I haven't read Sylvia Plath, so the phrase "a melon strolling on two tendrils" really doesn't mean anything to me. It sounds like nonsense. Now, I know that for a reader of Sylvia Plath, and in the context of the poem "Metaphors," the phrase probably means a lot. If I were to read the poem, or more from the poet, it would mean a lot for me too. But as it stands, it doesn't mean anything.
In fact, the phrase can make me angry. I can imagine having a conversation with Sylvia Plath fans where one of them says that something is like a melon strolling on two tendrils. The others would laugh, or nod, or quote the next line from the poem, and I would feel excluded, and stupid, and angry.
I was at a wedding once, and one of my friends, who felt he was being peppered with questions, said that he "didn't expect a sort of Spanish Inquisition." A number of others, including me, shouted out the next line from the Monty Python sketch: "NO ONE EXPECTS THE SPANISH INQUISITION!"
Another of my friends (not a Python fan) shouted out even louder, "NO NO NO! NOT HERE!"
She was having fun before, and then, suddenly, she was on the outside, looking in. With just two sentences.
Language can do that. In just a sentence, a phrase, even a word, it can separate the insiders from the outsiders. It can make some people feel really good about themselves, while at the same time making other people feel awful, outside, angry.
I've been thinking about this in the context of Christian worship.
We go out of our way to make worship a place where everyone can feel welcomed. Certainly we wouldn't call someone in the congregation "fatso" or even "hot stuff" during worship. We wouldn't walk through the congregation and tell people to get out.
And yet, a lot of our language in worship can have this same effect. I'm not talking about the usual "inclusive language" paradigm. I'm saying that we often use language in worship that means as much to an outsider as a melon strolling on two tendrils.
Outside of church, imagine two people talking about a work assignment: "I just want to lift up the contract proposal to thou, so that thou mayest place thy greatest effort toward its completion."
Is worship for making those of us who know the lingo feel included (like Sylvia Plath or Monty Python fans in the examples above), even if others feel excluded and even belittled?
I'm not saying anyone intends to insult the church's visitors. My Monty-Python-fan friends didn't intend to exclude anyone either.
If you get hit hard in the face, though, does it hurt less if the person who hit you didn't intend to do it?
We as Christians are called to sacrifice. It would not sacrifice our ideals or even our theology to work toward using language, in prayers, responses, and hymns as well as sermons, that use regular, ordinary language whenever possible.
It would be a sacrifice, however. We would have to think more about what we say, and be more attentive to people who are different from us. We might also feel a little less sure of our place on the church "insider track."
Oh, and we'd also have to give up a lot of the way we've always done it.
When I shouted that line from Monty Python, I didn't realize that it would divide my friends. I don't want to do that in church.
This work by Timothy H. Ruppel is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
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