by Bob Hendrie

When we are reflecting as we speak we can become aware that our thoughts and intentions are being poured from a large container into a smaller one by way of an even narrower funnel. There is always an excess of meaning, unexpressed and never more than partially comprehended, by speaker or listener. That unattainable wholeness of meaning is a reservoir of our accumulated experience, our lifelong e Indeed, it includes what was given even before we started experiencing at all. It’s in our genes. The reservoir is not even limited to past memory, since it also encompasses some anticipation of what might be. Anyone who knows us, and especially anyone who loves us, knows how to make allowances. We count on it. Any particular word or words are a mere fragment; our whole word can only be our life lived out and that too is as materially limited as we are.

When we are reflecting as we speak we can become aware that our thoughts and intentions are being poured from a large container into a smaller one by way of an even narrower funnel. There is always an excess of meaning, unexpressed and never more than partially comprehended, by speaker or listener. That unattainable wholeness of meaning is a reservoir of our accumulated experience, our lifelong e Indeed, it includes what was given even before we started experiencing at all. It’s in our genes. The reservoir is not even limited to past memory, since it also encompasses some anticipation of what might be. Anyone who knows us, and especially anyone who loves us, knows how to make allowances. We count on it. Any particular word or words are a mere fragment; our whole word can only be our life lived out and that too is as materially limited as we are.

We might say that that reservoir of consciousness is not just coextensive with ourselves; it is ourselves, working and achieved. Getting to know ourselves is a lifetime’s task and even in our lifetime it will never be complete. In addition to the inherent limitations of our finitude, the backed-up content of our experiences overwhelms our reflexive ability to comprehend it or bring it to adequate expression. It can always surprise us. It would seem that we have little idea how much is there, how much we are. Yet, it is there; we are there, continuously affected by that reality in our feelings, actions us to inspect our sensations, biases, understandings, experiences in general. That is how we can judge their truth, their correspondence with reality. The better we know where we are standing the better we can appreciate the view and its limits, our horizon.

A useful mantra in any discussion of human expression might therefore be ‘always excess’: there is always more unsaid than said, unthought than thought. This is true even of the simplest attempt at communication. Sometimes we cannot even find words to pin down our drifting thoughts to give them attainability. Words not only give expression; they also constrain it. If we are lucky, we may come across a poet who has found the means to fix what has oft been thought but ne’er so well expressed. Or we may abandon the attempt and leave the not wholly unformed matter vaguely drifting in our consciousness, perhaps to be formulated on some future occasion. It may even formulate itself while our attention is elsewhere or while we are asleep. We are so much more than we can reflexively know. Like Augustine, we remain a mystery to ourselves.

There are further ways to enhance our expression of meaning to others and to ourselves: the spontaneous gestures of stance, facial expression and tone we sum up as body language. Above and behind all, there is the established base of previous behaviour and intercommunication.

Life and word

We can therefore go further and say that our material bodies are our most comprehensive word even if we are still aware that they do not say all of us at this moment or indeed in our entire lifetime. Our material life is the fullest word we can manage.

Our being is limited by the moments of our birth and death. In addition, in any life there are so many unrealised potentialities. Ultimately, we are our word and that word is always as limited as we are. Our whole temporal life is our final and complete word, our meaningful self, expressed materially.

Our universe can be seen as God’s Word, its material expression in its whole history. Our word follows the perception of what is there; God’s Word creates it, God’s word/event, an utterance carrying meaning in matter.

Cosmologists inform us of the vastness of the universe, its violence and uncertainty. We are not just sprinkled with stardust, we are built with it; the dust of the earth is the dust of the universe. Scientists also tell us that such violence and apparent chance are necessary to make our emergence possible. There they have to stop, but the how raises the question of why.

Some of us seem to see further into that meaning than others. We call them seers, or prophets. For our tradition, grafted on to that of the Jews, these are mainly the prophets of the First Testament. Illuminated by the Creative Spirit, they pray and ponder their world. In the events of their lives and their people they discern patterns indicative of how God deals with people and the whole of creation. They see their nation as the priestly people who will make the one true God known to the whole world. The happenings in their nation’s life point to a loving Father God who cares for his children enough to reward their good deeds and punish their bad. The world and its powers do as they do, brutally and painfully, but God’s purposes are fulfilled – the ultimate paradox. Even their sufferings have meaning. They even look for one who will enter this process to the full and enable God’s entire great plan to be accomplished.

Prophets, however, are subject to the same limitations of insight and communication as the rest of us. Their word falls short of their vision, itself seen through a glass darkly. Jesus himself will clarify it on the road to Emmaus.

More than explanation is needed to bring God’s meaning and purpose to its full expression – that God so loved the world and desired the return of that love. That God’s creative Spirit is working till now to achieve God’s purpose. And so, in the fulness of time in the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ, drawing all to himself, God’s whole and unlimited Word materialised.