As I was re-reading Walker
Percy’s The Thanatos Syndrome this past fall I ran across this remarkable
passage from which the name of this blog is taken. 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, begorra –“
“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.
