Monday 22 July 2013

The Power of a Word


I have just finished reading ‘Day After Night’ by Anita Diamant, a story about Holocaust survivors who were imprisoned by the British in Israel, freed by the Jewish Palmach and placed in Kibbutz’ throughout the country.
 
“Kibbutz.  The word echoed in her head suddenly unfamiliar and unlike an ordinary noun like pencil or soup.  More like justice or even unicorn.  Not so much a thing you could put a hand on; kind of a fairy tale or a dream…a nice idea, a noble goal perhaps.  Not a real place like the one these men were talking about…just out of view.”

Kibbutz; for these survivors, it was another word for freedom.  Though they knew this word; they knew about the places that they were, but heard now, in this moment, the word held another meaning...salvation, freedom, home at last, a dream fulfilled.

The power of a word understood…said or heard or read at just that moment…the moment of seeing it real…of feeling it, smelling it, tasting it.  Have you ever heard a word like that?
 
A friend said to me on Sunday that he was amazed at the reading of these words…one in particular; the word taste.
 
"Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death 
before they see the kingdom of God."
Luke 9:27

Taste death?

What do you do with a word like that, used in that way for that purpose?  Tasting death…it’s as if it is something to be grasped, held on to, experienced; rolled around on your tongue, filling your pallet and then…to be swallowed. Like a blueberry, a little explosion, popping in your mouth, it’s sweetness laughing there, all sweet, flesh, and skin and seeds.  Like ice cream?  Ice Cream, with a bit of butterscotch, smooth and creamy, sweet; melting over every taste bud and down…your throat cherishing the melting down of it.  Tasting; maybe like a lemon, biting down on it, the pulp, squirting, finding its way into every hidden place in your mouth, its juice sucking up everything into a pucker, your lips, the whole of your face and even your fingertips…bitter.

Tasting death…tasting, the power of a word.
.
A word, how you hear it, how it falls fresh in your mind, powerful, with a new meaning, on your heart, filling your soul.  Words, how you say them matters, how you hear them sometimes matters more.

The power of words…thinking, feeling, tasting…taking them in, filling your soul.

I love that.