WORDS OF THANKSGIVING

Who came up with idea of definitions?  If we point all beginnings of the basis our society and its underlying isms to something, it would ultimately be God.  I have a friend who seems to love silence.  There is some comfort, some restorative strength that can be garnered from silence.  It's the philosophy of the monks - words are excess, distractions.  They go for long periods of time without words, living daily in silence.  Maybe for them it magnifies and intensifies everything else around them.  I don't know.  I could not be a Monk for obvious reasons - my gender.  And, for less obvious reasons - words are a form of music to me.  They make me think.  They cause pictures to play upon the screen of my mind.  They make me understand someone or sometimes even myself better.  They define into written and visual ways what I am feeling, thinking, experiencing but can't nail down always.  They erase the wondering that silence sometimes brings.  It says in the Bible, in the book of Genesis, that God instructed Adam to name all the created world - plants, bird, animals, reptiles, maybe even the stars.  He wanted them to have a name - a definition of what they were, what he intended them to be.  I find it interesting too that God spoke the created world into being.  He used the word SPOKE.  As God, He could have created it with a wrinkle of his nose, the pointing of his index finger, bolts of lighting from his hands, or just a thought.  But He didn't.  Why?  Maybe because there is power in speech, in words.  There is power in speaking out loud into the universe the existence of real tangible thoughts, products, things, ideas, struggles, affirmations.  In essence, like God, we are creating something from nothing through words.  We are taking what has been silent and making it alive.  On this Thanksgiving Day I am thankful for so many things.  I am thankful in that mix for words and what their definitions do to motivate, change, affirm, and create passion in me!