741: The Weight of Words
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A few years back, I gave a talk at Chautauqua in upstate New York, which, if you don't know what that is, starting in the 1870s, it was this high-minded lecture circuit, like Ted Talks before the internet, or public radio before the invention of radio, with a big religious component, which is how I fell into this long conversation about the literal word of the Bible. And having the staffer who drove me to the airport was a retired Methodist preacher, an associate pastor at one of the churches in Chautauqua named John Jackson, and we had this hour-and-a-half-long drive, and somehow we got on to how he doesn't believe that every word of the Bible is literally true, which, if you're a Methodist, that's no big deal. And John said that as he could told her, the literal words of the Bible seem less important to him than the big picture, "Love your neighbor as yourself, and love God above all." And I told John, like, I totally get the "Love your neighbor as yourself" part of that, like, I can see how that can reshape just everything about how you treat others and really everything you do in your life in the world. But I told him, like, I never really understood, like, why is it important to love God above all? Do you know what I mean? Like, if you do what God wants, you know, and you try to be good, you try to treat others right, what difference does it make if you love God? Like, what does God care? And I got to ask John about kind of a variation on this question that I've wondered about for a couple years, ever since the last time I was in synagogue, this is, I don't know, this is two or three years before this conversation, I hadn't been to synagogue in forever. And it was the anniversary of my mom's death, and we're Jews. So you're supposed to go say, "Cottish, this old prayer," that's one of the central prayers in Judaism at the anniversary of somebody's death. And so my dad and my stepmom and I were one of the daily services that observe in Jews go to every day in Baltimore, where I grew up. And I always liked going to synagogue as a kid. We went a lot, and so it was nice going back. I know the Hebrew prayers by heart, and I don't know if this is good or bad, but not having sat in a synagogue in over a decade, it really hit me how every day is a rerun. Do you know what I mean? Like, they never do a new episode, every day. The same words, same songs in the same order, stretching back hundreds of years, they read a new part of the Bible, part of the Torah some days, so there's that. But all the rest, basically, exactly the same, every day. And everybody is singing and chanting. And I started looking in the prayer book on the side of the page with the English translation of the prayers, which I hadn't done in years, and I really was struck at how many of them, the Amida, the Ashre are about praising God, like at length, like that's what the words mean, even the cottage, which you say over and over during surfaces, yikadaw, vikadash, mirebab, yamadid, rakhi, rutaviyam, wekamakutav, ikon, yikon, yikon, it goes on and on. And the words basically are, may his great name be exalted and sanctified, blessed and praised, glorified and exalted, extolled and honored, adored and louded, be the name of the Holy One. That is what they have you say when your mom dies, comforting, huh? It's basically God is great, over and over, building this beautiful line, really beautiful, that's basically God is so great, it's beyond the power of any prayer or word or song or
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