The gift of communication

I have noted from time to time how remarkable is the gift of communication that God has given us. The animal world is able to “converse” with each other on a level that meets their basic needs. A mother bear can listen to her cubs “tell her” that they are afraid, that it’s time to eat, that they want to play, but you and I can go infinitely beyond that. Not only can we transfer basic information but we can actually transfer ideas and even think together. 
       But like so many gifts of God, man has a habit of using the gift of speech to confuse rather than clarify. Words can be put together in a way that helps you accomplish what you want. Take the common phrase, gun violence. I know that one use of a gun can be to perform a violent act and I am against violence, but we need to think a bit clearly on the role of the gun in the phrase gun violence. I believe the term is misleading because it implies that the gun must pull its own trigger. After all, it is gun violence, something the gun does. From that it is reasonable to conclude that we need to get rid of the perpetrator, the gun. If a person killed with a knife we don’t call it knife violence, or if a person has  a fatal accident in a car, call it “car violence.” 
       Another thing about words is the Buddhist position on the limited ability of words to express the full existential meaning of what they would like to say. In art, music and poetry words point us toward what they want to express, but how could words ever make clear your profound reaction to a moving piece of literature or an outstanding work of art. Words take their meaning from context and everyone has a context unique to that person alone. To repeat myself (from another blog) a friend of mine still has the hair on his neck stick straight out when he hears a pit bull bark because unlike most of us, he was attacked by one many years ago. 
       To move from words to the ideas they express, there is one writer that stands as a mentor for all, C S Lewis. He had the unique ability to clarify his thoughts and express them so clearly that when we read his work we tend to say to ourselves, “Oh,  now I see.” So, here is an example of the “lucid clarity” of Lewis’ thinking and his ability to convey a thought.

“My argument against God was that the universe seems so cruel and unjust. But how did I get this idea of just, unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he first has some idea of straight. What was I comparing the universe to when I called it unjust?”

See what I mean?