Language and Power

These these questions have intrigued me lately: How much does the poet control the language, and how much does the language control the poet?

Suna said said that the balance is probably different for each poet. I can see the logic of that assumption, but is it really? At a fundamental level, doesn’t language define how we perceive the world? And don’t those perceptions define our realities? And isn’t reality just a negotiation between ourselves and the universe? And why am I blathering on about this?

Ambiguity in Belief

I started attending a Unitarian Universalist church. Having been raised Christian who later flirted with Taoism and Buddhism and had been exposed to Shintoism, it seemed like a perfect match for me.

One of the things that attracted me was the range of belief constructs that are not only accepted but embraced in the congregation. As someone said, describing how one of his friends recruited him, “They are all really nice people, and I don’t think they actually have a doctrine.” It is wonderful and refreshing.

So at the end of the order of service at this congregation, we sing the benediction, or good talking. It is a really sweet, ambiguous, contradictory song—like many other things in the order of service. One day, I started singing these words to the melody. (Suna added the “That’s spiritual” bit spontaneously. This version is meant to demonstrate the ambiguity that makes:

And we believe in stuff and in some other things

And we are somehow vaguely religious (That’s spiritual)

And with the power of words we say the things that we think

And we believe that questions can be answers

 

And we believe in things and in some other stuff

And we believe the things we are saying

And with the power of thought, we think the things that we say

And we believe that answers can be questions