. We use words to bash people on the heads and also to caress them. But we haven’t realized that we ourselves are language, words in the making, spoken into being – breath, water and flesh; h, vowels and consonants – just as we read in the first two chapters of Genesis.

Language tells us the road that we must follow. Christ is very clear about this when he says to his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mt 16:24). This is the way to eternal life, but it passes through denying the ego, drawing a line through the I, which forms a cross, †, but also a plus-sign, + (the meaning of losing our life in order to find it).

We have seen the three ways of moving away from the line by forming a triangle, the letter A, by deleting the I, +, and by treating the line as a number and counting down to O: A+O. These three symbols spell the name of God Alpha and Omega. As soon as we turn our backs on the ego, we turn to God. They are also found in the middle conjunction, and, if we write it with capital letters: AND (A ’N’ O). The reverse of and is DNA – it is in our DNA to do this, to move away from the line, to follow the progression of the Greek alphabet, AIO or AIW.

And when we draw a line through the ego, when we make the sign of the cross (a cross is a deleted I), something extraordinary happens. The progression of the Greek alphabet, with the ego deleted, spells A+O/W (depending on which letter we use to depict omega, a long o or w).

We effect a change at molecular level – the “living water” Christ was talking about, a change of heart, literally, at a level we cannot normally see – because this progression is contained in the word atom, traditionally the smallest particle of matter.

There is a clear connection between language and the environment: seed-root-tree-fruit. A tree that branches out is like a flowering ego, it is no longer a straight line. There is a clear connection between language and the history of the world, from the creation in the Book of Genesis to the Last Judgement, when angels will come to glean the field. And just as we plant a seed outside (as the Samaritan woman fetches water from the well in a bucket), so we must hear the Word of God and plant a seed in our heart.

The one will feed our stomach. The other will give us wings, and change our perception for ever.

Jonathan Dunne

Heart of Language 15/15

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See also: Theological English (video course); Word in Language (series of articles)

Posted on in Language

Time

Time is a line drawn by teachers of English on a whiteboard, with the points past, present and future marked by crosses. It is a line in a vast expanse of white, which can only exist because of the whiteboard. If there is nowhere to draw the line, then time cannot exist. We cannot just draw it in the air. Or we can if we use a sparkler. But it won’t last very long.

Time is a kind of zip. An Orion’s Belt drawn in chalk on a blackboard that is expanding space. Three points: past, present and future. Have, do and will. I have lived in London for ten years. Do you like London? I will come with you. Three auxiliary verbs that reflect our attitude to this world: to have (possessions), to do (activity) and to will (what we want). The only way to enter the line, to burrow inside it, to live in the moment, without regret for the past (nostalgia, which spells lost again), without fear for the future, is be. What are you doing? I am listening to music.

Time is a window of opportunity opened for us to take part in creation. It is a soap bubble floating in the air. It cannot last for ever, at some point it will pop. We saw in the previous article that if we are to take part in creation, if we are to be co-creators with God, if we are to have our own children, then the reproductive maturity that enables us to do this comes with age. To be left to age for ever really would be a punishment, so when we acquired carnal knowledge of the other and were expelled from the Garden of Eden, a clock was set in motion. Now we had a ‘life’, a finite period of time, three score years and ten, enough to grow up, reach sexual maturity, have children, raise them and then grow old. We are not authors, so we cannot breathe the breath of life into an inanimate object. We can, however, translate life. We receive it from our parents and pass it on. We are translators in everything we do, from having children, to breathing, to eating, to communicating. Nothing begins with us. We arrive mid-conversation, take part in the conversation and then leave.

But in this process we acquire meaning. We learn things. This is what time gives us. And note that time is clearly connected to line, there is a jump in the alphabet (m-n) and an l with a line drawn through it to make a cross: t. So that is what a cross is – a line that has been deleted, an ego that has been rejected.

Because with time came sin, and again you will see that these words are connected. Imagine letters are like reels in a slot machine: s becomes t and m becomes n, with the addition of final e. Sin-time. In time, we have children. But we also abuse this ability. We do not care for the other as we should. We try to take possession. We remain in permanent activity. Our lives are considered useless if we do not produce. Have, do and will. These auxiliaries dictate our lives, tell us how we should lead them. And what about be?

When we push aside the demands of the ego (a word that is in stark opposition to God), it is as if we turned the ego, the line (I), into a number (1) and counted down to O. We take the I of sin and turn it into son. In a similar way, we turn live into love (and not into its reverse, which is evil). We do this by removing the ego and then we see that time contains a cross (†), I and me.

So time († I me) is not just the chance to have children, something we can only do with another person and which will cause us to age, it is also the opportunity to grow spiritually, to realize our need, to meet God and not to deny him.

Church Fathers say that Jesus Christ is waiting in our heart. He calls to us and, when we have grown tired of the things of this world, external objects that can be classified and counted (which is what much of our activity is about), we heed his call. We turn away from our possessions, from the incentive to own, which is nothing less than the attempt to make ourselves the source of life, and approach the heart with our mind. After knocking for a long time – because we must learn to desist from the passions, what caused us to sin in the first place – we are allowed to go in. We call on him – ‘Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me’ – and enter. Our mind meets itself for the first time, and becomes aware of the presence of someone far greater.

So time is a bottomless pocket. A door handle. A bubble God blew in the air. Here today, gone tomorrow. A place where we can learn the true value of love, who is the only one that matters.

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

Monet’s lily pond
Posted on in Word in Language

Word in Language (24): English Course (3)

In the fourth and final part of this short course in English, we will look at word connections made by the addition of letters. Sometimes it is possible to make connections simply by adding a letter, and we have seen examples of these: SELF and FALSE or FLESH, for example, or GOD and GOLD. Here, I have simply added a letter (a, h, l) without making any other changes. But often it is necessary to apply the rules we have studied and make a change to the vowels, apply the seven phonetic pairs and b-v-w, change a letter according to the alphabet or its appearance. A good example is LAND and PLANT – we have added the letter p, but also applied the phonetic pair d-t. Or FLESH and FATHER – we have added the letter a, but also applied the alphabetical pair s-t. We may need to replace i and u with their corresponding semi-vowels j/y and w, c with the two ways it is pronounced, k or s, or to double a letter.

These are the words we are going to look at. See if by adding the letter in brackets and making any other necessary changes, by maintaining or changing the order of the letters, you can arrive at the connections:

FISH   LINE   (+ a)   AIR   CROWN   WORK   (+ d)

FLIRT   PLOT   (+ e)   LOVER   (+ f)   FIRE   (+ g)

GRIST   DIE   EGO   (+ h)   GREEN   (+ i)   FIRE   (+ l)

SNARE   (+ o)   FIEND   (+ r)   EXIT   (+ s)

FISH   SEMEN   (+ t)   IDLE   (+ v)

The two most commonly added letters are h and e. The first letter, h, is the way we represent breath in the alphabet, so it is not entirely surprising that we should often find this letter has been added – we are simply adding breath to the word. Think of the example of TREE, which has a single trunk, but when it sprouts branches turns into THREE, becoming three in one (a good analogy for the Holy Trinity). Nor is it entirely surprising that the other commonly added letter should be e, since this is the most common letter in the English language. What strikes me is that the two letters together spell he, and that points us to Christ.

The other commonly added letters are all grammatical. The first of them is s, which we use in English to make the plural (car, cars) and to make the third person singular of the present tense (learn, learns). Again, what I find striking is that if we add s to he, we get she, and that points us to Mary, his Mother.

The next four most commonly added letters are the two most common phonetic pairs I have already mentioned, d-t and l-r. Again, they are grammatical. D and t are the way we pronounce the past tense in English – think of the past of learn, which can be spelled learned or learnt (think of the past of spell, which can be written spelled or spelt!). These letters are appended to the end of verbs in English to indicate that the action was in the past. Meanwhile, l and r are suffixes used to turn nouns into adjectives – think of words like normal and regular.

The other most commonly added letter is n. Again, it is grammatical because n is used to make the past participle of irregular verbs (see, seen). So letters that are used in grammar to make derivatives, words that derive from others, are also commonly added in the formation of word connections. The other letters are vowels: e in first place (we often find this letter at the end of words in English, lengthening the previous vowel – think of shin and shine or man and mane), but also i and a. This completes the list of most commonly added letters: h, e, s, d-t, l-r, n, i and a.

Let us look now at the examples. If we add a to FISH (and apply the alphabetical pair s-t), we get FAITH. This is a remarkable connection because the fish is an early symbol of Christianity. The letters of the word for ‘fish’ in Greek, ichthys, form an acronym, again in Greek, for ‘Jesus Christ Son of God Saviour’. The symbol is made up of two overlapping lines – two hands in prayer. The fish may also remind us of pivotal moments in Christ’s ministry: the feeding of the five thousand; the feeding of his disciples on the beach by the Sea of Tiberias at the end of John’s Gospel, when Christ asks Peter to feed his sheep, a reference to the formation of the Church.

Meanwhile, LINE gives us ALIEN. We create an alien by drawing a line between them and us. We draw a line when we make ourselves out to be authors. The line is also the ego in English – the pronoun I. When we draw a line, we are claiming property, but this is hard to do given that nothing begins with us and things pass through us. We are translators, not authors, but our urge to be authors (and to deny the existence of the real author of all things) leads in our world to inequality, the haves and have-nots, to war and suffering. Christ asks us to embrace the other, because the OTHER is God (THEOS in Greek). We are not saved alone, but in community (we pray for each other, and the saints pray for us).

With the addition of the letter d, from AIR, we get BIRD (alphabetical pair a-b). Well, a bird is intimately linked with the air, so it is logical that the two words should be connected.

From CROWN, we get GROUND (u-w, phonetic pair g-k). This is to show that opposites are connected. To us, with our limited vision, they may seem far apart – certainly if you are perched in the crown of a tree, the ground will appear far off – but the truth is they are connected. It matters what happens on the other side of the fence – this is why translation is so important, so that cultures can understand one another and interact – but all too often we are concerned primarily or exclusively with what is going on in our own patch. We are saved as a body. We find this connection between distant points in similar word connections: ROOF-FLOOR (addition of l), TOP-BOTTOM (phonetic pair b-p, addition of m). Word connections are often confirmed like this.

From WORK, we get WORLD (alphabetical pair k-l). The world is a place of work – if we do not work, nothing will grow (and you will see that WORK and GROW are the reverse of one another, phonetic pair g-k). But this work is not in vain. It has its reward. If we read WORK back to front and add the letter n, we get CROWN. If we apply ourselves to the virtues, which is hard work, if we persevere in the face of doubts (our own as much as anybody else’s), we will receive the crown of righteousness. We will not achieve anything in the world without work.

The next is a wonderful example, because FLIRT, if we add the letter e, gives TRIFLE. I have to confess that, when I was young, my brother James used to make the most delicious trifles, with fruit and sponge cake, cream and custard. Once finished, it would sit there, on the side in the kitchen, attracting people’s attention, saying, ‘Here I am! Come and eat me!’ My brother’s trifle is not the only thing to do this – to flirt, I mean – fruit does it as well to attract the attention of animals that will spread the plant’s seeds far and wide. That is why FRUIT and FLIRT are also connected (phonetic pair l-r, addition of u). All Nature is attracting attention – or hiding!

And what is the purpose of a PLOT? The purpose of a PLOT is to TOPPLE someone. I give these last two examples to show that word connections aren’t necessarily theological – they can be mundane, or political.

By the addition of the letter f, we find LOVER in FLOWER. Well, just as fruit flirts, so a flower is a potential lover for an insect. Flowers are designed to turn heads, and we find that the reverse of FLOWER is REVOLVE for this reason (phonetic pairs f-v and b-v-w).

By the addition of g, we find FIRE in GRIEF. Grief is a purifying experience. It reduces us to our bare minimum, without the trimmings (which don’t matter anymore, or even make us sick). We are left only with ourselves, and it doesn’t amount to much. And yet this increases our dependence on God. Our pride is wiped away at a stroke. The clearest eyes I ever saw – together with those of a monk on Mt Athos – were those of a husband at his wife’s funeral. He was holding the pain inside. Isn’t this to be a disciple? To hold the pain, albeit for a while, rather than to toss it aside. To participate, to take up some of the slack, to bear witness.

Through the addition of h, we can connect GRIST with CHRIST (phonetic pair g-k). Grist is corn that is to be ground. Can you imagine two millstones whirling in a dance, rotating one on top of the other, with nothing in between? Their activity will, in the end, prove pointless. If we rotate in a dance, with nothing in between, what are we really doing? We need the grist of Christ in our lives – not just thin air, but matter that we can hold on to. God is not only spirit. He came down to earth and assumed our human nature. Every Sunday, we can consume his most holy body. This gives us grist for the mill. And what word is in MILL in reverse? I’M. Christ takes us away from the selfishness of our own desires, he provides a purpose, something we can grind. He is the bread of life.

I said before that Nature also likes to hide – especially when it dies. When an animal is about to die, it often disappears. We don’t see it anymore. This is why DIE and HIDE are connected. When we DIE, we SHED our outer coating (alphabetical pair h-i, addition of s). DIE is like the TIDE (addition of t), which comes in and goes out, just like our breathing.

Again, with the addition of h, we find EGO in ECHO (phonetic pair g-k). Isn’t our ego an echo? Isn’t it just telling us what we want to hear? But this is a kind of blindness. We will never learn anything if all we listen to is our own voice. We have to hear the voice of the other. We open ourselves to what is alien, take part in its joys and sufferings.

Through the addition of i (y), we find that GREEN is in ENERGY. This is an incentive perhaps to look for green sources of energy. After all, GREEN is CLEAN (phonetic pairs g-k, l-r).

By the addition of that other letter that represents the ego, l, we find FIRE in RIFLE. This, for me, is very interesting. What does a rifle, which bears a striking resemblance to the ego, since it is a straight line, do? It fires and then it takes a man’s life. Can you believe that, in our urge to be authors and to lay claim to property, we have created a representation of our ego – the line – for the purpose of taking another man’s life? RIFLE: FIRE – LIFE. There is language to tell us.

Our reason tells us we have the right. We listen to our reason, we rely on it, often to justify the actions of the ego. Well, why shouldn’t I? After all… And there is the voice of our conscience to provide a counter-argument. Well, it isn’t exactly fair, especially if you look at it from the other’s point of view. Reason is comforting. Reason tells us we can have what we want. But REASON contains SNARE (addition of o) and can be found in TREASON (addition of t). Perhaps it will do us a bad turn in the end and we should rely on faith instead. SNARE is also in ANSWER (addition of w). An answer is also comforting, it closes the chapter (but never for long).

Jesus must have thought he had a friend in Judas. Or this is what casual onlookers must have surmised when they saw them together. FRIEND is a complicated word, however. Without the r, it spells FIEND, and certainly the devil entered Judas when he decided to betray his master. Is that a coincidence? Yes, of course it is. Everything is coincidence, things happening together. But as I said before, there are other connections to confirm it. Look at the first four letters of FRIEND and apply the phonetic pairs f-v and l-r. What word do you find? EVIL. And in the last four letters of FRIEND? DENY. Language knew long before it happened what would come to pass.

‘All the world’s a stage,’ wrote Shakespeare in As You Like It. EARTH is in THEATRE. When our role is done, we exit stage left or right – perhaps left to join the goats and right to join the sheep (Mt 25:31-46). That is why EXIT is in EXIST. At some juncture, we exit and exist – in terms of the theatre – no longer. Life is but a dream. The ancient Greeks referred to the boundary between the earth and the underworld as the river STYX. This word is also in EXIST.

What is it that a FISH can do better than any other living creature? It can dart about, it can move from side to side, suddenly change direction. It can SHIFT (addition of t). I find this a very visual connection. I think of the fish in the water suddenly disappearing, parallel becoming perpendicular.

At the beginning of life is the seed and the egg. Only if an egg is fertilized will it remain in the mother’s womb, will it stick to the side of the womb and gestate. This is because SEMEN acts as a CEMENT (addition of t). Cement is a kind of past tense. The introduction of the seed cements the egg to the womb, where it can develop.

The DEVIL makes work for IDLE hands (addition of v). We have come across several connections with DEVIL: EVIL, LIVED, DIFFER, WICKED, DEFILE, YIELD…

We have now studied all the rules for making word connections. In all likelihood, we will have to rearrange the letters, not read them in the same order (though there are a few connections where it is not necessary to rearrange the letters). We may replace the vowels i and u with their corresponding semi-vowels j/y and w, c with the two ways it is pronounced (k/s). We may double a letter. We may change a vowel – vowels flow – especially the front vowels a, e and i. We may change a consonant according to where it is pronounced in the mouth – the seven phonetic pairs, plus b-v-w. We may change a letter according to its position in the alphabet and its appearance (by turning it upside down, back to front, by extending it). And having done all of these things, we may add a letter, most commonly he, she.

Language is encoded. It wishes to tell us about human life, why we are here, where we come from (the act of creation in the Garden of Eden), our current situation (a result of the Fall, where the ego holds sway, the line that produces aliens) and what we can do about it (repentance). I have given numerous examples to show that word connections are not isolated events, but part of a greater fabric in history, a thread floating in eternity, time is a thread floating in eternity. It is up to us what we do with the thread. We can discard it. We can use it to sew up a wound. We can tie it into a knot to remind us of something. We can add it to the tapestry, our own particular flash of colour. Life is a thread, a series of events taking us ever onwards, in a direction that will benefit us if we allow it. A water snake propelling us forwards. A hair in the eye that we must remove. The eye of a needle.

Thread is the breath that connects birth and death. All these words are connected. Our timeline is our breath. Our breath is our ‘to be continued’.

The eye of the needle, depending on the angle, can be enormous. Like the sun in the trees.

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

Posted on in Word in Language

Word in Language (22): English Course (1)

In the previous article we looked at word connections made between words containing the same letters, be they in the same or a different order. We will now look at word connections made by changing the vowels and the consonants according to phonetics (how the sounds are produced in the mouth).

The easiest changes to make to letters are to the vowels because they are like water, they flow. Voice passes through the mouth and is not obstructed by the flesh, the lips or tongue. We sing. When a doctor examines our throat, we go ‘Aaaah!’. Air passing through the mouth, with or without voice added to it, that is obstructed by the flesh, the lips or tongue, forms the consonants. They are the building blocks of language, so to speak. The difference between vowels and consonants is that with consonants the passage of air is cut off (by pursing the lips, by lifting the tongue) and then released like a projectile, with greater force.

Vowels are not produced in the mouth in the same order as they appear in the alphabet: a, e, i, o and u. From the back of the mouth (the throat, where language originates) to the front of the mouth, they appear in the following order: u, o, a, e and i. Note that the ego – the I – situates itself right at the front! So we have back vowels (u and o), a central vowel (a) and front vowels (e and i). We also have close/high vowels (u and i) and open/low vowels (o, a and e). The way the vowels are produced in the mouth forms a V-shape:

u                                        i

o                    e

a

It is very common, therefore, to make a word connection by changing a to e (we saw the example of EARTH in reverse being THREE). This is perhaps the most common vowel change, but also common are e-i (MEET and TIME) and e-o (ENEMY and MONEY). We also studied the progression of human life from the A of Creation to the I of the Fall to the O of repentance – AIO – and how this is present in language, both between and inside words.

When the passage of air (with or without the addition of voice) is obstructed by the flesh (the lips or tongue), we form the consonants. There are seven pairs of consonants and they are very important when it comes to making word connections. These are pairs of consonants pronounced in a similar part of the mouth, and very often one of them is voiced (has voice added to it) and the other is voiceless. You can feel which consonants are voiced by placing your hand on your throat as you pronounce them and feeling the vibration of the vocal cords. The seven phonetic pairs are:

b-p     d-t     f-v     g-k     l-r     m-n     s-z

There are also seven complex consonantal sounds made by the combination of one of these letters with the letters h or g: gh, for example, as in bridge, kh as in church, ng as in song. Unfortunately symbols are used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent these complex consonantal sounds, which disguise their relationship with the seven phonetic pairs, but we are not going to worry about them at the moment.

I add an eighth phonetic pair: b-v-w. This is because these letters are pronounced very close together, as we can see in languages such as Modern Greek (where b is pronounced v), Spanish (v is pronounced b), Latin (v is pronounced w) and German (w is pronounced v). This enables me, through v, to connect f with b/w.

Have a go at making connections with the following words by applying a vowel change:

DEAF   DRAMA   FAITH   (a-e)

SEED   (e-i)   NINE   STRIKE   (i-o)

or one of the phonetic pairs:

BABEL   TABLE   (b-p)   DREAM   (d-t)

DIFFER   (f-v, l-r)   ANGLE   (g-k)

HEAL   SOUL   TEMPLE   (l-r)

MISS   TEMPER   TEMPLATE   (m-n)

EROS   (s-z)   BLESS   BREAST   (b-v-w)

These are my answers.

DEAF in reverse reads FEED. I find this remarkable. It is as if, within our limitations, we are called upon to help each other. It reminds me of Christ on the beach at the Sea of Tiberias telling Peter to ‘feed my sheep’ (Jn 21:17). Christ knows our weakness – our excess of pride in our youth, our physical weakness in old age – but still he expects and wants us to minister to his sheep, to provide help to those in need. A similar connection can be found between BLIND and BUILD (physical pair n-u).

In the previous article we found confirmation for Shakespeare’s saying ‘All the world’s a stage’ in the connection EARTH-THEATRE. There is another saying – ‘Life is but a dream’ – which forms the title of a play by one of Spain’s most famous dramatists, Calderón de la Barca, Life Is a Dream (La vida es sueño). Again, we can find confirmation in the connection DRAMA-DREAM. Both of these analogies – life as a play, life as a dream – seem to refer to our limited understanding of life as we know it, human beings on a planet spinning through space. As I have said before, I believe that the world is a spiritual womb on which we are placed to grow spiritually. Our individual physical birth (from our mother’s womb) is followed by a collective spiritual birth (from the earth), which forms the body of the Church. When we are born in this world, we are not yet ready for the latter (spiritual) birth – we need time to grow. The mistake we make is in thinking that this world is self-enclosed – is all there is, a kind of free for all – when it represents an opportunity to grow.

FAITH in reverse reads THIEF. We may be afraid of having our faith stolen, but I think this connection refers to the faith shown by the Penitent Thief next to Christ on the Cross, a passage that appears in Luke 23:39-43. The Good or Penitent Thief believes in Christ and asks him to remember him in his kingdom. Christ replies, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’ So in a sense the Good or Penitent Thief is the first person to be saved – because he showed faith, because he believed.

But some of us seem to have a problem with the concept of resurrection, of rising from the dead. I don’t know why. There is a perfect example of such a resurrection right in front of our eyes, and that is SEED, which DIES in the ground only to resurrect in spring.

EARTH is planet number THREE in order of increasing distance from the Sun, but in our solar system there are said to be NINE planets in total (forgive me, I am of a certain age, and Pluto for me is and will remain a planet) with the Sun at the centre, which represents the number NONE. I have reiterated that I think we should teach our children in school to count from zero, 0, not from 1 – not to start with the ego (I), but with the eternal figure of God (O). This would then form the basis of all their thinking – not to view life in terms of the individual, but in terms of the Other, of the collective. We really have to get past the idea of money, of all exchange coming with a price tag, as if the things with which we bartered were our creation. They are not. They simply pass through our hands because we are translators. This is why single-digit numbers are not 1-10 (as we teach our children to count in school, or as we learn a foreign language) but 0-9. This is reflected by the Sun and the number of the planets.

In a similar way, we do not launch a pre-emptive STRIKE against our enemy (this attitude is again based on the idea that things belong to us and we have to fight over them). Rather we show love to our neighbour. We count down from the ego (I) to God (O), as we did with LIVE-LOVE and SIN-SON, and turn the aggressive STRIKE into the more tender and appropriate STROKE.

Language is telling us how to live our lives. It also confirms what we read in the Bible, which should not surprise us because Christ is the Word – we would expect language to confirm his message.

There are two moments of discord in the Book of Genesis. The first is the Fall – represented by the APPLE – in which man separated himself from God (though I have given a more positive interpretation of the Fall as the way we could have children and form the body of the Church). The second is the Tower of BABEL, where man was separated from man by not being able to understand the other’s language (at this point, the role of the translator came into force, but we are all translators because nothing begins with us). It is remarkable that these two moments of dissension are connected by the phonetic pair b-p.

Word connections can be quite mundane. At a party, we might eat standing up, holding a plate in our hands. At a campsite, we might eat on a stool, balancing a plate on our legs. But the normal thing is to be seated at a TABLE and for the PLATE to be on the table in front of us. That is why a table is such a basic piece of furniture – it is for eating at. A chair is for sitting on, a desk for writing at, a window for looking through (a book for reading!).

But if life is a dream, as the saying goes, then all this MATTER we hold in our hands (isn’t matter made up of atoms flying about, with plenty of space?) could also be considered a DREAM. Certainly we will have to leave it behind when we depart from this planet, we cannot take it with us – only our good deeds.

I talked about the world as the womb of the Church. The FATHER would GATHER us together (alphabetical pair f-g). He would bring us together in love. What would the DEVIL have us do? He would have us DIFFER. Here we have to apply two phonetic pairs: f-v and l-r.

The most perfect example of an ANGLE I can think of is that formed by the ANKLE. Word connections can be very visual, and this is one example (compare LICE-RICE and NAIL-RAIN – phonetic pair l-r – are they not visually alike?).

In order to HEAL, we must HEAR (the Word of God). Here are another two examples of language confirming the stories of the New Testament. At the Presentation in the Temple, Simeon says to Mary, ‘And a sword will pierce your own soul too’ (Lk 2:35). SOUL is connected to SORROW (the letter r has been doubled, the u turned into its corresponding semi-vowel, w). We feel sorrow in our souls at the state of the world, the poverty and suffering; we also feel sorrow at our own corruption (our propensity to lust, greed, anger). Sorrow is a word that is intimately linked with soul (and the voice of our conscience). Of course, it is also in SWORD, and SWORD contains WORD. Words can be cutting. Saints are depicted with swords – they protect themselves with the Word of God. Paul says as much in his letter to the Ephesians: ‘Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God’ (Eph 6:17, my italics). Word connections are rarely isolated, and we will find confirmation for WORD-SWORD in the connections ARROW-WORD (addition of a/d) and SPEAK-SPEAR (alphabetical pair k-l, phonetic pair l-r).

Similarly, when Christ enters the temple and drives out the moneylenders, accusing them of turning his Father’s house into a den of thieves, we see an example of righteous anger. We find confirmation of this New Testament story (the cleansing of the Temple, Mt 21:12-7) in the connection TEMPLE-TEMPER. The chief priests and scribes, however, show a different kind of anger. They are angry with him for healing on the Sabbath, for doing ‘amazing things’ (Mt 21:15).

Christ is without sin. He has no need to repent. But our own anger can all too often be self-motivated. We are angry because our boundary lines have been crossed, our comfort zone has been invaded. For this kind of TEMPER, we need to REPENT – and there is the word to tell us.

The word ‘sin’ in Greek is hamartia, which means to miss the mark. We are not aiming as we should, we are not pointing in the right direction. Our gaze has been misdirected, most often towards the things of this world (and owning them). This is why SIN in reverse reads MISS (the s has been doubled). It also reads NICE (c-k/s, addition of e). Sin can seem nice. It can seem an act of freedom. This is the devil’s greatest trick – to make us think we are having fun, we are asserting ourselves, while all the time we are in fact destroying our existence, becoming spiritually dead. Anything that is centred on the self is not from God. It should be centred on him and, through him, on our neighbour.

I have said that the world is a spiritual womb, a nursery, in which the body of the Church is being formed. It is a kind of template – and in the word TEMPLATE we find PLANET (repetition of e and t). In fact, this is one of those strings of word connections that occur sometimes:

AM/AN – MAN – LAND – PLANT – PLANET – TEMPLATE

AM (God) created a countable noun, a separate being, AN – that is to say, he created A MAN (a combination of AM and the indefinite article AN). MAN is a LAND animal (l-m, addition of d). We use the LAND to PLANT things – food for us to eat, trees for us to breathe, flowers to make the world a prettier place. Without every kind of PLANT, our PLANET would be unrecognizable (and very barren). Our PLANET is a TEMPLATE, a trial run, a testing ground, not our final destination.

Language turns somersaults, whispers secrets in our ears. Can you hear me? Will you pay any attention?

The only word connection I have for s-z is EROS-ZERO, which I take to be a confirmation of the saying in 1 John 4:8, ‘God is love’.

I am now going to move on to the eighth phonetic pair (which isn’t really a pair at all): b-v-w. This pair enables me, through v, to connect f-b/w.

I have done down the SELF. I have connected it to FLESH in reverse (it goes the way of all flesh), to FALSE and SLAVE (its passions deceive us, its demands enslave us). But I have shown another way, how SELF can be connected to SERVE, if we will only change our direction. And here is a remarkable connection, because SELF can also be connected to BLESS. God blesses us, he doesn’t bless some abstract notion, he blesses each one of us, calling us to greater things (the deaf to feed, the blind to build!). The self, if properly directed, is a blessing because it will direct us towards him. We cannot know the Father without our self. We cannot form part of the body of the Church without being our self. MIRACLE is to RECLAIM that self from the deceptions of the devil, from the lust and anger, from the water of the well that never fills, and to fill it with living water, the water that never runs out, Christ himself. This is a blessing. BLESS-SELF.

There are three forms of nourishment in this world, and they are connected: BREAD-BREATH-BREAST. A baby without their mother’s milk, without drinking from the BREAST, will STARVE. But STARVE is contained in HARVEST, just as FAST is in FEAST (and so we come back to BREAST):

FAST – FEAST – BREAST – STARVE – HARVEST

Another string of word connections. There is paradox in Christianity, in the CRIME there is MERCY. We are given this time to come to our senses. Time is a gash in the side of eternity.

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

Posted on in Word in Language

Word in Language (14): Auxiliary Verbs

We live in the white space of eternity, but we cling to the line of time. It is extraordinary that the word TIME contains DIE (phonetic pair d-t, addition of m), but if we take a couple of steps in the alphabet it also gives LIVE (alphabetical pairs l-m, t-v). We have seen how it also contains MEET and DENY – this life on earth is our chance to meet Christ or to deny him, it is as simple as that. This is the purpose of life – do we choose to count down from the ego, I, to God, O, or do we prefer to attend to our own self-interest and to amass possessions by counting up from the ego, I? Once you start counting up, there will be no end, and we have seen how the English alphabet does this – it goes from the letter A to I to Z (1 to 2), it starts to count up, which may be seen as signifying a Western rational way of thinking, counting the cost, whereas the Greek alphabet, which may be taken to signify a spiritual way of thinking, a spontaneous response, counts down, it goes from the letter A to I to O (1 to 0, or omega).

 

This is very telling. We somehow have to escape the line that is represented by the ego, I, or by the timeline. LINE is close to MINE (alphabetical pair l-m) – when we draw a line, we are limiting ourselves, laying claim to possession, fencing ourselves in. We may find that the LINE leaves us ALONE, whereas in fact we are ALL ONE, and the one we have in common is God.

 

We see our life on earth in terms of the tenses: present, past and future. How much time do we spend in the present? Perhaps not very much, we are always thinking about events in the past or worrying about the future.

 

An example of the present tense is ‘I live in London’ or ‘I like to visit Hyde Park on a Tuesday’. It is used to talk about routines, actions or states that we consider to be fixed.

 

If we want to ask a question or to make a negative in the present, we have to use what is called an auxiliary verb – a verb that ‘helps’ us to ask the question or to make the negative – and the auxiliary verb for the present is ‘do’: ‘Where do you live?’ ‘I don’t like going out in the dark.’ We cannot ask a question or make a negative without the auxiliary ‘do’, or we will sound a little foreign: ‘Where you live?’ ‘I not like going out in the dark.’

 

Auxiliaries are a feature of the English language. Other languages like Ancient Greek and Bulgarian have little particles that enable the hearer to understand that what is coming is not a statement of fact, but a question: ‘ara’ in Greek, ‘li’ in Bulgarian. Languages like Spanish use intonation. ‘You live in Madrid?’ with a rising intonation informs the hearer that this is a question. I’m not telling you, I’m asking. But English has need of auxiliaries.

 

So it is in the past, and the auxiliary is the same: ‘I went to school in Clapham.’ ‘Where did you go to school?’ ‘I didn’t like it very much.’

 

So ‘do’ is the first auxiliary. ‘What do you do for a living?’ ‘Do you often come here?’ ‘Don’t talk to me like that!’

 

The auxiliary for the future is ‘will’. This little word expresses intention or a prediction: ‘I will come and help you.’ ‘I think it will rain at the weekend.’ ‘Will you tell me what it is?’ Whereas the auxiliaries in the present and past – ‘do’ and ‘did’ – are only used to ask questions or to make the negative, in the future the auxiliary must also be used in positive statements – precisely to signify that it is the future: ‘I come to lunch on Tuesdays, but next week I will come on Wednesday.’

 

We have seen how language encourages us to think in terms of the collective, not in terms of the individual, and the future provides us with a wonderful example because if we contract ‘I’ and ‘will’ we get ‘I’ll’ – this is a way of talking about plans in the singular – whereas if we contract ‘we’ and ‘will’ and think about the future in terms of the plural, we get ‘we’ll’.

 

Language appears to be telling us something: ‘I’ll’ and ‘we’ll’. I’LL and WE’LL. Take away the apostrophe that indicates a contraction and you have ILL and WELL. Isn’t this language telling us to think in terms of the plural? We might also notice that ME becomes WE when we turn the letter M upside down (physical pair m-w). And what is the plural of ‘you’ (think not how the word is written, but how it sounds)? Why, ‘us’ of course!

 

There is an aspect – the perfect – that we can apply to the tenses we have talked about, the present, the past and the future. This perfect aspect has the amazing ability to connect the tenses, to join them together, but our emphasis is still very much on the line.

 

For example, imagine that I started to live in London in the year 2000. It is now 2020, and I still live in London. You have a past – I moved to London in 2000 – and a present – I live in London now. What if you want to join them together? You can only do this by using the perfect, the auxiliary for which is ‘have’: ‘I have lived in London for twenty years.’

 

Imagine a point in the future: when you get home. I want to say that between now and the point in time when you get home, that is between the present and the future, I am planning to finish baking a cake. I will say, ‘By the time you get home, I will have baked a cake.’ There is the perfect again, by means of the auxiliary ‘have’, and it connects two points along the line, the past and the present, the present and the future, even the past and a point further back in time: ‘When you came to visit me, I had already put the things away.’ Before that point in time when you turned up, I had performed this other action, between the past and a point further back in time (when I got home from the office, for example).

 

Well, after that short lesson in grammar, we are equipped to say that the auxiliaries that cover the timeline are ‘do’, ‘will’ and ‘have’.

 

But doesn’t this tell us something about how we approach time, our lives on earth? Because the first auxiliary, ‘do’, refers to activity – we must always be busy. The second auxiliary, ‘will’, refers to intention – what I want. And the third auxiliary, ‘have’, refers to possession – how much I have. Couldn’t this be said somehow to sum up our approach to life: what I do, what I will and what I have?

 

This is because we are clinging to the timeline. We are like vines on an arbour or shellfish on a submerged pillar. We cling to what we know. And what we know is what we can see in front of us, what we can lay our hands on. But there is so much more. There is the enormity of space, to start with. There is also the enormity of ourselves – isn’t the kingdom of heaven within us? There is the enormity of our hearts, of our reaching out to one another, of the many examples of endurance and selflessness that humanity has shown. There is the moment when, albeit we are busy or tired, we take time out to focus on the other’s need. We shift away from the timeline, we take a step over the abyss. We enter the white space of the whiteboard. We realize that the battle has already been won and we are picking up the pieces. We step outside of time and into the light. We cease – for a moment – to linger on the past or to harbour concerns about the future. They are always only moments – the past and future quickly reclaim their place, like a tide coming in. But there are moments when we can separate ourselves from the timeline and enter eternity. We are in eternity. Now.

 

And what is the fourth auxiliary that is used to represent the continuous aspect, to talk about the moment? It is ‘be’. ‘Where are you at the moment?’ ‘I am sitting in the garden.’ Enjoying life, focused on the here and now, amazed by the wonder of it all. Isn’t this life? Amazement at the other, amazement at ourselves. Little coins that jingle in our pockets. Coins that are like suns, shimmering in the light.

 

Faith is stepping off the line. I don’t have enough money, I don’t have enough time, I’m too busy, I can’t do it for you, otherwise…

 

Faith is being quiet. In the moment, when we prise the timeline open and expand it, blow a little air into the bag.

 

When we expand the moment, we use ‘be’ (a word that we have seen is connected to ‘we’ and is contained in both ‘die’ and ‘live’). ‘I was reading a book when you arrived’ (I was unaware of time). ‘We will be waiting for you when the train arrives’ (the train will pull up alongside the platform, but we will already be out of time – waiting for you). ‘Be’ takes us out of time – it is used for actions that may be temporary (‘I am living in London at the moment, but next month I may not be’), continuous (‘we were walking alongside the river when it happened’) or repeated (‘I have been trying to get hold of you for ages’). It takes us away from the apparent security of our own efforts (‘do’), our own wills (‘will’) and our own possessions (‘have’).

 

There is so much noise in the world, but the truth is that the silence is much greater. There are so many words on this page, but the truth is that the white space is far greater. There is so much substance to our bodies, but the truth is that we are peppered with holes and invaded by space.

 

So it is with time. Time – the cross (†), I and me – is in eternity. It is the only place it can be. At some point, the teacher of English will come along and rub out the timeline. And then our preoccupations, our money and possessions, our frustrated wills, will count for nothing. All that will count is who we have allowed ourselves to be.

 

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

Posted on in Word in Language

Word in Language (7): Time

Let us look at time. We live in time, our lives on earth have a beginning, a middle and an end. When we learn our own or a foreign language, one of the first things we learn is the tenses: past, present and future. So our lives are very quickly conditioned by the concept of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Everything in this sense is linear, and indeed the word ‘time’ is connected to ‘line’ by the phonetic pair m-n and by drawing a line through the letter l to make t (I call this a physical pair, because they look alike).

 

Teachers of English, of which I was one, teach the tenses by going up to the whiteboard and drawing a horizontal line with their marker. On the line, they mark three crosses to represent past, present and future, but the fact is the line is like a loose thread and it exists before the cross that stands for the past and continues after the cross that marks the future, because we cannot be certain about these things – when the past started, when the future will end. It hangs in the air, like a loose thread on our clothing, which we pick up and put in the bin.

 

I remember standing in Wandsworth, London, while teaching an English class, and having a revelation. I realized that the only way I could draw a timeline was by having a whiteboard, without the whiteboard it was impossible for me to draw the line. And while the black of my marker seemed to obliterate the white of the board underneath, the fact is the white of the board still existed beneath the black of the line. This meant that time exists – and can only exist – in the white space of eternity. Time is proof for the existence of eternity because without eternity time cannot exist. There is nowhere to draw it.

 

But what is its purpose? I have already said that I believe time exists to give us a chance to make meaning a two-way process, to offer ourselves to God in the same way that he has offered himself to us on the Cross.

 

Let us take out our toolkit and disassemble the word ‘time’. What do we find? Four letters: t – i – m – e. That is, ‘time’ is made up of a cross – the letter t, which we saw earlier resembles the letter l with a line drawn through it – and the words ‘I’ and ‘me’. So it seems the first thing about time is crucifying the self, our egotistical impulses. This is the meaning of the Greek word for ‘love’, agape – we overcome our own will, our own selfish inclinations, in order to love the other, however different he or she may be, because God has already loved that person and because, by loving them, we will learn to discern what it is in them that makes them worthy of God’s love and gives them value, something we may not have been able to see when our spiritual sight was obfuscated by our own concerns and ambitions. We have already seen that when we draw a line through the self and form a cross, the letter t, we also form a plus-sign, +: in laying down our life for the other, we find our true self, the one that is meant to live, the one that exists in the white space of the board and is not conditioned by the tenses (I am born, I live, I die).

 

But we can go further than this, because, by changing one of the vowels (remember that y corresponds to i) and applying the phonetic pairs d-t and m-n, we see that TIME is connected to two words: MEET and DENY. That is, our sole purpose in this life is to turn towards God or to turn away from him, to embrace him or to reject him, to enter into the personal relationship that is represented by the Holy Trinity or to turn in on ourselves and enter into a relationship that is inward-looking and ultimately futile. We can see a similarly stark choice in the word LIVE, because LIVE in reverse reads EVIL, but if we take the ego in LIVE – the letter I – treat it as a number (1) and count down, we get LOVE. So in LIVE we are faced with a similar choice: to do EVIL or to LOVE the other (God and our neighbour – they are one).

 

If we take steps in the alphabet, we will see that TIME is connected to LIVE (l-m, t-v), but it is also connected to DIE if we apply the phonetic pair d-t and take away the letter m. Again, the stark choice between allowing space for God in our lives or leaving him outside. The connection TIME-LIVE involves keeping the letter m, a letter which, when upended, resembles the number 3 (the Holy Trinity). If we keep the number 3, we live.

 

It is certainly true that from the point of view of this world our lives have a beginning and end, and time itself is no different. It came into existence and it will cease. We see this if we apply the phonetic pairs d-t and m-n, because ‘time’ is connected to ‘begin’ (here, the d has been reversed to make b, and we have added the letter g) and to ‘end’ (here, we have omitted the letter i and read the word in reverse).

 

Put simply, time is a space in which we are given the opportunity to grow. It cannot go on for ever, just as our childhood cannot go on for ever, because at some point we must become spiritually mature, realize our limits and seek another meaning that is not the simple gratification of our needs. Time is a teacher. It is like an enclosure in which the damage we can do may appear great, but it is limited. Take time away, and you have boundless space. Lift up the veil of time (I think those two words are connected), and you will reveal the twitching nose and arching whiskers of the white rabbit of eternity beneath, the one we have been grasping at, the one we knew was there all along, if only we could believe it. TIME, in short, is a MYTH (same three letters, addition of e/h), a story, the story we tell our children when we put them to bed, the story we read to ourselves as we get older. It is a myth, but we take it to be reality, and the one who is – namely, God – we take to be a myth.

 

There is another word connected to TIME, and that word is SIN (alphabetical pair s-t, phonetic pair m-n, addition of e). Time is an opportunity to sin – only God is without sin – but by sinning we learn from our mistakes and reach spiritual maturity. We take the opportunity to MEET God rather than to DENY him. We learn to LOVE rather than to do EVIL. We become a child of God – a SON – by taking the I in SIN and counting down, as we did before, from I to O.

 

We have learned to place too much emphasis on our reason, to make an effort and to expect the corresponding reward for our exertions, for everything to have a price (though how that price is fixed in this world is questionable, to say the least). Salvation, however, will not come to us through our own intellectual acceptance of God, our keeping our side of the bargain. It will not come to us through MERIT (a word that contains TIME). It will come to us when we open ourselves to the grace of God and participate in his energies, when we align our will to his.

 

We do not get to heaven by our own efforts, just as we cannot know God through an act of our own will. We can strain as hard as we like, bang our heads against a brick wall. God has to reveal himself to us. The ball is in the other’s court, I’m afraid. But we can invite this revelation, this participation in his energies, by showing mercy. MERCY is the counterpoint to MERIT – they are only a letter apart, but the connection is hidden so it won’t be immediately visible. The letter c is pronounced s, s-t is a jump in the alphabet, y corresponds to i. MERCY-MERIT. Two ways of viewing the world. MERIT: you get what you deserve (this is patently untrue). MERCY: we humble ourselves and – at this point, yes – by an act of will we do violence to ourselves and force ourselves to embrace our enemy, to understand him, to say a good word to him on the road instead of hurling abuse.

 

TIME, like a screen, a partition, a stage set, a loose thread, is whisked away, the board rubber comes out and eliminates the black line in time for the next lesson, the bell goes, people’s attention turns to other things, what lesson is next, what the other person thinks, and ETERNITY is revealed.

 

The letter y corresponds to i. Phonetic pair m-n. ETERNITY has TIME in it, just as the whiteboard showed us.

 

And the word ‘eternal’ – if we juggle the letters around, rotate or extend the letters (phonetic pair m-n, physical pairs f-t and i-l) – spells ‘I am free’.

 

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