Ineffable

I traffic in words.

I believe in their power to communicate, inspire, change, and share. As an English teacher, a lecturer, a writer, and a voracious reader, my days are dominated by the quest for picture perfect prose, whether it be mine or those I'm consuming. I know what it is to struggle for just the right adjective as the cursor blinks blinks blinks in impatient condemnation. I've felt the joy of stringing together a precise collection of syllables to vividly and poignantly connect my experience with whoever is on the other side of the screen. And mostly through Steinbeck and C.S. Lewis, I have been pierced by words in such a way that I felt someone was looking inside my soul and telling me what was there all along but I never had seen.

I say that, but this post isn't about the power of words. Instead, it's about their inadequacy in certain situations.

The word that communicates the weakness of words is ineffable.

Ineffable: (adj.) "too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words."
synonyms: indescribable, inexpressible, beyond words

When I hear this word, I think of my daughter Elise. She has been immersed in a loquacious household and saturated with the wit of Fancy Nancy, a children's book series devoted to a character, Nancy, who uses extensive (i.e. fancy) vocabulary to describe her experiences. Whatever Elise is, she is rarely at a loss for words.

Except when she is. Recently there have been times where she's replied to a question of mine with, "I know, but I don't know the words to describe it." She thinks it's because she doesn't know those words yet. I'm beginning to believe it's because the thoughts/emotions she's attempting to express are ineffable.

What could a 6-year old possibly find ineffable? Guilt and fear, mostly. "Elise, why did you try to make your sister feel bad?" I don't know the words to describe it. "What is it about this situation that scares you?" I'm not sure how to say it. I've found myself agreeing with her. I ask these questions, but what do I expect her to say? Who can put into words the pride and competition and evil inside of us all that causes us to act in demeaning ways to other members of humanity? What words would accurately describe the fears I carry around daily in a way that would make other people understand?

There are moments of intense joy for her that she doesn't necessarily have the words for either. She has to draw those rather than describe them, as she did with the "Smile as Big as My Face" picture. Or sometimes she has to express her excitement not in words, but in inexplicable clawing hand motions and weird gutteral sounds that make her look and sound like a foraging animal. Words cannot contain her enthusiasm. It is not bound, in moments like these, by the limits of logical behavior.

Some things in this world, maybe the best of things, are ineffable: how I felt on the walk with Emily the first night we met, Black Canyon in Colorado, Reese's peanut butter cups, the first spring day that it's warm enough to open the windows. I'm sure there are scientific descriptors that might measurably detail aspects of these; none of those descriptors begin to tell the story, though, in a way that will make it real to someone else.

As Elise has shown, the worst of things are ineffable as well: the hate we've all found inside us at one time or another. The pain of betrayal. The disorientation of feeling lost in life, living in a place and time where you perhaps do not belong or don't have a place and not having any idea the way out. Loneliness, or the need for solitude. Regret. We have words for these, but not adequate ones.

It's hard for a writer to admit: "I don't have the words." But maybe that truth highlights the need for writing, for metaphors, for poems and stories that attempt to provide a glimpse of an image that shows, just for a second, the truth that you can't wrap words around. We need good prose precisely because we must attempt to try to share in creative ways the experiences we want to communicate but can't.

What this writer wants to explain is that the ineffable is for me some of the greatest evidence for God. The fact that beauty and joy and comfort exist that we can't wrap coherent words around, that we can't seem to classify or compartmentalize, that were clearly made for us as a mere taste for what's in store for us, begs the question of what? Or perhaps Who? We did not create this joy or this beauty or this companionship; it was created for us. The unspeakable horrors communicate the same message to me. Problems so big, pain so great, hurt so complex that we find language and solutions inadequate means that the solution is bigger than us. We cannot solve the puzzles of a fallen world. The answer is elsewhere, and it is the great longing inside of us.

How then do we share the ineffable in our lives? We share by sharing the experience. Hold the hand of the person you love and gape in awe at the inexpressible. Hand a friend some peanut butter cups. Sit on your patio when spring stirs your soul, and do so with your friends, a grill, and several stories. Take someone to your favorite place and let the place speak for itself.

And what of the evil? Of the pain and loneliness and frustration and loss? How do we share that? We don't. We share the one Comfort, the one Solution, the one Constant in the midst of all of it, and we tell stories that help to describe all the ineffable qualities of this Savior. It's all we can do. In situations like these, as much as we wish otherwise, words just won't get the job done.