A Big Deal of Words

“I believe the road to hell is paved with adverbs, and I will shout it from the rooftops. To put it another way, they're like dandelions. If you have one on your lawn, it looks pretty and unique. If you fail to root it out, however, you find five the next day... fifty the day after that... and then, my brothers and sisters, your lawn is totally, completely, and profligately covered with dandelions. By then you see them for the weeds they really are, but by then it's—GASP!!—too late.”

― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

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Dear Kate,

I wonder if King's is a writer's response to what Jesus urged us, to say it like it is, because "when you manipulate words to get your own way, you go wrong."

Say, if a person is in the habit to keep adding "literally" to her claims, could it be that her words are loaded with metaphorical elements susceptible to her bending and twisting for her own good?  (Now try to read this last sentence again, but this time add a "very" before "susceptible" and feel the effect of the adverbial intensifier.)

But what if we grew up to learn whoever yells the loudest actually gets to win?  Or that embellishment means substance?  Or no one actually cares about nuanced and thoughtful suggestions, and to spin and skew hard-core "facts" about self-serving "reality" is how one gets his way and gets ahead?

We might think only evil people--meaning, not ourselves--would prefer to perpetuate a sad state of discourse such as this, but I think really evil people would just go ahead to do their really evil deeds without really having a need to explain themselves.  If the doer is so convinced and powerful in his evildoing, he wouldn't need words to reason with dissidents or recruit new converts.

Words are for those who still accept the possibility that she might be wrong, in thought or in action or likely in both, that another shade of truth is needed to unpeel her eyes of their willful blindness, that there is always another word after her final word.

That God is more than a merely likely possibility.

It is on this ground that we discuss theology.  It is the same ground on which everything is theologically discussed.  Whenever we speak about whatever to whomever, we are speaking a Word about more than ourselves, we're appealing to a first and final Word that we assume to have an enduring appeal to humankind.

So the question is: are we faithfully representing the Word in our choice of words, in how we put a sentence together, or even in how we choose to not speak?

"The Word came to his own people, but they didn’t want him."  The Word gets a thumbs-down all the way, all sorts of angry and scornful emoticon from this world to footnote his every utterance.

If we are in the habit to fish for thumbs-up and come up on top in our speaking, what are we saying about ourselves?

Yours, Alex

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Dear Alex,

I have talked too much and done too little, growing dandelions in adverbs.

So last night, after a 12-hour drive home, I decided to add verbs, not adverbs, for a small change in my relating to another. At my 13th hour on the road, I stopped by a friend's home to say goodbye. She and her family would be re-locating to the East Coast.

About 13 hrs ago, I had bought custard buns and coconut pastries for her from my favorite Vancouver Chinatown bakery. I would gift them to her as my way of caring one last time on this shared soil of trees and critters, manure and dandelions together as housewives and realists, dreamers and working mothers.

By the time I arrived at her door steps, I knew I looked worse than fifty shades of dandelions. Not because of the long road trip or traffic. Not for the energy and time to coordinate schedules and objectives.

The big deal for me was my disappointment in having missed her in these past 4 years of stumbling and growing in the same town and church. I could have called her up for more tea time beyond a lunch together last year. I had made a big deal of my busyness as if I could live to outlast a tree. I had been timing myself for the right reason and mood, the perfect adverbs to set in motion a big-head agenda to connect with her when the real deal was simpler: be a reader, be a friend.

Towards midnight at the threshold of her house, she opened her door and arms to me. I fell into her embrace. I had few words for her, no adverbs: Do call me so I could help with the moving. I repeated this request as if she could not read me.

But she was a better reader than me. Looking at me, she said she would not deny me of this joy. She was helping me and it was no big deal.

Yours, Kate