ࡱ> JLI .bjbj .>oo&$$$$$,-2$$$$$$$$,,,,,,,:.0,$$$$$,C&$$,C&C&C&$$$,C&$,C&C&:+,,oD>,$y%', , ,0-1,R1C&1,C&,$$$$$ Q:  I wish I could speak like musicIn a packed tube train in London around a month agoSilence packed everyone seemed engrossed in their newspapers or iPodsI noticed a man reading a childrens story to a girl sitting on his knee possibly his daughter - something about the calming balm of his voice something about the words that seemed to flutter down the carriage and spread light something about the gentle tone of his voice despite all this rush and stress a human voice simply reading a story- most of the people in the carriage seemed to be listening one of our ancient pastimes I felt moved perhaps I was being returned to what truly mattered in that moment or any moment that we have the choice to reach out to each other with our voices and our words - I felt this man was offering the carriage a great skill and a great gift and it was all free his only qualification in that moment was being fully humanAn example of simple words having the power to inspire and healAnd at the other end of the spectrum from one stranger in a packed tube train to words addressed to 300 million Americans Barack Obama appeared to deliver another of his nation unifying speeches recently after the shootings in Tucson, Arizona he managed to use words to try and build some kind of hope for the future rather and challenge his listeners not to lazily fall into a blame game or a scoring points gameHe saidwhat we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together.An example of words used sensitively to urge a nation to work together and find a way forward rather than slip into more suspicions and divisions between democrat and republicanWords can uplift and heal usAnd words can really matter to usI was saying goodbye to a friend the other day I said see you aroundShe said please dont say that where is around? its so metropolitan it offers no commitment I found myself a little surprised by my own frustration I said ok Au revoir or see you soon I hopeFor some reason she just didnt like that phrase and it made me think of the way I use words and phrasesI wonder if you have any words or phrases you really dont like?And how about words you like to use?So words are very personal to us they can be like friends or foes I sometimes wonder whether we sometimes allow something as important and vital to us as faith and our search for the meaning of life to be hijacked by words?I wonder if you witnessed an event billed the great faith debateBack in November last year in Toronto, CanadaTony Blair one of the most famous Catholics in the world and Christopher Hitchens, the outspoken atheist journalist debated on the subjectreligion is a force for good in the world Around 60 protesters angrily demonstrated outside questioning whether Blair had the right to come and talk about God in view of his legacy in IraqBut the debate went aheadChristopher Hitchens compared God to an oppressive regimesupervising us is a sort of celestial dictatorship, a kind of divine North Korea.Salvation is offered at the low price of the surrender of your critical facultiesreligion forces nice people to do unkind thingsand do stupid thingsTony BlairListed all the great things that have been achieved in the name of religionAccording to statistics gathered by asking the audience to click on buttons after the debate Hitchens won the argumentTo me the event seemed to be yet another wrestling match of words to prove or disprove whether we need religion or if God existsWe have the high profile atheists trying to expose religion as pure follyRichard Dawkins book The God Delusion quotes the American comedian Cathy Ladman All religions are the same: religion is basically guilt, with different holidays - a book I have readAnd a book I havent read God is not Great by Christopher HitchensAnd those writers who stick up for religionThe Dawkins Delusion by Alister McGrathThe Case for God by Karen ArmstrongWars of words picking over the carcass of religions and God with literary artillery from both sides in the form of best selling booksIs this the way its going? An increasingly polarising debate which possibly takes us further away from the place where this entity, phenomenon or dimension some of us call God and some use other names or words may indeed livePerhaps this endless ping pong game proving or disproving God or arguing that religion is a good or bad force completely misses the pointPerhaps we risk throwing out the baby of curiosity with the bathwater of scepticismMaybe our words for exploring the unknown are getting in the way do words like God, salvation, sin, soul, redemption, righteousness help or hinder us in our quest for truth and integrityMaybe many religious words can begin their life as poetry and metaphor .then over time these words can become more concrete and unquestionable and used to gain power over people rather than empower them do countless religious words need to be abandoned or redefined?And the blasphemy controversy in Pakistan at the moment should we be protecting religious words and banning words that speak against religion? Isnt this an example of religious words becoming more important than peoples freedom of speech what should we be protecting religions or real people? And in the west we cant claim we put human rights before religious doctrines only a few years ago a Birmingham theatre company cancelled a play exploring blasphemyMaybe were losing touch with what the mystics have been teaching us for centuries we can get caught up in a fog of words that can entrench us further into our views and assumptions this war of words can possibly stop us hearing the real heart beat of lifeRS Thomas, the Welsh poet, says that an honest search for God is about embracing the abyss and the vacuum of not-knowing, and abandoning our equations and words and calculationsWalt Whitman in his mighty poem Song of Myself describes the experience of finding fragments of the holy and the sacred in our lives and finding signs that point to realities beyond the mere biological understanding of this lifeHe writesI guess it is the handkerchief of the Lord.A scented gift and remembrancer designedly dropt,Bearing the owners name someway in the corners, that we maySee and remark, and say whose?Mary Oliver, the American nature poet follows on from this rich tradition of celebrating mystery she talks about playing at the edges of knowing and that maybe rather than worrying about proving or disproving things our real challenges are to look, to touch and to loveAnd art critic of the Independent newspaper Tom Lubbock found out in 2008 that he had a lethal brain tumour he decided to keep a journal of his experiences as he slowly lost his faculty to create words his specialist craft as he literally slowly lost his mind until his death in January this year in his very honest often poetic writings he explored the dark, mysterious place deep in himself, the place beneath words, beyond mere language and was faced with the question of where exactly our words come from Are they manufactured by millions of nerve endings in the little grey cells or from a source that we will never fully understand a soul, part of us that connects with what Carl Jung called the collective unconscioushe wrote very movingly about his curiosity about language and where and how it is created in ourselveshe wrote.The mystery of summoning up words. Where are they in the mind, in the brain? They appear to be an agency from nowhere. They exist somewhere in our ground or in our air. They come from unknown darkness. From a place we dont usually think about..The mystery of the generation of speech.Perhaps this is partly what the author of the Gospel according to John in the Bible was describing when he wrotewhen all things began, the word already was. The word dwelt with God and what God was the word was or in other words is it our will to express ourselves that lies at the heart of our soul or existence?Is our urge to communicate somehow at the centre of this big project we have to be alive?I have been thinking a great deal about language recently I have two young nephews aged 5 years old sons of two different brothers of mine Josef is very chatty and articulate and bilingual in English and German he knows most of the names of the internal organs of the human body in both languages like the larynx and the liver etc - while Peter cannot speak any words at all he possibly has a condition called sensory integration disorder - he is so smiley and tactile and when he looks at me his eyes melt into me with complete trust and warmth he communicates so much without wordsHe dares me, jogs me into exploring this life without words, without my obsessive use of words who would I be without my words?So today I challenge you to think about the words you use and to notice how words are used, for better or worse, in our exploration into the meaning of this life, in our quest to describe our beliefs and to make sense of the realities in our world that lie behind and beyond the realities we can see or proveAnd maybe Hafiz had the right idea when he said I wish I could speak like music I wish I could put the swaying splendour of the fields into words so that you can hold truth against your body and dance I am trying the best I can with the crude brush, the tongueThanks for listening"#  4 5  >  r  * E q "gIJK13ST&( 678߿߿ϿϤϤϜϜϜϜϜϜhh|CJaJh|CJaJhZCJaJh1VCJaJh~h~CJaJh~CJaJhCJaJh;CJaJh|I~CJaJhqvCJaJhd.CJaJhZhd.5CJ aJ htg~5CJ aJ h+H6#$X 5  > p q KL>?UVV'( PQ  :;'!mnogd|8No 9&'7 lnikYnp#$[kpZw#%+Kny* ""## $$$$b%f%&-p....h|h|CJaJhh|CJaJLojkop89-.@AOP$%%+ , !!!!0"m"""##%&&&&((((Y))) ,,gd|,,--...................gd|,1h. 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HO        |&@& @UnknownGTimes New Roman5Symbol3 Arial? Courier New;Wingdings"1hƫƤF D&!F$4s'&3QHP ?{27 I wish I could speak like music Hafiz  the Sufi poet John HarleyChristopher Mann   Oh+'0 , HT t  '8I wish I could speak like music Hafiz the Sufi poet John Harley Normal.dotmChristopher Mann2Microsoft Word 12.0.0@F#@ ֐@@  ՜.+,0( hp  ' UnitarianDs' 8I wish I could speak like music Hafiz the Sufi poet Title !"#$%&'()*+,-./012345678:;<=>?@BCDEFGHKRoot Entry Fo>,M1Table 1WordDocument.>SummaryInformation(9DocumentSummaryInformation8ACompObj`ObjectPool?o>,?o>, F Microsoft Word 97-2004 DocumentNB6WWord.Document.8