Language

In this picture Moses is face to face with the un-namable God, represented by the eternal circle in which the unpronounceable name transliterated YHWH is written in Hebrew. A green angel flits overhead like a heavenly dragonfly. Behind him there are hints of no-longer-important sheep. It was painted by Marc Chagall in 1966, and you can have it from the Georgetown Frame Shoppe for just shy of $3K. It is part of a larger set of works telling the story of the Exodus. If a picture is worth a thousand words, imagine what the book of these pictures must be!

Pictures, however, are not words. Words work differently. They go places pictures don’t go. Enmeshed in circles and patterns of meaning, words can jump across the moon and back before you know you’ve left the earth. Pictures drag you into unknown places by the waist like a commanding dance partner. They have too many words in them to be that nimble.

And words are part of a larger world called language. The unspeakable name of God is, in fact, a name of sorts, a way to refer to the un-referrable, like the word, “infinity,” and it calls up all the rest of the quirks and color of Hebrew as a language of life and prayer. I don’t speak Hebrew, but I do speak English, Spanish and can manage some Tsafiqui. Each is a world, caught up in the human drama, overflowing into other worlds, changing them and being changed, along with the people who speak them.

From Texas to California, a generation of Spanish-speakers were punished in school for speaking Spanish in places where Spanish was spoken everywhere except school, government offices and court. Their descendants today speak almost no Spanish. Similar things can be said of the First Nation peoples. They’ve lost a world. On the other hand, this afternoon I had a delightful conversation with a woman completely in Spanish, and she is not ashamed of her world. She is making sure her daughters are bilingual. Like daffodils coming up now in the Spring sun to greet the tulips, cherry trees and a hundred other flowers, each language adds color, texture and depth to the human journey. What a tragedy to exterminate one in a human soul!

 

Picture Credit: http://www.georgetownframeshoppe.com/marc-chagall-color-lithographs-the-story-of-exodus-moses-and-the-burning-bush