Language As Framework.

I’m slowly becoming aware of how powerful language is, how the words that we put on our feelings and actions carry with them the potential for huge things.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about change, dare I say revolution. I think there is not only a lot of unrest with our current options, but I’m beginning to believe (perhaps for the first time) that there are people who are willing to do what it takes to usher in the change. They are willing and prepared for it to cost them something.

Politics. Economics. Spirituality. Sexuality. Change is in the air and it is beginning with words. For the first time in a long while there is a swelling voice that is beginning to articulate this growing unrest with some of the systemic problems that we have locally and globally.

In this way, perhaps “words” are the first signs of revolution. I remember reading Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian for the first time and out of nowhere feeling like I was being hit with a ton of bricks. All of a sudden McLaren was putting words onto the feelings that were laying just below the surface for me. By articulating this change in my life and the life of others, he gave me words to describe what I was feeling, what was changing, and what was happening without making me feeling hopeless. In a way it validated what I knew to be true in the deepest parts of my heart but was unable to say (before) without feeling like an idiot.

The same thing happens when you give victims of domestic violence words to describe their abuse. Or when you give words to those who suffer from injust governments. In real and deep ways, they begin to stand up to their oppressor and are empowered to resist them, effecting change which becomes the catalyst for revolution.

I think this same idea is happening in other areas. People are beginning to not only articulate the problem in fresh ways, but they are simultaneously articulate solutions and cures in fresh ways.

I’m not saying the revolution has happened yet or that it’s even upon us or that it will even be realized. But without these people articulating and putting into words things ahead of time there would be no infrastructure for change to put it’s foundation on.

David Korten as quoted in Everything Must Change, referring to the culture war between empire and earth community, “The outcome will depend in large measure on the prevailing stories that shape our understanding . . . Perhaps the most difficult and yet essential aspect of this work is to change our stories.”

Changing our stories is going to happen in large part by big-names and no-names standing up to the unjust and corrupt stories and exposing them for what they are. This is part of the revolution, this fumbling process of searching for the right words is the beginning of the change.

It is happening now. And my only concern is that too many people are seeing these articulations as nothing but mere banter. And negative complaints. When in fact, I believe they are neither.