Scottish (Celtic) poet, Kenneth White, tells us it is time to “rediscover the earth” and to begin “rewording the world.” 

What does this mean?

We all use words. We all think we know how to use words. We all believe we are masters of communication because we do it all day, every day. We do not often pause to think of how words use us…how they shape us, transform us, and mold us. We also do not often stop to think how words filter and shape all of our understandings of the world and life itself.

So, what could we possibly mean by “rewording the world” when we walk about communication and writing and consulting?

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice.

T.S. Eliot

Here, Eliot is inviting us to pause at the dawn of a new year, or a new transition, and ponder the truth that words are shaping us and reality. Not only that, words are malleable. Last year’s words will now change as they become next year’s words, given voice and expression in new and imaginative ways. We must simply pay attention. Yet, we do not often think of words as malleable. 

We tend to believe that words are permanent, set in stone within our holy book of words, the dictionary, but the dictionary is simply a collection of words about other words. We define words with words, and those words also change, add, and delete their definitions over time. 

Sufi mystic, Rumi, writes, “I pay no attention to words or realities outside myself – but only to that which comes directly from my heart. Words have no substance or final cause in themselves. The substance is in the heart, which is the interpretation of the words. To dwell in words is to dwell on superficialities. I want to set the heart on fire with love, and I want to be the fire – consuming all thoughts and expressions.”

Religious, philosophical, and spiritual traditions, especially the more mystically inclined, tend to have a high distrust of words. The Buddha, for example, tells us that words, ideas, concepts are simply fingers pointing at the moon. They are not the moon itself. 

These same traditions also, paradoxically, have a high reverence for words.

Socrates and Plato distrusted words and told us much the same as the Buddha. Words are representations but not the things themselves. Later, Nietzsche would remind us that words are all metaphors and never the thing itself, and then, post-structuralists and others would further remind us that words and images are (empty) signifiers within an endless chain of signification. Belgium artist, Rene Magritte, portrays this powerfully in her image of a pipe that says, “This is not a pipe.”

We are caught within a double-bind, then. We are distrustful of words. We do not like to be deceived, but we also trust words unconditionally. We give them power. We revere them. We use them carefully and cautiously….but we also use them haphazardly and recklessly. Yes, we have a strange and paradoxical relationship with words and communication. 

A wielder of words can often even be viewed as an “enchanter of souls” (a psychogogia as Gorgias was accused of being). We give words magical powers. Spells. Incantations. We also sometimes worship and admire words and the Logos. In the gospel according to John, we read of the “Divine Logos” – “In the beginning was the Word (Logos).” 

In other traditions, we also hear about this logos. Heraclitus, for example, tells us the logos is a burning fire at the heart of all life. Others, including Pythagoras and Plato, tell us the logos is the guiding and founding principle of the universe, which is how many Greek philosophers understood this concept. 

Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all affirm that God speaks life, reality, and Creation into existence through words. Christians ascribe the status of Ultimate Word (Logos) to Jesus the Christ, and Jews refuse to use any ultimate word to represent what they mean by “God.” 

These religions deem words to be powerfully creative, and this primary form of creativity is reserved for God only while our words to describe God are recognized to be pale shadows, inept for the job of describing the Divine. 

Alan Watts writes, “From my present point of view, all doctrines of God – including atheism – are ultimately false and idolatrous, because doctrines are forms of words which can never be more than pointers to mystical vision, and not by any means the best pointers” (Behold the Spirit, xviii). Here, Watts’s Buddhist influence is evident, and it is the same paradoxical relationship with words that we see in other religions and philosophies. 

So what, then, do we mean by rewording the world? What could this possibly mean?

For us, rewording the world is a creative process of imagination (spiritual imagination and otherwise). It is an invitation to re-think, re-imagine, and re-create our world together. It is an opportunity to reframe our reality and the ways we interpret our reality together. It is our chance to reconnect with the earth and with our neighbors to discover the truth of our own inter-connectivity. 

We think of rewording the world as seeding. We are re-seeding the world with our words. We are re-imagining concepts and ideas in new and innovative ways. As we do this, we are re-creating our world together. 

Too easily do we cling to old words and ideas as beliefs that we must never question, but this only brings us more turmoil and disconnection. It does not enliven our hearts and inspire our minds. As Thich Nhat Hanh writes, “People kill and are killed because they cling too tightly to their own beliefs and ideologies. When we believe that ours is the only faith [or opinion] that contains the truth, violence and suffering will surely be the result.” 

Our practice of rewording the world is one of peace and nonviolence. We want to make life more wonderful for the world. We want to offer life-giving words and ideas. We aspire to the mindful practice of communication that takes words and ideas seriously, knowing they have material consequences for everyone around us and for the earth itself. 

“Words can travel thousands of miles. May my words create mutual understanding and love. May they be as beautiful as gems, as lovely as flowers” (TNH). We are participating in the important mindfulness practice of harvesting what we plant. 

As Gwendolyn Brooks tells us, “We are each other’s harvest,” and that is precisely what we are participating in and investing in…each other. 

We are co-creating and re-imagining the world together. When we practice generosity, we will seed generosity, and we will harvest generosity. When we practice compassion, we will seed compassion, and we will harvest compassion. We will also create and invent and re-invent the meanings of words. 

We are transforming hurtful, violent, hateful, desecrating words into nonviolent expressions of reconsecration. We are making sacred again what has been desecrated through our own prejudice and oppressive systems of docility and corruption. 

We are planting new seeds for a new harvest of words and ideas…ideas that have material consequences. We are rewording a world in hope and in trust that what we plant will give rise to new visions and new experiences of wholeness and healing. 

Our rewording, then, is also a re-weaving, an inter-connecting…a re-networking and a re-relationshipping of our world. We are creating realities of wholeness and re-wholenessing our world, together. 

As we reword the world, we can give birth to new realities, new words, and new harvests, together.