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What if I notice the sun flaming through autumn trees at dawn and decide to tell a friend what I saw? How should I describe my experience? Do the words I choose matter?
Here are a few choices: "I saw the sun coming through the trees this morning. Interesting." And another, "The sun coming through the trees this morning was so awesome!" Or, "The dawn sun cut one autumn tree into a stained glass window."
The word "interesting" doesn't tell us much. And we have so bludgeoned the fine old word "awesome" with overuse that the word no longer carries power. The third choice may not be the best, but it at least gives us an image to provoke our thinking and thus to deepen our experience of Beauty.
Words often determine our humanity. When we work to find the right ones, we can enrich life experience and affirm God's Love.
When we use the wrong ones, we can get a result like this:
In 1978, a six-year old child of God came home from school to find his rural Tennessee home empty. His parents had deserted him. He lived alone in the house for three days until neighbors lent help. Across the next eight years, the rejected child lived in nineteen different homes.
At fifteeen, the runaway stole a tractor-mower and sold it for two hundred dollars and moved into a cardboard box.
At sixteen, the juvenile delinquent spent a few months in jail for theft.
At twenty-one, the criminal went off to prison.
At twenty-nine, the murderer entered his cell on Death Row.
At thirty-nine, #321012 remains on Death Row wondering if he will live to see his fortieth birthday.
The words the world used to describe my friend Glenn got steadily more degrading after his parents deserted him. He went from child of God to child on the run, to juvenile delinquent, to criminal, to murderer, to a man condemned to die by lethal injection.
Do words matter? It's hard to kill a human. It's not as hard to execute a number.
It's hard to kill a child of God. It's easier when we use the word "murderer."
But this is not about the death penalty, or even about the labels that have torn down Glenn's life ever since he was old enough to learn words.
This is about the patient in room 3012. Is the patient "the gall bladder" or "the woman with gall bladder disease?"
If she's "the gall bladder" it's not so hard to ignore her call light. If she's a woman, then we, as humans, need to help.
We need to find better words than "awesome" to describe Beauty. Calling a human being "the gall bladder" degrades us as well as the being in our care.
We don't all need to be poets. Yet, finding more humane language tells us whether we are living in God's Light, or walking in the half tones of shallow experience.
Reverend Erie Chapman
Journal of Sacred Work 
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