By Reverend Laurie DeMott

The word is 'ineffable'. The dictionary says that to say that something is ineffable is to say that it is too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.

Everybody repeat that word after me: ineffable. If you say the word "ineffable" enough times -- ineffable, ineffable, ineffable -- it begins to feel a little like gibberish which is perhaps the point because the only time we use the word is to say that we have nothing to say, to say that we might as well stand there wide eyed and slack jawed unspeaking because our brains have gone silent in the face of the mystery that we have encountered or the beauty we have experienced. To open our mouths and try to describe what we are experiencing will be to diminish the wonder we are feeling; it just cannot be put it into words.

"It's just ineffable," we say, meaning, "Stop talking about refracted light and airborne particles and just enjoy the sunset, will you?"

Ineffable -- say it with me again. Ineffable. In our scientific world where everything is dissected and taken literally, ineffable is a word we should perhaps use more often.

I came across the word ineffable when I was reading a book called Good Omens, a funny novel about Armageddon by Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman. Now, Armageddon doesn't seem like the subject for a comedy but the book is about a demon and an angel who have become so fond of humanity that when they get the word from their superiors that it is time for the world to end, they decide to try to stop the final battle. The rest of the armies of heaven and hell push doggedly forward insisting that Armageddon is part of the divine plan, and everyone in the book spends a lot of time interpreting the signs and writings to prove that they understand exactly what is supposed to happen. Only the single demon and the lone angel question whether anybody -- even the hosts of heaven and hell -- can ever truly know the mind of God.

"God does not play dice with the universe;" the book says, "He plays an ineffable game of his own devising which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, namely everybody, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.

The angel and the demon in Good Omens talk a lot about the ineffableness of God, the mystery that is God even for angels and demons. Some things can simply not be ultimately understood or adequately explained and our experience of that mystery can only be expressed in means that move us beyond the rational -- in art, in music, or even in silence. Back in the Middle Ages, the famous theologian Thomas Aquinas, spent a lifetime churning out over two million words in books about the nature of the world and God’s purposes for us but on his deathbed, he experienced a vision and declared afterward that everything he had written was of no significance beside the beauty that he had seen as heaven opened before him. One commentator says, "Aquinas was perhaps the most striking example of a philosopher who comes to believe that the real meaning of the world is ineffable but Aquinas was exceptional. The history of philosophy abounds in thinkers who, having concluded that the truth is ineffable, have gone on to write page upon page about it."

Proverbs 29:6 says, "An evil man is ensnared in his transgression, but a righteous man sings and rejoices." One way of looking at this verse is to say that all of those evil people will finally get theirs in the end while the righteous will skip happily about singing, "Nyay, nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah!" but I think the Proverb is not talking about some future reward and punishment but a present attitude that brings us to that end. I think the Proverb is suggesting that the ability to keep on singing no matter what comes is, in fact, what saves the righteous. We live in a world where some eighteen year olds have massive strokes while some ninety year olds can still whip us on the tennis courts, where one friend hurts us and betrays us for no reason while another friend persists in loving us even though we have done little worth loving. We live in a world where forgiveness can be so healing and at the same time so hard to do, where joy can crash upon us unexpectedly one moment and sorrow can ambush us the next, where evil feels so persistent and yet goodness matches evil with equal stubbornness. When we try to figure out the whys and the wherefores of the world, it can make our brains hurt -- and worse, it can make our hearts hard and our souls cynical because when we try to dissect the mystery and use words to describe the ineffable, we fail miserably and our failure makes us miserable. The Proverb tells us that the righteous are saved from cynicism by the humility of recognizing that there are some things that will remain unknowable and when faced with the ineffable, the only appropriate response is to stop talking and sing.

In 2001, researchers discovered that if burn victims were encouraged to sing while having their bandages changed, they experienced less pain. The genre of music that we call the African-American spiritual arose from the suffering of slaves as they expressed their bondage and their longing for freedom in the cadences of song. And how many parents have hushed the tears of their babies with the soft notes of a lullaby? The words of our lullabies don't even make sense -- Rock-a-bye baby on the treetop? What's the cradle doing in the top of a tree? How did it get up there and why would you rock a baby in such a precarious place? The words make no sense but we trust that in the soft tones of the melody our child will hear the affirmation of our love and protection. Song, music, painting, sculpture, and even silence proclaim that as human beings our understanding will never be complete -- our brains will never be large enough to hold the wonders of the universe and unravel all mystery -- and the best response in the face of the ineffable is to stop talking altogether.

Mitslav Rostopovitch was a famous and talented musician in Soviet Russia who was exiled from his homeland in the 1970s for his support of the author Soltsynetzin, when he was labeled an enemy of the Communist state. Rostopovitch was touring Germany, playing his cello in concerts around the west, when Soltzynetzin was arrested by the KGB and placed under house arrest. Rostopovitch immediately wrote a letter of protest and released it to the western press and as he suspected would happen, the Soviet's declared him also to be an enemy of the state and he was forced into exile. He resigned himself to live the rest of his life away from his homeland and for more than two decades did so but then one night, in 1989, he turned on a television in his room in Paris and watched dumbfounded as CNN showed the images of people shattering the Berlin Wall and celebrating with champagne all night long as the Soviet Union crumbled.

The next morning, Rostopovitch flew to Berlin. Overcome with emotion, he set up his cello in the midst of the rubble of the Berlin Wall and he played Bach as the sledge hammers pounded in the background. There were no words for what was happening in his heart; there could only be music.

In our scientific age where rational atheists anxious to prove their superior intellect battle it out with biblical literalists equally sure that they have the final truth, we need to reclaim the ineffable ground. We need to be humble enough to say we cannot know it all let alone explain it all because our minds will never be big enough to express the inexpressible. We need to re-discover mystery. We need to sometimes let the questions go unanswered. We need to hear in the poetry of Proverbs the reminder that while the evil will be ensnared in their own pride, the righteous will be saved because the righteous understand that there are times when the most faithful thing to do is stop talking altogether and just sing.

----------------------------------------

1. Good Omens by Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman, p. 1

2. By Roger Scruton, Effing the Ineffable: How do we express what cannot be said?", November 4, 2010, www.bigquestionsonline.com

3. Part II: Music in Worship, by Charles Rush, Christ Church, Summit NJ, Oct 19, 2003