In the beginning was the word.  And, for my entire life, I’ve had an almost mystical affection for words.   Words are the one thing that will outlast me and words will last as long as man is man.  Kingdoms rise and fall, but words continue forever.  Words can get you a job or put you in jail.  And nothing is more powerful than small words:

  Yes.

  Stop.

  Dad died.

  I love you.

  You have a son. 

         From 1973 through 1993, I put together a dictionary of about 300 pages that consisted of every new word that I encountered, including slang and jargon.  My inner world is larger than the external word as it includes fantasy and speculation.  As words encapsulate thoughts, I expanded my thoughts by increasing the words I knew.  

        However, my writing skills were never in sync with my oral skills.  I’m much too self-conscious.  I would be probably too dangerous if I was as good at talking as I am at writing.  It may also be a matter of experience, and I’ve never really had that sort the experience.  I’m not as good as Nancy is with casual banter.   My father at his prime was a forceful although sometimes pedantic preacher.  He would type out his sermons on six inch note paper and then memorize the sermon.  I admired my mother’s friendly ease before small or large groups.  Both my parents could preach or teach in several Chinese dialects.  Of preachers I’ve heard, Billy Graham and Bill Hybels have impressed me the most.  They are both skilled in articulating ideas in ways that anyone can understand, and are especially good at “closing the sale”—making concrete applications.  Of American politicians, I consider Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy to be the best orators for their powerful verbal poetry.

       World War II coincides with the rise of some masterful speakers.  Franklin Roosevelt had patrician warmth.  Churchill mastered the tongue as few did to inspire an island that helped defeat the Third Reich.  Even Stalin fell back on his days as a seminarian by using a question and answer approach in his rare speeches.  But I consider that the greatest master of speech in the 20^th century was Adolph Hitler.  I despise the man and all that he stands for.   I think his book Mein Kampf is rubbish from cover to cover—except for one chapter on rhetoric, which he writes with great authority.  Hitler sought to convince his audience of the sincerity of his emotions.  “Men believe,” Nietchze wrote, “in the truth of all that is seen to be strongly believed in.”  In Mein Kampf, he insists that to be successful, oration must combine simplification with reiteration:  “It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.”  He took great care in crafting his phrases.  He paid equal attention to the place and time of meetings.   “In all these cases one is dealing with the problem of influencing the freedom of the human will,” he writes.  Audience interaction is critical.  ”An orator receives continuous guidance from the people before he speaks.”  Movies of Hitler’s speeches almost always portray him as been on the brink on incoherence. But Hitler was masterful in the scaffolding of rhetoric, and used all kinds of vocal effects and gestures.   Over two hours or more, using humor, mimicry, and sarcasm, Hitler’s speech would build to an emotional crescendo that galvanized his audience, using words that were eloquent but false.   It’s a valuable and dangerous model for future political and religious orators. 

     Perhaps I missed an opportunity by joining the Wheaton College debate team, as it was nationally ranked and won many awards.   In recent years, the internet forums have helped me develop by written debating skills, and nothing gives me more pure oxygen then the exhilaration of argumentative thought and discourse.   And nothing can be more civilized with the right people.  I think it was Freud who said that civilization started when a man stopped hurling a spear and starting hurling an insult.  As a general principle, however, it’s wise to avoid arguments.   “Controversy equalizes fools and wise men—and the fools know it,” Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. said.  The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.  “I made it as a rule to forebear all direct contradiction to the sentiments of others, and all positive assertion of my own,” Benjamin Franklin wrote.  “I even forbade myself the use of every word or expression that imported a fix’d opinion, such as ‘certainly’ and ’undoubtedly’.”   There are many times when we must present our point of view, and we should do so with logic, force, flair, and wit.  But disputation for its own sake leaves in its trail a poison that dissipates slower then the memory of the dispute.  Dale Carnegie writes that “you cannot win an argument.  You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it.  If you win it, you lose it.  Why?  Well, suppose you triumph over the other man and shoot his argument full of holes and prove that he is non compos mentis.  Then what?  You will feel fine.  But what about him?  You have made him feel inferior.  He will resent your triumph. And

                                      A man convinced against his will

                                      Is of the same opinion still.”

Ray, husband to Elsie Wik Johnson, encouraged me in my love for words and we would exchange poetry, or, what Carl Sandburg called “the synthesis of hyacinths and biscuits.”   In one poem “The Hard Way to Write a Poem” he wrote:

Today I finished off a poem that’s bothered me a month,

And did it by the simply ploy of cutting out

               Six lovely lines.

It kills my soul to throw away good lines—

Good lines don’t come that easily.

Yet those lines simply would not fit,

So out they went.

And so I have a finished poem at last.

I also have a very private pain

That can’t be cast aside

                Like these six lines.

I consumed the poetry of T.S. Eliot, H.P. Lovecraft, Emily Dickenson, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Yevgeny Yevtushenko and absorbed the rhythm of words and idioms.  In my senior year, I got a first prize for this poem.  I’m not sure that it means much—I was playing with word-sounds and word-images:

Dragging the Shenandoah

Sappy riptide gloaming

blast glass Michelob

from deadwater, ghoul-pooled

nomadic crabs swagger over sullen

quicksand:

      there too shadows fall.

For bamboo wizards

tote oiled rope through

furbelowed wilderness

seeking star-smashed

lines of credit imbrued Queen Ann chairbacks.

This final blood-cleaning compels the duty of out

office.  So caladium-fanged foam welcomed the

casterways as flies to wanton boys to find

beauty

       in another world.

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