Vern Walker’s Beyond Language led me to a variety of interesting places. Walker and I share much in common by way of background. He is a Vietnam combat vet. So am I. He has been an author, a poet and a teacher. So have I. I am familiar with the red rock of Sedona and what it is like to be in a desert. The differences are informative, too. He is a lawyer and a philosopher. I am neither, at least not in any formal sense. One different thing I am that matters deeply is that I’m a chaplain. The language spoken in that world makes “beyond language” an understatement.

Language is so much more than vocabulary and grammar. It matters who’s doing the talking and what they construe language to be. The language of a lawyer is quite different than the language of a philosopher or a poet, or a storyteller, or an engineer. Each seeks communication with elegance and precision in ways unique to the purpose at hand. It is a glorious gift to be able to read in the manner intended by an author, and a severe impediment either not to be able to do that, or worse, to refuse to do so. A special poignancy is added to the mix when reader and author are one and the same person.

Beyond Language alternates between prose and poetry as each of the five themes that make up the structure of the book is presented. I got the sense that the poetry was to there to demonstrate the poverty of the prose as well as, curiously, the poverty of the poetry. I got the sense in the early chapters about sensation and emotion that Walker, seeking the precision of philosophy and law, was uncomfortable with paradox, ambiguity and inability to control (or at least predict) the responses of others.

His discussion of “inside” and “outside,” subjective and objective experience reflects the Biblical proverb: “The heart knows its own bitterness, and in its joy no one else shares.” Prv 12:10 NAB). Language bridges that gap but imperfectly. I’m not sure I understand what he means by “Our talks of ‘outside’ and ‘inside’ makes it possible for billions of people and worlds to exist at the same time.” (p.12).

Stories serve as connective tissue in Walker’s model of space, time and memory. Although he seems to me to be a convinced materialist, I found a special poignancy in his question about the story we tell ourselves about the sun eventually burning out. Why indeed would we tell ourselves such a story? What would it mean? I suppose he could read Sean Carroll’s The Big Picture to find out. I don’t think he’d like the answer, though he’d likely have to agree with it. I wondered what he might make of Peter Kreeft’s notion of “place-time” as a way of combining meaning with physics. It is your presence and mine, and our encounters that carry meaning, and turns the “space-time” we occupy into “place-time.”

In his discussion of predicting, Walker expresses a meta-narrative about the world that I found utterly depressing: “Because life is deadly and the future uncertain, because we desire good things and strive to attain them, many of our thoughts and discussions, concepts and practices, are devoted to predicting the future and recording stories of success and failure form the past.” (p. 36). I’m put in mind of Rousseau’s characterization of life in the state of nature as “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”  What follows is then a paean to science and enhanced powers of predictability that, having taught statistics at the graduate level, I found as attractive as flat beer.

The section on "explaining" fares the same fate. Walker’s world seems to be decidedly Newtonian and deterministic, even though we live in an age of quantum indeterminacy. His ruminations might be significantly different if informed by quantum effects.

After reading the following sections, I was about to give up on exasperation, but I’m glad I did not. I found Walker’s description of “God” to be nearly identical to his attempted description of who he was himself. That explained a lot.

It got better. His description of himself mirrored Thomas Merton’s expression that “At the center of our being is a point of nothingness, which is beyond sin and illusion, a point of pure truth…which is never at our disposable, from which God disposes of our life, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind and the brutalities of our own will.” Having read this, I repented of my bad attitude about the book and found joy in the last words of the last poem, which read:

“I am

This time and place

Where these words flow,

Obtaining my meaning

From somewhere

Beyond language.”

 

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the author and/or publisher through the Speakeasy blogging book review network. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR,Part 255.