Why This Title ? - Joe Kavanagh - 25 Aug 01

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I am puzzled by the title. It seems to suggest that 'words' are the goal of the exercise, whereas it has always seemed to me that 'experience' is the ultimate aim. Words draw us, entice us, touch us, and open us to experience ... what is the line of Eliot "words, after speech, reach into the silence" (or something to that effect)? If this question is not entirely wide of the mark, I would be glad of a response. joe k.

-- Anonymous, August 25, 2001

Answers

Response to why this title ?

Joe, the title actually was suggested by Paul Murray when I met him in Providence at the General Chapter--not that I want simply to shift the responsibility onto him! I like your way with words: "words draw us...". My understanding is that we are actually living this life now- -but we are so taken up by television and the media and the "ideology" of our time that we scarcely know *what* it is we are living. We don't really know our own story. Many of us live almost unconsciously. And being unaware of the real character of our lives, we are at odds with things and, like the people of Nineveh, we scarcely know our right hand from our left (hence the need for a prophet). The aim of the seminar is to work towards saying what we are, who we are, finding the words for the incohate things that we are already caught up in. Finding *our* own words will enable us to live our own lives (rather than Jerry Springer's, or...). So, as you rightly point out, the goal is not to speak, but to live. But speaking our hearts enables us to live. One final remark: it concerns the extraordinary phrase (which we have heard to often, we no longer spy out its character): "In the beginning was the Word". There is something to be pondered on the place of the word in Christianity--as opposed to Eastern religions. Gawronski (Word and Silence : Hans Urs Von Balthasar and the Spiritual Encounter Between East and West by Raymond Gawronski, S. J. - Hardcover - December 2000) has gathered together all Balthasar's sayings on Eastern religions and on Western philosophical contemplation which he (Balthasar) saw as being in some way akin to the Eastern experience.... Hope this helps--Philip

-- Anonymous, August 25, 2001

Response to why this title ?

You are not wide of the mark, Joe. Words do exactly as you say, and more. I'm coming from a different angle. Having had many wonderful experiences I would like to try to put words on them, in the hope that I could share something of the sense of them with others. Words have a way of validating experience. AM

-- Anonymous, August 25, 2001

Response to why this title ?

Joe, I feel that words and experience somehow interpenetrate. Sometimes the words are the experience. I am reminded of Christ in John's Gospel when he said: "My words are spirit and they are life." Are we not created for this kind of... precipitation of words within the very brine of life? We haggle with words and sometimes the words will come alive and haggle back. They take us over in the same way that symbol can speak to our very depths because the words themselves are symbolic of the concepts they express. We are often taken by the response of Pope John Paul II's words: "Young people of Ireland, I love you." Few stop to consider the centuries of life within the Catholic Church and amongst the faithful of Ireland which finally precipitated those words. Words, in my opinion, are in an interplay with so much of life, at many levels. Ray.

-- Anonymous, September 23, 2001

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