As
I was re-reading Walker Percy’s The Thanatos Syndrome this
past fall I ran across this remarkable passage. I will quote it at
length. It is a conversation between Dr. Tom More and a presumably
mad priest, Father Smith. The old priest is now a fire-spotter for
the park service and the conversation takes place in the tower he
lives in. We pick up the conversation with Father Smith speaking:
“Words
are signs, aren’t they?”
“You
could say so.”
”But
unlike the signs out there (the trees on fire), words have been
evacuated, haven’t they.?”
“Evacuated?”
“They
don’t signify anymore.”
”How
do you mean?” . . .
The
two proceed to spar verbally until Father Smith proposes a word
association exercise.
“Let
me turn the tables on you and give you a couple of word signs and you
give me your free associations.”
“Fine.”
“Clouds.”
“Sky,
fleecy, puffy, floating, white –
“Okay.
Irish.”
“Bogs,
Notre Dame, Pat O’Brien,“
“Okay.
Blacks.”
“Blacks.
Negroes.”
“Blacks,
Africa, niggers, minority, civil rights –“
“Okay.
Jew.”
“Israel,
Bible, Max, Sam, Julius, Hebrew, Hebe, Ben –“
“Right!
You see!” . . .
“See
what!”
“Jews!”
“What
about Jews?”
I
say after a moment, “Precisely!”
“Precisely
what?”
“What
do you mean?”
“What
about Jews?”
“What
do you think about Jews?” he asks, cocking an eye.
“Nothing
much one way or the other.”
“May
I continue my demonstration, Doctor?” . . .
”May
I ask who Max, Sam, Julius, and Ben are?”
“Max
Gottlieb is my closest friend and personal physician. Sam Aronson
was my roommate in medical school. Julius Freund was my training
analyst at Hopkins. Ben Solomon was my fellow detainee and cellmate
at Fort Pelham, Alabama.”
“Very
interesting.”
“How’s
that?”
”Don’t
you see?”
“No.”
“Unlike
the other test words, what you associated with the word Jew was Jews,
Jews you have known. Isn’t that interesting?”
“Yes,”
I say, pursing my mouth in a show of interest.
“What
you associated with the word sign Irish were certain connotations,
stereotypical Irish stuff in your head. Same for Negro. If I had
said Spanish, you’d have said something like guitar, castanets,
bullfights, and such. I have done the test on dozens. Thus, these
word signs have been evacuated, deprived of meaning something real.
Real persons. Not so with Jews” . . .
“That’s
the only sign of God which has not been evacuated by an evacuator,”
he says, moving his shoulders.
“What
sign is that?”
“Jews.”
“Jews?”
“You
got it, Doc” . . .
He
leans close, eyes alight, “The Jews – cannot-be-subsumed.”
“Can’t
be what?”
“Subsumed.”
“I
see.”
“Since
the Jews were the original chosen people of God, a tribe of people
who are still here, they are a sign of God’s presence which cannot
be evacuated. Try to find a hole in that proof!” Debate continues
but Tom More is unable to get around the old priest’s argument.
Neither
can we! Father Smith diagnoses our present predicament with
astonishing acuity. Words no longer signify. Especially Christian
words. Nobody listens to us any more – nor should they! Our words
no longer signify. And they no longer signify because there is no
people, no community, no presence to give substance and reality to
them. Our Greek and Western heritage has finally run us into a dead
end! Our tendency to vest reality in what can be thought and
linguistically expressed has run out of steam. Having bought into
this way of doing things as the church, we now find ourselves bereft
and unable to imagine any way forward but more and better of “the
same old same old.”
Our
words no longer signify! Thus is the peril and the opportunity the
church faces today in our culture. Whether it be peril or whether it
be opportunity is the crux we face. Can we find our way, through the
Spirit, to a place where, again, our words signify the truth
demonstrated by the incarnation of that truth in the lives of God’s
people in this time and place? We shall see.
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