By Leo Campos
The other night at the end of our monthly lectio meeting at my church one of the participants shared with us an insight she had while we were doing lectio on Mark 6:1-6. In our group we take turns reading the passage from different translations, to keep it fresh. She excitedly told us that these various translations reminded her of “Darmok and Jalad at Tenagra” – and that reference made me jump from my seat! She had broken through our near-Pharisaical search for meanings and caught a glimpse of the Living Word of God residing just below the text. In monastic circles we call that Contemplation, but it does not matter what you call it.
For those of you who are not Trekkies here’s the a quick synopsis: at the surface the episode deals with the problems of communication, especially intra-species communication, with Capt. Picard and an alien captain stuck together in a hostile planet where their only choice is cooperate or die. But how do you cooperate with someone whose language you do not understand?
This may seem a relatively trivial problem, but remember folks that this is the 24th century, and everyone has a “universal translator” which means, basically, that everyone speaks the same language. Now you meet a race where your computer is incapable of translating their language. Inconceivable! The only thing that the alien keeps saying over and over is “Darmok and Jalad at Tenagra.” (Trust me in the hands of a fantastic actor like Patrick Stewart this stuff reaches near Shakespearean levels).
Is language really translatable that way? When I say “I love you” would it be instantly translated into another language? I have a little book at my desk called In Other Words: A Language Lover’s Guide to the Most Intriguing Words Around the World given to me by a dear friend and fellow logophile. The book lists hundreds of words which are untranslatable into English, or at least there is not a one-to-one correlation between those words and English.
I have personal experience of this. Having grown up in Brazil until my early teens, then living in England, and now the US – I am the incarnate version of that little book. “Untranslatable” would be a great epitaph for myself. If you came to me asking for help in translating one of the more famous untranslatable Brazilian words (saudades) I would tell you – “Come to Brazil, spend a summer with us, dance in the Carnaval, hang out in the beaches of Rio and fall in love with a beautiful girl and take a walk with her by the sea, sip some fresh coconut juice while holding hands and looking up at the Jesus statue at the top of the Corcovado, and then leave. And then I will call you in about a year and what you will feel – that’s saudades!”
This is the fundamental issue of language, at its roots it is not made up of solid atoms of language stuff. Perhaps one time we might have fallen for that idea. Those of us who are avowed (or even born-again) Modernists think that language is made up of fixed signs. But the reality is frustratingly, beautifully more complicated. Language, like atoms themselves, tends to dissipate into a cloud of metaphor when we look closer. For example when I mentioned the “meaning” of “saudades” in the last paragraph, what exactly does “meaning” mean? If you want “meaning” to mean one thing it will, and if you want it to mean something else it will too. Light can be both wave and particle – what you are looking for? What meaning are you looking for?
One of my (spiritual) mentors is the Mexican poet Octavio Paz. And as every other poet whom I have read or met, the metaphorical nature of language is of grave importance to him. He says “If we are a metaphor of the universe, the human couple is the metaphor par excellence, the point of intersection of all forces and the seed of all forms. The couple is time recaptured, the return to the time before time” (in “André Breton or the Quest of the Beginning,” 1967).
Back to Star Trek – here we are in the 24th century, stuck in a hostile planet with an alien who just keeps repeating “Darmok and Jalad at Tenagra”. There is an urgency in this. There is a life and death struggle here. What are we to do? How am I say I love you? How am I to pray?
In the episode it turns out that the reason the alien’s language was untranslatable was because it was completely metaphorical. Once they uncovered the key to the alien’s metaphor (their religious texts – aha!) then Capt. Picard and the alien could begin to communicate. Trust me guys, this is worth watching, and even using in an adult Bible study group.
A question of language that is important for us spiritually is the truthfulness of the Bible. “Is the Bible literally true?” At times the question is about truth, sometimes the emphasis is on the literalness. When I am asked this I feel like the Pharisees who were asked by Jesus about the source of John’s prophetic gifts: if I answer “yes” then…on the other hand if I answer “no” then…
Is the Bible true? Yes. Is the Bible literally true? Yes. It is absolutely literally true poetry. It is the only true poem I know. It is the clearest truth we have, perfectly metaphorical. I use the adjective “perfect” the same way my scientist friends use the term “absolute”. It is not a trivial thing. When you can grasp this, the Truth of Christ can dawn upon you, and it will change you inside-out, and you will be seen in public with your Bible, and you will go home, no run home, just to spend a few precious minutes with these stories. You might just spend days marveling at “At the beginning was the WORD and the WORD was with God and the WORD was God.” You just might recite the Lord’s Prayer and realize that the Kingdom is here as you speak it.
Can we all speak the same language? Let the poet have the last word: “Today we all speak, if not the same tongue, the same universal language. There is no one center, and time has lost its former coherence: East and West, yesterday and tomorrow exist as a confused jumble in each one of us. Different times and different spaces are combined in a here and now that is everywhere at once”
(Paz, in “Invention, Underdevelopment, Modernity,” 1967).
Brother Leo Campos is the co-founder of the Community of Solitude , a non-canonical, ecumenical contemplative community. He worked as the “tech guy” for the Diocese of Virginia for 6 years before going to the dark side (for-profit world).