Thought for the Week: Beyond words
Dorothy Searle considers whether we need to learn to listen more and react less
For me, spiritual experience is that which reaches me from ‘beyond’ – beyond the physical, the intellectual and the emotional, and beyond words. If I am to communicate what I know, I have to use words, but I’m limited to the words that I, and any listener, will understand. This poses a huge problem: all words have unspoken connotations and we don’t all share the same connotations. We can’t communicate without words, but we do need to recognise their limitations. When talking of ‘the beyond’ we have to use the language of metaphor and must be prepared to follow other people’s metaphors too.
In the past, Quakers were all Christians and used the language of Christianity with a minimum of misunderstanding. However, things have changed. Many Friends don’t have a Christian background, and many want to move as far as possible away from it. This does mean that the use of Christian language without explanation will definitely lead to communication failures.
Mind you, communication with someone whose background is different can lead to very useful reminders that we need to be clear in our own minds about what we actually mean. Some thirty-five years ago, when I was a fairly new Quaker and my Meeting contained some very Christian ‘weighty Friends’, Bible quotations were frequently used in ministry to illustrate a point. Most of us knew the context and meaning of these quotations, but we had a Chinese attender whose background was completely different. He sometimes spoke, often just after we had heard a quotation, and his ministry reflected the words that had actually been said rather than the intended meaning. I found my thoughts going off at some very useful tangents.
I am very sad to hear of occasions when either the use of ‘God’ language or its absence causes distress. Why can’t we see behind the language to what the speaker is actually trying to communicate and show reasonable tolerance of the words used? Is it really impossible? Are we suffering from the culture of the instant response to the sound bite?
The word that causes most problems is ‘God’. Why? Perhaps you think of God as a person, he thinks of God as a force, she thinks of an all-pervading presence and I vacillate between a number of images. Does it matter? We are all trying to express the inexpressible!
There seems to be archaeological and other evidence that, ever since there have been people, there has been a sense of ‘the beyond’. Yes, it’s been misused; it’s been mixed up with magic, provided the ideal setting for an elite to control everyone else and been substituted for rational thinking. But that sense of ‘the beyond’ is still as strong as it ever was. Quakerism is a religion and all religions are human attempts to approach ‘the beyond’. We need to value the freedom it gives us to find our own, individual, approach. We need to try our best to use words that will express our experience as clearly as possible and we need to listen to others’ words with great care – not to find a modern ‘heresy’ but to search for what they are trying to tell us.
Do we need a set of clearly defined new words to be used without any hidden agenda? Or can we manage with those we have – but learn to listen more and react less?
You need to login to read subscriber-only content and/or comment on articles.