Words That Make New Worlds

     Words are important to me. I have been known to lay claim to a little nonsensical quotation from Jim Morrison, who once said, “I’ve always been a word man—better than a birdman!” Words are my stock-in-trade as a preacher, author, and poet. I traffic in words because I believe that words have power.

     God seems to agree with me on that (or, better, I seem to agree with God). The One who creates all things through a word, the One who finds expression in a Word and then enters into our situation when “the Word [becomes] flesh and [lives] among us” (John 1:14)—that God knows the power of words. In a poem I wrote some years ago, “A Salute to Academia,” I put it this way:

     I’m thinking about this for two reasons. One is that in the daily reading from the lectionary, the prophet Hosea instructs the Israelites to return to God, “For you have stumbled because of your iniquity. Take words with you and return to the Lord; say to [God], ‘Take away all guilt; accept that which is good, and we will offer the fruit of our lips” (Hos 14:1–2). Take words with you. We will offer the fruit of our lips. There are times when words fail us, when silence before God or in a holy moment with another person is the most appropriate course. And there is truth to the adage that “actions speak louder than words.” But we ought never forget that there is power inherent in both the spoken and the written word. The prophet goes so far as to suggest that bringing words (backed up, of course, by appropriate actions) to God can elicit God’s forgiveness and acceptance. Take words with you. Entrust yourself to the Word.

     The other reason I have this old poem on my mind is because I read it at the poetry session at the Keystone Conference Annual Meeting last weekend. Transitional Conference Minister Carrie Call invited participants at the conference to share samples of their poetry on Saturday night, and I took her up on it. I read the aforementioned “A Salute to Academia” and my Pentecost poem, “Bathing in the Swollen Stream.” The former is all about words—how they have power both for good and ill:

     Other words, however, have forfeited their power. Buzzwords and academic-speak and politically correct verbiage leave me cold. They become sterile and stilted, unable to perform any works of creation or redemption.

     I encourage you to use the written word to enter into God’s presence. Even if you have never written a line of poetry in your life and would never show it to another human being if you did, writing can be a meaningful spiritual practice. Write a prayer. Write a letter to God. Write a story about something meaningful that happened in your life. Don’t be afraid to express yourself–nobody need ever see what you have written besides you and God. Follow the prophet’s advice and take words with you to your encounter with the Divine. Words that speak the truth forthrightly and without evasion. Words that are worthy of being spoken in the presence of the true Word of God.

     Words that make new worlds.

Here is the complete poem, in case you’re interested:

Robert S. Turner

**

Words can be stones

dense with significance, like a pent-

up breath teetering

on the lips, ready to leap out

and conquer

or fall from a great height and crush.

**

Words can move words can still words

can stop you in your tracks.

Words can break and bruise and heal.

Words are ice words are fire,

either way they burn.

**

Words work when you work them,

they sweat on the page

under the sun they pull their weight

and push their way out of mind

into sight, out of womb into the world.

Word is flesh is Christ is God,

creator, dier, sleeper, reborner,

revealer and revealed, Mystery.

**

Fertile words rumble in the back of your throat,

they hum, purr, contented, assured.

Dying words groan mourning words keen

blunt words knock. But

**

some words buzz.

They grab your attention like the microwave

going off and we look inside to find

the popcorn burnt, the marshmallow grown fat

but still full only of air.

Why worship buzzing words

when other words sing?

Why empower when

you could make something happen?

Why be holistic if you’d rather be real?

**

Sheepskin blankets and smothers words,

education bleeds them dry.

Words graduate into anemia.

August words shuffle

for a buck eighty five,

but april will dance for a dime.