Be Silent

At twilight, I sat on the dock in Port Townsend and watched the light turn pink. And God spoke. I'm having trouble translating.

It's never enough to say, "The Lord told me to tell you that you are precious," "The Lord said He has good plans for me," "The Lord told me I'm going to perform miracles in a remote island off the coast of Papua New Guinea." We cannot translate the language of God in this way; when we try, we dilute it, generalize it, make it trite. In our common language, it becomes merely strings of letters and morphemes, signs and signifiers.

Of course, in the beginning was the Word. The Word was with God and the Word was God. Then God said. All things came into being through Him. God said.

Next to the force of God's words, our language is a sparkler spelling G-O-D L-O-V-E-S Y-O-U. I cannot speak, "Cat," and cause my cat to appear before me. God speaks life into existence, and we attempt to copy his language as a child may attempt to copy Chinese.

Sometimes, it's best to be still and watch the light turn pink.