Use Your Words

My brother Bill wrote a paper once about two ways of using words and of understanding language. The first was instrumental: words are tools that help us communicate ideas, language a means of expression and connection. The second was a meta understanding: words shape reality, language creates the world in which we live.

The first understanding puts words within our world, the second weaves it into the very structure of reality. Are words a tool or do they help create and define the world(s) in which we live? Either way, words are powerful.

Over the next few weeks, leading up to Advent, my focus will be on words – beautiful, frightening, powerful. Tools or the building blocks of reality, either way words are a vital part of human life. The power to destroy, the power to heal, and when they draw us into God’s love – holy.