Flesh Becomes Word
FLESH BECOMES WORD
Isak Dinesen in Out of Africa tells how she was sometimes asked to sit in on a Kyama, an assembly of the elders of the farm, authorized by the government to settle local differences among the squatters. After a certain shooting accident she had to write out a statement, dictated by a man named Jogona Kanyagga, regarding events leading up to the accident and proving his own right to claim the victim as his son. When the long tale was told (during which Jogona sometimes had to break off, hold his head in both hands, and gravely slap the crown of it “as if to shake out the facts”) the baroness read it back to him. As she read out his own name, she writes, “he swiftly turned his face to me, and gave me a great fierce flaming glance, so exuberant with laughter that it changed the old man into a boy, into the very symbol of youth. Such a glance did Adam give the Lord when he formed him out of the dust, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul. I had created him and shown him himself, Jogona Kanyagga of life everlasting. When I handed him the paper, he took it reverently and greedily, folded it up in a comer of his cloak and kept his hand upon it. He could not afford to lose it, for his soul was in it, and it was the proof of his existence . . . the flesh was made word.”
Words are inadequate, we say. So they often are. But they are nonetheless precious. “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver. ” In a time of crisis we learn how intensely we need both flesh and word. We cannot do well without either one. The bodily presence of people we love is greatly comforting, and their silent companionship blesses us. “I know I can’t say anything that will help, but I wanted to come,” someone says, and the word they would like to speak is spoken by their coming. Those who can’t come send, instead of their presence, word. A letter comes, often beginning, “I don’t know what to say,” but it is an expression, however inadequate, of the person himself and what he feels toward us.
Before Eve heard the voice of the serpent summoning her to the worst possibility of her being, before Adam heard the voice of God summoning him to his best, the Word was. The Word was at the beginning of things, the Word was with God, the Word was God. That Word became visible in the flesh when the man Christ came to earth. Man saw him, talked with him, learned from him, and when his flesh was glorified and he returned once more to his Father, men declared what they had seen. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and touched with our hands concerning the word of life . . . we proclaim also to you.” That eternal Word had become flesh and through those who knew Christ that flesh had become once more Word. Those who hear that Word today and believe it begin to live it and again it becomes flesh.
If I had a choice, I would not want to do without either the word or the flesh. I want letters from my friends, but I want to see their faces. I see them, but then I want them to say something. I have a guest book in which I always ask people to write their names, explaining that they need not write anything more unless they want to, but I open it after they are gone in hopes that they will have written some word as well. “Say it with flowers,” says the advertisement, but when the flowers come how eagerly we look to see what the card says.
When I come to God I want words. Even though “there is not a word in my tongue but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether,” I want to say something to him. He knows what I look like, he knows my frame, remembers that I am dust. Does this flesh need words to speak to him? It does. There is, of course, a silence that waits on God. There is a lifting up of hands that takes the place of words. But there are times when we want desperately to speak. “Each in his own words” is all very well if you can find them, but often I find them only in the words of others.
I am troubled by the tendency today to assume that one’s own words are “better” or more sincere than someone else’s. The bizarre wording of wedding invitations I have received makes me want to go and hide rather than “share the joy.” I did actually attend a wedding ceremony composed (“created” was what they called it) by the couple themselves, complete with prayers of their own making for the minister to read. This was somehow supposed to surpass the words of the Prayer Book. It didn’t. Surely it is possible to repeat in all honesty expressions which others have found to be adequate which are at the same time both noble and beautiful? Doesn’t it draw one out of himself, beyond his own horizons, to participate in an ancient ceremony? Does it really follow that the substitution of something “original” makes the thing richer?
Take the Psalms. They are human cries. Whoever wrote them knew the bottom of the barrel. He had felt his bones rot. He had sunk in slime, been ridden over, tom in two, betrayed, outraged, and bludgeoned. He knew the sweeping barrenness of loneliness, the forsakenness of grief, the bewilderment of unanswered prayer, and put them all into words that speak to my condition. So I read them back to God—with the expressions of faith and praise that punctuate the howls. “My heart is in anguish within me . . . horror overwhelms me . . . he will deliver my soul in safety from the battle that I wage” (Psalms 55:4, 5, 18); “My wounds grow foul and fester because of my foolishness . . . but for thee, O Lord, do I wait. It is thou, O Lord, who wilt answer my prayer” (Psalms 38:5, 15); “The earth reeled and rocked . . . but the Lord was my stay” (Psalms 18:7, 18).
How poor my own words would be compared to those of the Collect for Evening Prayer: “Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son Our Saviour Jesus Christ. ” I would be hard put to improve on Paul’s prayer for the Roman Christians when I am praying for my friends (as an old lady in Canada used to pray for me, and included this prayer in nearly every letter she wrote me): “May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”
Hymns are a powerful source of strength to me. Who of us can match words like William Williams’ “Guide me, O thou great Jehovah, pilgrim through this barren land” or Henry Twell’s “Thy touch hath still its ancient power; No word from thee can fruitless fall; Hear in this solemn evening hour, and in thy mercy heal us all”?
In the old words of George Herbert such as “Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back” or in the more modern poetry of Amy Carmichael: “And yet we come, Thy righteousness our cover, Thy precious blood our one, our only plea; And yet we come, O Savior, Master, Lover—To whom, Lord, could we come, save unto Thee?”—in such words my own flesh (empty, dumb, aching, needy as it may be) becomes, to God, word.