We climbed a long, gentle slope and were alone
in a vastness and a distance that were like nothing I had ever seen or
imagined. In all directions I could see the horizon, not a hill between that
interrupted the smooth, round bowl-rim of blue. It was like being a very tiny
ant on a table under Mother’s very biggest mixing bowl, a blue and silver bowl
and a table-cloth all greeny-tan and full of little wrinkles….I felt a kind of
smile inside myself, and a sense of awe that made me not want to say a word….It
was like driving into a world nobody had ever seen before except God, a world
God had just made, like the world in the Bible before there was an Adam or an
Eve. Even the sounds were all new….not much louder than the squeak of a cricket
in your pocket.
High, Wide and Lonesome – Hal Borland – 1956
I am reading the story of Hal Borland’s boyhood on the East
Colorado plains in the early 1900s. Though it may not be a history that sings
to many of us today, there are passages with such powerful description that
they almost bring tears to my eyes. More than once I have had to stop and
marvel at the talent that could create such haunting imagery, such transporting
prose.
The ability of some writers to do this is a God-given thing.
In fact, I believe language and its proper use is all a gift from God – one of
the greatest of all gifts.
There is a reason Christ is called the Word of God: He is
the ultimate expression of the Divine. And human language is a shadow of that
expression. Without words, we are incomplete beings. It is not until we are
able to express thought in words that we have fully “become.”
A child’s first word is cause for celebration. Grandparents
are called, social media posts tell of the event, the family is all aflutter.
Why? Because the child is now part of the communion of souls, able to give and
take in the expression of life.
When Helen Keller, blind and deaf, uttered her first word,
she “became.” Before that, she was unaware of her own separateness and the actuality
of the world around her.
But great writing, great literature, is a step above and
beyond basic communication. It is the art at the heart of God. By His word,
worlds became. At His command, the earth and the universe, life itself, burst
forth.
By our own words we create or destroy the very atmosphere
around us. The word is a powerful thing.
Great language, great writing employs this gift at the
highest human level, and often seems to be a divine thing. Wonderful writers
will tell you that they do not always know where the words come from, that they
seem to flow into and through them from beyond themselves.
Wonderful turns of phrase – elevating and profound, or pithy
and simple – “just the right words” are not belabored. They just come.
Not all those who appreciate fine writing can write that
way. But they recognize it when they read it or hear it. It touches them in the
same way that a fine musical score touches them or a grand sunset or a mighty
surf.
It is not only part of God’s creation, it is the origin of
creation itself.
The next time you read a marvelous piece of prose or poetry,
think of where it came from. At that moment, the author is the pen of God.
