Theos-Talk Archives (August 2001 Message tt00234)

Hi all,

once again, a friend sent me this. About how words shape
our world. I've recently started describing my country (the
Netherlands) to people from abroad as "New York-state" with
a border around it. This really is a relevant way of
looking at the situation, though of course we also have our
own language. But then, the fact that that language is
different from German is largely due to the fact that there
is a border around the country. If there had not been the
border, we probably would have had the same
bible-translation and then we would now have the same
language and I would not have so much trouble understanding
about different cases.

Here's the quote:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Scott Reeves" <ScottR@Spiritus.Org>
To: <Spiritus@Alltel.Net>
Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2001 10:59 PM
Subject: 42 - MORE WORDS


Mark Twain put it very nicely when he said, "It was so cold
that if the thermometer had been an inch longer, we would
have frozen to death." We do freeze to death on words. 
It's not the cold outside that matters, but the
thermometer. It's not reality that matters, but what
you're saying to yourself about it. I was told a lovely
story about a farmer in Finland. When they were drawing up
the Russian-Finnish border, the farmer had to decide
whether he wanted to be in Russia or Finland. After a long
time he said he wanted to be in Finland, but he didn't want
to offend the Russian officials.. These came to him and
wanted to know why he wanted to be in Finland. The farmer
replied, "It has always been my desire to live in Mother
Russia, but at my age I wouldn't be able to survive another
Russian winter."

Russia and Finland are only words, concepts, but not for
human beings, not for crazy human beings. We're almost
never looking at reality. A guru was once attempting to
explain to a crowd how human beings react to words, feed on
words, live on words, rather than on reality. One of the
men stood up and protested; he said, "I don't agree that
words have all that much effect on us." The guru said,
"Sit down, you son of a bitch!" The man went livid with
rage and said, "You call yourself an enlightened person, a
guru, a master, but you ought to be ashamed of yourself!" 
The guru then said, "Pardon me, sir, I was carried away. I
really beg your pardon; that was a lapse; I'm sorry." The
man finally calmed down. Then the guru said, "It took just
a few words to get a whole tempest going within you; and it
took just a few words to calm you down, didn't it?" Words,
words, words, words, how imprisoning they are if they're
not used properly.

Anthony de Mello, SJ
-----

This last story was also used by Frank Herbert in one of
his Dune-books. 

Katinka

=====
-Those who observe, learn, a whole life long.
-Wie observeert, leert , een heel leven lang.
=====
my own homepage:
http://www.geocities.com/katinka_hesselink/
=====

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