Spoken Language is Not Meant to Be Everything

There is a fierceness to the way that complexity and magnanimity invade our overly simplistic conceptions of the nature of life and the world, at times shattering what we thought we knew and understood. G.K. Chesterton did well to observe that the human tendency is to shrink our world to a manageable size, wherein we can pretend to predict and control. As I write about service-learning, I frequently write about "communities," but upon reflection, I realize that while it is easy to type the letters that assemble the word "communities," the actual reality that this word signifies is not nearly so easy to articulate or reveal. Communities are not simple, they are complex and expansive. They rarely have clear cut boundaries, and even when one boundary appears, it is gone before it can be meaningful because communities are never stagnant, but rather dynamic and living entities, simultaneous with the continued tread of human existence. My intent here is not to abandon human language, but rather to acknowledge its shortcomings to ever fully express the complexity and bigger than me-ness of this life and world that I am blessed to be in and part of. My invitation is for us all to consider that when we use terms like "community" and "us" and "them" that the ease with which we can say or write these words belies the depth and profundity of their actual reality. We must be constantly committed to the task of expanding our worlds, and sometimes this just means opening our eyes to the world that we are actually talking about.