Sandra McCracken

lost and found in translation

Last week, Derek and I had the privilege of attending (and playing music during) Civitas, a faith and politics conference in Washington D.C. sponsored by the Center for Public Justice.  The topic of conversation for the week centered on what it looks like for us to cultivate grace-full citizenship.  What does it mean to work together toward justice and generosity?   To practice peace and forgiveness in our affairs?  To be able to listen to and honor one another even when we disagree?  

I could write pages on the things that I have been thinking about since our week in D.C.…but for now, I just want to mention one little idea that has lingered.  During a Q&A session, Kyle asked a great question about the value of words.   He asked, (I’m paraphrasing), “What role do words play in your work as singer-songwriters?  Does the work that you do matter as story makers and truth tellers?”

This question led me to think about how much I love words.  I have always been a sucker for a string of rhymes nestled neatly in a narrative.  Be it a poem from Ecclesiastics, or Dr. Suess and the trufulla trees, or a ramble about a leopard skin pill box hat; I suspect that words might be one of our most basic human needs.   Marylin Chandler McEntyre in her book Caring For Words in a Culture of Lies says it this way, “Words are entrusted to us as equipment for our life together, to help us survive, guide, and nourish one another.  We need to take the metaphor of nourishment seriously in choosing what we “feed on” in our hearts, and in seeking to make our conversation with each other life-giving.”

This question of words also makes me think about hymns, and the present movement of people writing new old hymns.  I am on a journey with fellow songwriters and poets who are working to revive and restore old hymns in hopes that it will inject our modern church with a sense of unity as people of faith.   Hymns can help protect the purity and the peace of the church.  Hymns, with enduring words, tell a story of where we’ve been, who we are, and where we’re going.  The words we sing are formative to our worship, and worship is formative to our whole selves.  And we, as whole people are sustained by these words so that we can translate the good, true and beautiful to our communities and our culture.  I’m convinced that words matter.

Jesus is called the Word.  His essence is intrinsically wrapped up with God in this way.   This correlation between God, Jesus, and Word elevates the value of language, poetry, and all manner of creative word work.   If God is the Maker, and without Jesus “nothing was made that has been made,” (Jn 1:2) then, this leads me to believe that there is a direct and mystical connection between spirituality and the world that we are currently making out of our words. 

As with most things, there are good words and there are bad words.  They are to be harnessed for intentional use.  “Four letter” words can be used for good.  And the most pious prayers can be bent toward deceit.  Our past is made up of the stories we remember and retell.  Our future is made up of the words that we teach and how we converse with our children.  Our politics are often made by the “news product” that we choose to highlight (much of this information we don’t know how to contextualize).  We highlight what we think is urgent.  What is urgent is not necessarily what is important.  As a result, we often make tidy generalizations about complex situations and misrepresent people.  And our social grid is shaped by the way we alter the tones of our speech when talking with different kinds of people (based on racial or economic differences, and social hierarchies).  With language at its worst, we wield our words as swords of greed and self-promotion and war.  

Jesus is THE Word.  The good Word.  Jesus isn’t dismissive of our good and bad words.  He elevates the value of our words, and he pays the premium to buy them back for the Good.  Jesus is the incarnation.   Jesus is the translation.  He is the one who learns our native tongue, to be the interpreter in our conversations with God.  

 Jesus is God’s best narrative in human form.  He walked, and ate, and spoke words, and slept, and fished, and loved, and died.  He rose from the dead.  And just like all things, he resurrects our words, too.  In Jesus, our words can have new life.  He elevates ordinary work of art making through songwriting and poetry and conversation.  This means that we can be in communion with God while we have conversation about sports or gardening with our friends.  And it means that teaching 9^th grade physics can be as sacred as caring for the poor.  So, yes…I believe that writing songs is valuable.  And I thank God that it does.   And I’m thankful for good questions that stir up the meaning that is just beneath the ordinary.  I hope to find the right words at the right times to do more of that which David Dark calls “sacred questioning.”  Thanks, Kyle.