A Few Words About the Ineffable

A Sermon by Jim Gordon

Delivered to the First Unitarian Church of Oklahoma City

Sunday June 18, 2006

Readings

Today is about words, especially the words we use in churches. You may be up here some day, having to find your own words. Words are great for chemistry and engineering and physics and such. Those are the easy arenas for words. 

But for the really complicated parts of life, words never are an exact fit:  The joy of seeing a good friend.  Holding on to your most significant other.  Weddings.  Funerals.  Symphonies.  Walks in the rain.  Walks on a dark street late at night.  Chocolate.  Picking strawberries in a mountain field.  These are best described through stories, music, and poetry.  And silence.

ilence is important. Silence gives words room to maneuver.  Silence is also how all songs should end.   You’re familiar with the problems of being in the non-smoking part of a restaurant.  It’s like the non-peeing part of a swimming pool.  And for some of us, it’s like the non-applauding part of the sanctuary on a Sunday morning.   In all three cases, someone on the other side of the room – or the pool—feels better, but you just got some on you.  

Some one once asked Whitehead why he didn’t write clearly. He replied “Because I don’t think clearly. “  Today’s service is not linear. If the police tested sobriety by our ability to talk in a straight line, I’d be in jail this morning.   So we’ll make several turns along the way.  So, before the readings, a couple of favorite stories:

Two old men are riding in a bus. One turns to the other and says “I wish I’d known back then what I know now.”

A young man in the row behind him taps him on the shoulder. “Save me a few years. What did you learn?”

It’s 25 years from now.  A woman is sitting in her home talking to her computer. She’s in a contemplative mood. She asks the computer,” Do you think you computers will ever think like we humans do?”

And the computer says,” That reminds me of a story……”

Since we’re talking about the limitations of language,  I have selected readings from Winnie the Pooh, The Tao, Stendhal, Vincent van Gogh,  and someone you don’t know: Professor Brian Gaines of the University of Calgary.

I’ll start with Professor Gaines, who spoke at a conference on artificial intelligence:

Most of our mental processes may be not so much pre-linguistic as utterly independent of language.  This is a matter for empirical study.  Professor Brian Gaines, University of Calgary

Winnie-the-Pooh: “It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like ‘What about lunch?’"

Winnie-the-Pooh:

Piglet asked, "When you wake up in the morning, Pooh, what's the first thing you say to yourself?"

I say 'What's for breakfast?'" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"

"I say,' I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?'" said Piglet.

Pooh nodded thoughtfully. "It's the same thing," he said.

A.A.  Milne

Pooh knew what he meant, but, being a Bear of Very Little Brain, couldn't think of the words.   A. A. Milne

And one more from the Pooh: "Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.

The way that can be named is not the way.  The way that cannot be named is the way.  The Tao.

Vincent van Gogh: “How important it is to know how to mix on the palette those colors that have no name and yet are the real foundation of everything.”  (You really should read all of Vincent’s letters to his brother, Theo. )

Stendhal -- Love, music, passion, intrigue, heroism; these are the things that make life worthwhile.  Henri Stendhal  (A little humor would be good, too.)

A Few Words About the Ineffable

Sunday, December 6, 1987.  A day that will live, in my memory at least, in confusion.  In one sense, the experience is ineffable.  Our minister, Dick Allen, was having a pulpit exchange with Robin Meyers, the minister at Mayflower Congregational.

It was cold in Oklahoma City. There was snow and ice on the ground, and several of us were trying to get all of the ice off the front steps.  At ten minutes before eleven, someone stepped outside and told us that Rev. Meyers had just called.  From the airport.  In Dallas.  And he said he would not be able to make it to the service. (That part we could figure out for ourselves.)

I was the president of the board that year, and someone announced rather authoritatively that on such occasions the president was the one who had to fill in and provide a sermon.  Since that day, I’ve gotten a lot better at questioning statements like tha , but at the time I was a little slow on the uptake and whoever said this sounded reasonable and that was that.  I went into the minister’s office, found a book for the readings. And I followed the choir down that aisle right there. I remember saying to myself “These people are my friends. These people are my friends.”

I don’t remember the service, but some people say it was the best sermon I’ve given here, and I’ve done several.   This week, I looked at the order of service for that service. I noticed Rev. Meyers’ title: A Word About Words.  Just a coincidence.  I’d already decided my talk would be called a Few Words About the Ineffable. 

I work at the library, which means I spot lots of interesting books. One odd title I found recently is called “The Age of Spiritual Machines.”  The author claims that machines will soon be smarter than us, and will then demand civil rights, become immortal and will, being made in our image, become religious.  I didn’t find it very persuasive.  Computers are faster thanus, they can store more information. They can beat us at chess,  and Google lots of things.  But computers are not going to be conscious, and they’re not going to be religious.  It is not our intelligence, not our ability to think that makes us spiritual and religious.  What sets us apart from machines it this: We care.  We assign value to things and events. We determine what’s important.  Computers can calculate what is, but not what is important.

When we humans say “That’s important” we mean “that’s what we want.”  We want. We want to live. We value comfort and friends and entertainment and love and everything.   Life requires a will to keep living.  Humans and birds and amoebae all have this innate drive to keep living.  Computers only care about what we tell them to care about. 

There another book, The Greatest Management Principle in the World.” I’ll save you the time of reading it.  The seven word principle is all you really need to know:  “The things that get rewarded get done.”  That’s it.  Stare at a wall and ponder that one.  Skip the book. You have examples as good as anyone else’s.

In the first part of the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, the ape-people, the pre-humans, are visited by a monolith, a huge perfectly smooth block. with the proportions of 1 by 3 by 9.  The ape people awaken at dawn to find this monolith has plopped down right in front of them. The first to awaken says, as I recall, something like “uh arrh arhk onk ahrg.”  He repeats this several times.  The others join in.  They then jump up and down while they continue their commentary.

So what’s the big deal with the monolith? They’re sleeping next to another big rock, even bigger than the monolith.  Well, first the monolith is symmetrical. Its proportions are 1 to 3 to 9.  It’s absolutely smooth.  It doesn’t reflect light.  They know it’s out of place, but, being unable to find the right words, they make a lot of grunts and squawks.  

And, if some such technological miracle, one as far beyond our understanding as the monolith was to the ape-people, should appear among us today, our comments would be equally inane. There’s nothing to say.

If a purple sphere materializes in this room, vaporizes this building and immediately returns it to its previous state, re-materializes around the outside of the building, transports us instantly to downtown Chicago, and then back here again. And say then it showers the room with bananas and confetti, and then disappears—what do you do with that?

Some areas of science have trouble with finding the right words. Folks who work in quantum physics have trouble finding words to explain what’s going on with photons and quarks and such, because human understanding is mostly in the form of “This is like that, except where this is like that other thing.”  The best metaphors for quantum physics are from magic. Harry Potter. Hocus pocus. Two particles communicate with each other at a faster-than-light speed, even though that’s impossible.  And photons “know” the slit is open.  Shazam! Particles just appear from nowhere, and then disappear.  Light is a particle. Light is a wave. Light doesn’t fit in our categories, our “this is like that” thinking.  

The word intelligence comes from the old French word interlegere.  It means “to gather,” in the sense of gathering between the rows. These days we’d say “read between the lines. That’s where the meaning, the real intelligence lies—between the words.

A lot of my thinking doesn’t require words, and almost none of it involves complete sentences.  I always wondered about the thought balloons in comics, where they speak in perfectly clear sentences.

Only when I prepare to speak do I start finding words with which to label my thoughts.  At other times, it’s mostly just  “uh arrh arhk onk ahrg.”  It’s only when I want to communicate that I go stamping labels on what’s going on in my brain.  And it’s often a real inconvenience.  And it’s also irritating that I can never get it right.  There are no words for what goes on in here.  Most of it’s really truly ineffable. 

But there’s a way to talk about this a bit. I can’t give you the content of my thinking , but I can, I believe, give you a pretty good description of the process that goes on in my mind, and maybe in yours. There’s this stream of images and concepts and such bouncing around in here. Some of it is triggered by immediate sensory impressions, like the traffic light that has me putting on the brakes when it turns red. And some of it is just fragments of memories and fantasies from childhood to yesterday.

I was once accused of using 90% of my brain as a home entertainment center.  I don’t know about the exact percentage but the accusation is basically true.  Because of this, I have very little patience for complaints about boredom.  There’s always something interesting to ponder. 

One major entertainment for me is figuring out the dynamics of what’s going on with people. Whether by myself or in a room full of people, I enjoy following the spoken and the unspoken flow of ideas.  Where did that comment come from? What made me think of that? What’s she avoiding saying aloud?

When I see someone I know, my first reaction is always a complex of feelings and thoughts and intuitions.  My overall reaction could be grossly oversimplified into “positive” or “negative” or “neutral,” but actually it’s a myriad of values in a hodgepodge of ineffable categories.

 You would be surprised how many of you are in my “unconditional positive regard” section.  Each of you is unique in my experience, and  many of you are in my “absolutely delighted to see you” section.  

The Voyager spacecrafts were the first human-made objects to leave the solar system and head out into interstellar space. Each of them had a gold-plated phonograph record, a player, and some illustrations as to how to play the record. There were some greetings from world leaders, which I suspect will be totally meaningless to any alien who plays the record. But the records were mostly music:  Irish Jigs, Bach, Louis Armstrong, Aboriginal chants, Bluegrass; music from all over the world.  Music, I suspect, that will be understood by anyone who can figure out how to play the record.  I think music is as universal as mathematics.

Speaking of music: The choir is off for the summer. When they return, they will provide beautiful music for us.  Beverly will write a descant for the last verse of the opening hymn.  I never sing that last verse. I confess I indulge myself and just let the hymn and the descant wash over me.  It’s a baptism of sorts, and it washes away my sins and sorrows, and makes me whole.  A descant plays a game with the melody, flying around above it, urging it on, working with it.

Stories. The reason we like stories is that they remind us we’re not alone.  People in stories have the same feelings we’ve had, the same feelings we will have.  Stories are often the only way to say who we are.  So, here’s  a story that ends with a very good poem.  A former minister, Dick Allen, and I were doing a service together years ago. Before we processed in with the choir, we somehow got our papers mixed up, and I ended up with a poem he intended to read.  When it came time, he couldn’t find it, and I didn’t discover it until after the service. So he told the story of the poem. I wish I had a record of what he said, for it was in its own way, every bit as good as the poem. He shared his experience of the poem. He didn’t have the poem, and he was disappointed, but he did not disappoint us.

          The poem—this is it:

The Duck
Donald Babcock

Now we're ready to look at something pretty special.

It's a duck, riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf.

No it isn't a gull. A gull always has a raucous touch about him.

This is some sort of duck, and he cuddles in the swells.

He isn't cold, and he is thinking things over. There is a big heaving in the Atlantic, and he is a part of it.

He looks a bit like a mandarin, or the Lord Buddha meditating under the Bo tree.

But he has hardly enough above the eyes to be a philosopher. He has poise, however, which is what philosophers must have.

He can rest while the Atlantic heaves, because he rests in the Atlantic.

Probably he doesn't know how large the ocean is. And neither do you. But he realizes it.

And what does he do, I ask you? He sits down in it!

He reposes in the immediate as if it were infinity — which it is.

He has made himself a part of the boundless by easing himself into just where it touches him.

I like the little duck. He doesn't know much, but he's got religion.

The duck in the poem doesn’t talk—he has a narrator providing a commentary, but it’s the duck doing the real work.  But the narrator is a poet, and we come to know about the duck.

Having a word for something does not mean that you understand it.  Words are convenient handles for ideas, but knowing the word does not give understanding of the idea. The most basic understanding is in ineffable concepts.

A good example: When Hannah, my granddaughter, from whom you heard earlier, was about a year old, I was watching her run around in her front yard in front of a sprinkler. It was the kind that has a little oscillating arm that strikes the spray of water and through gearing, moves the spray of water around the yard, then reverses and moves back the other way.

After running around in the water for a while, Hannah took notice of the sprinkler.  She walked over to it, and sat down beside it. She stared at that sprinkler with a concentration that was amazing. She didn’t move for three or four minutes, an eternity for children that age.  Then she resumed her play, satisfied with her new understanding of the sprinkler.

Hannah had no words for lever or gear or cam, so she couldn’t describe what was happening. But she SAW what was happening.  We learn things, and only then to we learn to apply words to the parts and processes involved. We then use those concepts to learn more complicated ideas. But our most basic understandings are not much beyond sprinklers and levers and slides and merry-go-rounds.  We just put lots of simple pieces together.

I enjoy learning new things. But this is not the place for more facts. Try these questions? How are you? What makes you happy? Do you want to play? Can I help? How about a drink? May I fix you a sandwich?  We say these things, sometimes in code. I like you. I love you. That hurts. That’s nice.

There is an idea. I don’t have any good words for it, so I call it “High Play.”  It’s when we conquer that perfect isolation of being human, and connect with another person.  We really see each other.  We confess and forgive. We see each other. Martin Buber said, “All real living is meeting,”   We understand each other because our basic feelings are the same. I know about your fears, for I have fears.  I know about your joys because of my joys.  If we depend upon words to connect to each other, we are doomed to be alone.  But if we use words and silences to tell stories, we find each. Then we are not alone. That’s community, and that’s why I’m here.

I quoted Winnie-the-Pooh earlier. I’ll close with Christopher Robin:

 If ever there is a tomorrow

when we're not together,

there is something you must always remember.

You are braver than you believe.

Stronger than you seem,

and smarter than you think.

But the most important thing is,

even if we're apart,

I'll always be with you.