Planting a Flag in Mystery and Calling it Conquered
Poetry says things by words, associations, spacing, absence.
Literal meanings are — changing.
Some words don't necessarily mean the same today as ten years ago. And even the ones that do take on a new context.
Saying "twin towers" on September 10th that year meant something different to saying it on 9/11.
We pin things down. In science. Maths. Equations. Laws.
In language. Grammar.
But even these norms shift and flex.
Irony. Humour. Mic drop rhetoric.
We say something and mean something else entirely.
Memes — make a point recogniseable.
Punchlines — overturn expectations for humour.
Tropes — render shortcut-understandings conventional.
Meanings are held, upheld, contested according to shared understandings within our time and culture.
But over time, things change.
Comedy sketches from twenty years ago get taken down from a website because they were 'of their time'.
Once funny — perhaps because of a collision of innocent things like 'unexpected change of perspective' or 'speaking aloud what had not been spoken before’ — are no longer funny, innocent, or at the edge.
Too well-worn. Offensive.
We co-exist in all this - writer and reader.
Also within the generational mapping of our family lines — love and history and shifting dynamic.
Norms that hold us and place us, as if they offer another literal truth — yet even that's contested and ambiguous at times.
If all this is coincidence — life on earth, I mean — it's (increasingly) not just a fresh breeze walk in the park; valuable for its own sake. It's like a seventy or eighty year session of being drilled in meaning, meaning making, meaning resisting and meaninglessness.
It’s all just accidental, and all the apparent meaningfulness has very limited significance.
That's if this is all coincidence.
Coincidence?
Some people say that the fact we are here on Planet Earth in these precise conditions that create the tiniest window for life, is not about God, it just is how things are.
Not significant at all, in the big picture, because ultimately, it's just something randomly occuring.
So, eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die.
In that view, whatever else I sense is — probably just projection?
Like putting two and two together and making four point five — or infinity?
My fault for being naive.
But no one who says that can prove it either. And once they were just two minutes old, like me — the one toying with the idea it IS significant.
Not coincidence?
Then this is what intrigues me most of all:
I can make statements of belief, but there's not much point if the language is up for grabs is there?
I mean, I might actually have discovered Truth, yet everything I say about it or to point to it could be completely misleading. Especially these days, when pointing to anything causes the limelight to be on the one pointing.
A signpost becomes a destination. Lands End and John O'Groats. Those signposts are where you want your selfie taken if you're travelling that path.
At what point across the Severn Bridge are you no longer in Wales but in England. Or the other way around. Do you wait for the signpost? The view? Do we ask the geolocation and satellites?
Relativism, pluralism… swimming in meanings.
Culture does not allow to land, even as it demands we stay grounded.
We're keeping the heavy medicine balls up in the air and not allowing them house room.
I believe (I think I do, and I'm checking by saying it aloud) that
— some things defy absolute measurement because they're contested endlessly with no common agreement.
(e.g. who may be smuggling agendas, and who isn't; who is and may not know they are; who is worth trusting and who isn't)
— meanwhile, some things seem endlessly contradictory though they may yet be true.
(e.g. we may genuinely seek Truth and to align with that Truth, but get it wrong because we land on it and place a flag in it rather than continuing to seek. I mean, once someone 'conquers' the moon, something truly unownable with all it's surrounding mystery and awe takes on the appearance of a present for Veruca Salt whining, 'I want the world, I want the whole world' so that everyone else, even if they're older and wiser somehow has to pay attention. )
— that seeking the outcomes and rewards of Truth is a different thing to seeking the 'face' of Truth.
(e.g. Wanting the rewards of Truth so you can spend them on something else demonstrates the real desire is not Truth but what Truth gets you. Instrumentally. Whereas, the relational version, wanting Truth and nothing less, so that you can remain in the light of Truth is different. Letting moonlight be moonlight rather than Veruca Salt's bullied and obnoxious neon sign, letting us know the moon is now an extension of a brand rather than…)
— And I think when we talk about morals it sounds preachy, to me too. Like soap box style. And not because I don't think morals are good or preaching is bad. But it's like when we use metaphors it can sound suspiciously metaphysical and weird. Preachy and metaphysical are the kind of pejorative labels that hang around in the ether as if to stop us going too far one way or the other. But that kind of labelling effectively gags morals and metaphors.
— And someone could take Jesus and make Him a lesson in being kind. And nothing else. Or someone could take Jesus and make Him a lesson in being a warrior king. And nothing else. The words and meanings fly around, with increasing distraction and saturation. Yet all the claims about Jesus, so powerfully staked out and branded, with a big flag stuck in the middle or whatever, those claims, that language, those expressions of meaning — all gone quite soon, one way or the other.
I'm only interested in Truth as it always was and always will be.
Truth that holds me, let alone me holding 'It'.
And rather than us anthropomorphising God (calling Him a Him) that we are made in His image, and our distinctions are things we feel the pull and push of as we swim in all this meaning.
The funny thing is, my words sound vague. But I'm describing something tangible and obvious to me. And if you wonder if that's an intellectual or a relational claim, I'd say, those are your labels. I'm not sure they fit.
