And Now for Something Completely Different

Letting hemispheres meet in words?

Niels Bohr was a science giant who knew how to bow the knee to the beyond-words nature of the universe he was discovering. He was quoted as saying, “If anybody says he can think about quantum physics without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about it.” He also drew an analogy that is often paraphrased this way: “If quantum particles spoke, it would be poetry.” What he meant was like what Gary Zukav made famous: the idea of physics as “dancing Wu-Li masters,” that is, patterns of organic energy that are far less amenable to being pinned down in words than their large slowed-down classical counterparts. This universe does exceed words, yet it gets transmitted through them—on our good days, that is. And God gets involved in it all.

One of the treasured discoveries I cherish from my doctoral research is a C.S. Lewis piece entitled, “Is Theology Poetry?” It was, the essay itself tells us, “Originally presented in 1944 at an Oxford debating society called the ‘Socratic Club.’ Later on, it was published in the collection entitled: They Asked for a Paper (1962).” That last title just makes me giddy, like quantum physics! In this glorious essay, Lewis’ conclusion can be summed up in one line: “Theology is…poetry to me…because I believe it.” There is an incarnational aspect here: the Logos finding its telic end in the lived experience of humanity. The entire essay is here if you want to go all the way through the wardrobe: https://www.samizdat.qc.ca/arts/lit/Theology=Poetry_CSL.pdf.

What I am about to present is what theology became in me because I believed it. To be more specific, it is emergent evidence of the hemispheric integration that the Logos generated as it passed through my thinking. This is a decade-old “crop” (because things come in seasonal harvests, it seems) of SPIRITUAL ACRONYMS that I gathered those years ago. Something of the fractalist in me, I think, always knew that in the Spirit, every WORD is a WORLD. And because it hurts me that words—and worlds—get flattened rather than being opened up for display and doors into other thought-lands, I was compelled to open them up in nontraditional ways beyond mere definition. But let’s not over-interpret: I also found these “fun,” and they gave me little doses of healthy giddiness! With only a little fear and trembling, but mostly hope of resonance, I present to you my little thesaurus below. These are the deep cuts from the vault. You didn’t ask for a paper, so you are getting my poetry.

Disclaimer before the list: In the words of Bob Dylan from My Back Pages, “I was so much older then; I’m younger than that now.” I can hear a slight left hemisphere abstraction of untested encouragement in these that borders on the dreaded “happy clappy” but, even so, I stand by them. I have always been fascinated with the Genesis account of naming animals because I am (and remain) convinced that WE get to NAME whatever parades itself into our lives. These track with that divine garden initiative that still beckons.

One pop culture note is also appropriate: Years ago, the wildly unique Gary Busey was a contestant on The Apprentice, where he spilled out his “Buseyisms” to my horror. (There is evidently a book of them, and some are intriguing.) That may have made me vault these more deeply, but I’m trusting the safe space of Substack to understand that these are touching something that we are all chasing, not just being “cute.”

With all that context, for your consideration…here are the acronym-formed musings coming to us through time:

PEACE:

Perceiving

Everything

According to His

Cosmic

Efficiency

Or, PEACE is:

Perception

Extending beyond

Antagonizing

Circumstance and into

Eternity

JOY:

Judgment ends;

Open to hope beyond

You

For TIME—I did a before and after--or perhaps a left and right hemisphere view:

Tyrannical

Icon

Manipulating

Energies

Vs.

Transient

Indicator ultimately

Manifesting

Eternity

PAIN (this one I have absolutely lived—no disclaimer at all here):

Powerful

Activation of

Inner stores of

New strength

STRUGGLE:

Super

Training

Regarding

Under-developed

Growth potential

Generating

Long-lasting

Effect for good

PRAYER:

Pressing past

Rational interpretations;

Accessing

Yet-unrealized, but

Ever-available

Resources of heaven

FOCUS:

Finding inner

Optics that

Calibrate

Understanding in the

Spirit

Here’s another pair—VICTIM to VICTOR:

Violated

Inside by

Circumstances;

Trying to

Invoke help through

My desperation

Becomes:

Valiantly (and patiently)

Identifying with

Christ’s

Triumph

Over all

Rejection and resistance

SHAME:

Seeing

Harmful

Accusations

Minus

Eternal love

GLORY:

Giving place to

Love to

Overhaul

Reports of

Your failure

And finally, here’s one that broke the rules a bit: SHINE (someone suggested to me once—and I still can’t believe this—that rather than shining myself, I should “make my husband shine”—hence, I had a lot of fuel for this one…)

SHIIINEEE:

Show

How

Intense

Interior

Illuminated

Narratives

Exceed

Exterior

Explanations

The following one is probably the mother lode of what I have to say to the world. But first indulge me in one more far-reaching pop culture reference: As Ricky Bobby in Talladega Nights famously said about photographs: “I’m not sure what to do with my hands,” so the Body of Christ has not known what to do with their brains. (They just hold them up awkwardly somewhere in the picture, like Will Farrell did in the film.) That is changing. We are learning. There ARE things to do with your brain as this acronym suggests:

THOUGHT:

Territory

Housing either

Open Potential OR

Unwelcome impasse for

God’s Higher

Truth

So, here’s to the opening out of words into worlds….What would happen if we named the things that walked across our lives according to the open system of Spirit, not just the raw data of self-protective perception? Whether or not any of these speak to you on a discrete level, at the very least perhaps they open you to the meta-system that is always in play. When it’s all said and done, there is one thing I believe is always true of the life given over to God: A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT. Sometimes that river is the “speechless Real” but sometimes it is full of words that don’t beat down but rather open out to possibilities. By all means, don’t stop here. Go anywhere you want and RENAME what has been flattened in your life, reinfusing it with the glorious…

MYSTERY:

Mastery by the right hemisphere

Your operating system;

Settling the buzzing bees at last,

Telling the full-orbed story

Experientially,

Returning worry to wonder;

Yearning finds Home.