Words

The late poet priest John O’Donohue once wrote that a blank sheet of paper represents silence. To put pen to paper is to cover up the silence by words. The white space that surrounds words frames the words and gives them perspective. Just as there a two sides to a coin, there are two sides to words – what is written and what is not. The words draw us in but the white space gives us rest and room to absorb what is said.

Looking at a blank sheet of paper with a pen in hand, searching for  the first word is to look deep into a vast wildness that is both compelling and repelling us in the same breath. To look at empty page of white space on a computer screen with the cursor blinking remorselessly and relentlessly is less poetic, however. Poetry can be captured on a napkin, in notebook, on blackboard or even a matchbook cover. The computer screen, however, seems sterile but within the sterility there lies the hope of fertility. The mind is where words capture images that are both visible and invisible to the eye and given the images form that can be shared.

That first keystroke, like the first pen stroke, shatters the silence and page becomes a place of both sound and silence. We struggle to balance those extremes in our limited understanding of that place we live that is life but is moving toward death and a new life. More keystrokes fall and letters appear on screen, seeming random at first, but then words appears and the words create sentences that become something we can grasp.

The words we create – do they mean anything? What do they sound like? What do they feel like? What do we do with them? Word’s make us feel the softness of a baby’s breath against our neck as we cuddle our child close to us. Words help us hear the hard scratch of the lilac branches against the brick outside our house animated by a hard night wind. Words can help us sense the love our pets have for us as our dog looks upon us with an unbroken gaze that is both soft but also direct.

Words allow me to describe a giant yellow moon peering over the brown and tan distant mountains that are fading toward blue and black as daylight fails to hold its grasp on the sun.

Words save me when I find them in time to make a connection that needs to be made. Words fail me when I wait too long and they no longer have the power to make a connection. Words define me. Words define us. Words connect us with God. We call those words prayer.