Wordless Faceless

 

Everybody's talking at me

I don't hear a word they're saying

Only the echoes of my mind

People stopping, staring

I can't see their faces

Only the shadows of their eyes

- Harry Nilsson, "Everybody's Talkin'"

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Dear Kate,

I used this song quite extensively when I was younger, even more naive than I am now, as a running commentary in a short film I made with church friends, to show in a youth group "Evangelical Night," with altar call and all, "fighting for souls."

Not a word of Jesus the Word was mentioned in the film.  Some might think I have left that to the preacher after the curtain was closed and light back on.  Oh no, it would be too dangerous to do that, leaving things to preachers.

I did set up an altar alright and made a call too, an invocation for people to cry out for God and hear nothing coming out of us, only the echoes of our mind, ourselves faceless, a shadow of what we long to be.

We are not speechless, illiterate, or in lack of the means to communicate (how many messaging apps do you have?).  We just don't know what to say, to ourselves, to others, to everything in life, to a possible God who might possibly be listening but for all we know not giving a shit.

Didn't you just hate it, the congregation being asked to pray, in Sunday service, virtual or not, any sort of religious meeting?  When are we going to say to ourselves simply and honestly: We don't have the words!  We don't know what to say with conviction without feeling embarrassed.  If I can squeeze a few pious words out of me, it's only cos I am doing a public service to end our collective embarrassment, unshame ourselves.

"They went carrying in themselves that distress which is the only serious product of modern culture, and a sort of active despair lightened only (they did not know why) by the inner assurance that the truth for which they hungered would one day be shown to them," Jacques Maritain spoke, years later, about the state he and a fellow student Raïssa Oumansoff were in when they first met.  They subsequently married each other and kept hungering together for the Truth, the Way, the Life.

Who's hungering with you?

Yours, Alex