THE WORD I WAS LOOKING FOR
First Unitarian Church of Alton
November 9, 2003
Rev Carol M Wolff
Perhaps I should have entitled this sermon "The Word That Was Looking for Me" rather than "The Word I Was Looking For" because it all began one day last month when I arrived at the church frustrated for about the 11th time that week with a phenomenon that as far as I knew, had no name or recognition.
In I walked, arms full, purse precariously about to fall off my shoulder, tote bag dangling from my other elbow as Becky our Office Manager grabbed the door and offered to help.
"I’m OK" I said, " but yes you can help me – I need to find the word for this thing that keeps happening to me ALL THE TIME – what is it about the world that cause every single thing that protrudes from my body to get caught on things? – I mean every single time I get out of my car, I am prevented from a graceful escape by my purse strap which is inevitably caught on the gear shift or hand brake, if there is the smallest little loop on a wallet or belt, or a sleeve that hangs less than tightly to my wrist it gets caught by a banister or doorknob or railing?"
"Well" Becky said, "I don’t know if there is a word but I guess we can invent one: ‘Carol’s caughtitis’ or something like that." We laughed and I proceeded to walk upstairs, almost falling backward and strangling as my tote bag shoulder strap which had fallen down was grabbed by the stairway hand rail – See?, I said, See? –it happens ALL THE TIME.
Then when a friend was visiting I showed how the elevator at my condo is out to get me – it doesn’t matter which motion I choose to do first, it is always the wrong one – if I try the door, it is latched, and if I push the call button, it is inert, telling me the door is unlatched and that the elevator is already there – I swear this is true - every single time I approach the elevator this happens.
Now my friend says this is impossible, and that I only NOTICE when this happens and do not notice when it works in my favor but –ohhh no, I am being persecuted by this old creaky elevator – it is out to get me.
So I went for a few days ( maybe two) laughingly referring to my Carol caughitis problem, enjoying the coining of a new word when The New York Times Sunday paper arrived as it does per my subscription, in the mail on Monday. I was busy so sat down to read it Tuesday saving as I always do the magazine section til last.
That evening as I began to read it, I quickly passed over the first few pages and got to my favorite section of the magazine, William Safire’s column "On Language." This particular week, Sept 21, the column was written by Charles Harrington Elster, Wm Safire being on vacation. Elster is the author of "Verbal Advantage" and co-host of the public radio program "A Way With Words" which I wish our station carried. Without further ado or introduction, let me read it.
|
Resistentialism: Things that go totally awry By Charles Harrington Elster I dropped a plastic cup this morning -- or it dropped me. As I removed it from the cupboard, it eluded my grasp, bounced on the kitchen floor, hung in the air as if deciding what to do next and then landed upside down with a complacent plop. When I picked it up and wiped the rim, I could tell that it knew. It knew I was going to write this article today, and it was mocking me. It is almost a truism to say that words have the power to transform us and crystallize our vision of the world. I say almost because, though the statement may seem trite, it is unassailable. Every literate one of us has experienced its truth. My crowning moment in word serendipity is seared into my brain. I was thumbing through Paul Hellweg's Insomniac's Dictionary when I stumbled upon the word resistentialism, which Hellweg defines as "seemingly spiteful behavior manifested by inanimate objects." Reading that definition, I had what can only be described as a revelation. I felt that an entire category of my experience had been uplifted from the Cimmerian realm of the Inexpressible into the clear, comforting light of the Known. Here, at last, was a word for the rug that quietly curls up so it can snag your toe, the sock gone AWOL from the dryer, the slippery piece of toast that always hits the floor jelly side down. Here, at last, was the word that explained the countless insolent acts of things, especially the infuriating intractability of plastic wrap. The Oxford English Dictionary defines resistentialism as a "mock philosophy which maintains that inanimate objects are hostile to humans" and calls it a "humorous blend" of the Latin res, "thing(s)", and French resister, "to resist", with "existentialism." The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, Fifth Edition (2002), perhaps in resistential defiance of its title, expands that definition to "a mock philosophy maintaining that inanimate objects are hostile to humans or seek to thwart human endeavours." Resistentialism was coined by the British humorist Paul Jennings in a brilliant send-up of Jean-Paul Sartre and the philosophy of existentialism published in The Spectator in April 1948. Although Jennings coined the word in jest, I must object to Oxford's dubbing resistentialism a "mock philosophy." There is nothing mock or sham about it, as anyone who has ever had to call a plumber on a Sunday morning to unclog a refractory toilet will attest. "Les choses sont contre nous. Things are against us," Jennings writes in his later essay, Report on Resistentialism, which appears in Oddly Enough (1950) and The Jenguin Pennings (1963). "This is the nearest English translation I can find for the basic concept of Resistentialism, the grim but enthralling philosophy now identified with bespectacled, betrousered, two-eyed Pierre-Marie Ventre ... In the Resistentialist cosmology that is now the intellectual rage of Paris, Ventre offers us a grand vision of the Universe as One Thing -- the Ultimate Thing (Derniere Chose). And it is against us." Why did it take us until the mid-20th century to come up with a word for something that has doubtless plagued us since before we begot language? Perhaps because resistentialism is nonverbal, which I suspect is why it's the driving force behind so much comedy. It's the motivation for many episodes of The Three Stooges and I Love Lucy. It's the nemesis of Wile E. Coyote. It's why people laugh when someone else slips on the proverbial banana peel. Resistentialism also has a long history in our literature. In his Ode (Inscribed to W.H. Channing) (1846), Ralph Waldo Emerson saw the resistentialist writing on the wall and proclaimed that "Things are in the saddle,/And ride mankind." In his autobiography, published posthumously in 1924, Mark Twain relates an anecdote about a recalcitrant burglar alarm in his ornate mansion in Hartford, Connecticut. It "led a gay and careless life, and had no principles," he says. "We quickly found out that it was fooling us and that it was buzzing its bloodcurdling alarm merely for its own amusement." In his 1995 novel The Information, Martin Amis evokes our frustration at being constantly picked on and pushed around by things: "... the dumb insolence of inanimate objects! He could never understand what was in it for inanimate objects, behaving as they did. What was in it for the doorknob that hooked your jacket pocket as you passed? What was in it for the jacket pocket?" Reports of resistentialism abound in ephemeral literature as well. The Peter Tamony Collection at the University of Missouri, Columbia, contains dozens of newspaper clippings documenting the phenomenon of resistentialism in everyday life. Tamony (1902 to 1985), a noted San Francisco etymologist, apparently was a jelly-side-down kind of guy and as fascinated as I am by the wiliness of things and by the word Jennings coined for it. Among Tamony's clippings is a story about a lady in London whose telephone rang every time she tried to take a bath. No matter what time she drew the bath, day or night, the phone always rang -- and when she'd answer it, nobody was there. Things eventually got so bad that she stopped bathing altogether, which prompted her husband to investigate the problem pronto. The cause, he discovered, was a bizarre, electronically telepathic conspiracy between their water heater and the phone. In the great scheme of things (think about that one!), Jennings tells us, we are no-Thing, and Things always win. This is true, I believe, even in the ostensibly placid world of words -- for, after all, words are themselves things that in turn signify Things. Charles Harrington Elster is the author of Verbal Advantage and other books on language.
|
Well you can imagine my delight – here was the word I was looking for – or as I mentioned, perhaps it was looking for me.
At any rate, we found each other and here we are now I am delighted to be able to mutter the words "Resistentialism – at it again!" every time I am caught so to speak.
So I began reflecting on this whole experience – the phenomenon of the meaning of the word, the way the word was found and discovered, and the perfection of it all.
I mean I would have never known where to begin searching for such a term nor would I have tried assuming it to be a futile endeavor and would have stuck with "caughtitis", a perfectly sensible explanatory word in my opinion.
But you see, I was rectified, redeemed by that column – in the NEW YORK TIMES of all places, you can’t get more legitimate than that!
Finding the right word has given my frustration with all of this an entirely different spin – first of all Charles Harrington Elster and I are now connected – at least I know now there is SOMEBODY out there who understands!
And although knowing the right word doesn’t really diminish the occurrence of the phenomenon, it at least helps and makes me just chuckle and shake my head instead of gritting my teeth and getting irritated.
I mean, it still happens of course, and even more so as if they (the things out to get me) are saying – yeah see, you may know the word now but we’re going to remind you of it all the time until you lose your mind – or maybe you already have.
You may know by now that my basic theology is that of Love and Paying Attention. Paying Attention is what allows us to have these experiences – maybe other people get their appendages caught all the time too but think nothing of it.
I think as human beings we try all the time to make meaning of things if we are so inclined or intelligent enough to do so. I think we are always being caught by things that are inanimate or maybe even invisible.
How many times a day do you have a random thought or catch something on a bill board on the radio that makes your mind wander and leap to other things? I think our everyday lives cause our minds to work hard to make sense; to find meaning in the mundane and sometimes unobserved chaos that our lives represent.
I found that this experience has been written about in other places, Edward Tenner’s book "Why Things Bite Back" comes to mind – about our belief that technology causes unintended consequences – he calls them "revenge effects" – the unintended, ironic consequences of the mechanical, chemical, biological, and medical forms of ingenuity that have been hallmarks of the progressive improvement obsessed twentieth century.
He says after all Murphys’s law as originally uttered by a frustrated engineer, was meant not as a fatalistic, defeatist principle, but as a call for alertness and adaptation.
So I wonder – what is trying to catch you, snag you? Are you paying attention – do you have a word for it? Are you looking for the word or is there a word out there looking for you that you are not acknowledging?
I would venture to say that much theology comes about in this way and is the reason we have words that are often impossible to define, especially for UUs – words such as God or Spirit, even Love and Hope.
These are the things that are trying to catch our attention. We may be loathe to use the terms I would suggest we need in order to define them- we may eschew the actual experience of the meaning of the words, but as the author Elster says, words are themselves things that in turn signify Things (with a capitol "T").
Ultimate words that point to things beyond our human ability to understand are the words that make religion what it is that cause us to have faith or make us believe in things we cannot see or explain. We have to be willing to allow them to catch us -= we have to listen and pay attention lest we miss the importance of them and therefore end up living lives that are not fulfilled or become meaningless.
I want to live with these words on my tongue – I want to believe something is tugging at my sleeve, catching me and making me stop and ponder the meaning of where I am at that moment – I want to transcend the physical world of purse straps and inanimate hooks and posts and enter into a world where the invisible is made tangible, where words signify more than things with a capitol or not.
The things we are about in the church community are like this – we cannot always articulate why we are here in this place much less on this planet, but we have a need to know and we need words to help us get there.
So we come together and share our experiences in an effort to know – to know ourselves and one another and to attempt to find that right word, whatever it may be, that will allow us to live more fully, that will lead us to a better understanding of what we are and where we are and why.
I love words and always have – I collect quote books and love crossword puzzles and acrostics, always eager to learn a new word or find a new meaning for one already known.
But I must say, the word I was looking for, resistentialism has become a favorite new one, one that will resonate for a long time – especially every time I am caught by those things that are out to get me.
I hope there is something out to get us – I want to believe we are not all there is – I want to think that what we do have purpose and meaning and will be appreciated – that the ripples of our lives will live on into the far future and maybe catch someone and cause them to stop and wonder about the world.