Let's Play a game: odd intellect

Can you name the famous intellectuals?
1. This scientist, who spent more time in the Bible than in researching science, believed the earliest date of the apocalypse would be 2060AD.
2. This scientist believed he could work things out with his estranged wife by proposing a contract which included such gems as: "you will make sure I receive three meals regularly in my room." And "you will renounce all personal interactions with me insofar as that are not completely necessary for social reasons."
3. This polymath, who seemed to have a love for puns and subtle mischief, spent some of his time making a considerable list of humorous synonyms to describe his man bits.
4. This philosopher, novelist and satirist when he was able to return to his home country, one of a few he was either exiled from or jailed in, became wealthy by buying shares of the governments new lottery.
5. This Nobel prize winner, who was also the parent of a Nobel prize winner, battled scandal when it was discovered they were having an affair with a scientist, who was a married father of four.

Hpaet

Often times we think of the spoken words in terms of a turn of phrase or great speeches. But these are like comparing photographs to what is really a movie. Language is not a stagnant thing.

I started this current obsession, this current interest, with a simple desire to be able to read Beowulf in its original written form. Beowulf is an epic poem of a hero who fights a monster, Grendel, then the monster's smother, then finally a dragon. It takes place in Scandinavia, but is written in English, Old English. So, I have an old poem with a hero, monsters and dragon, but I might have to learn some new words, right?

Well, it is a little trickier than that. Even though the poem was only written by people in England that spoke in a way that evolved into modern English, it is not recognizable. The first line reads like this, "Hpæt pe Gardena in gear dagum, þeod cyninga, þrym ge frunon, huða æþelingas ellen fremedon!" Old English looks more like German than English, but it is not German either.

So, what is Old English? It is not the language of Shakespeare, that would be Early Modern English. It is not the language of Chaucer's Canterbury tales, that would be Middle English. This is older than all of that, the language of the Anglo Saxons, who occupied what is now England. Their language was a fusion of Latin, two dialects of Norse and a bit of Celtic. It wasn't a static entity, either though, it change and evolved over 700 years, the final major change coming in 1066 with the Norman conquest of England.

If you look of that Old English word Hpæt you will find a few things. First, you will find that it is an alternate spelling of the word Hwaet (rhymes with cat). Second, you will find that translators commonly translate this word to Listen. If you dig a little deeper, though, you will see it is more closely aligned with the word "what", a question meant to draw attention. Do you see the string now? The hint of how we got from there to here?

Hpæt is an alternate spelling of the word pronounced Hwaet. This word is the Anglo Saxon version of the Proto-Germanic khwat, the old Saxon what or the Danish hvad. This word, by 1300 was recorded as what, like we see it today. No alternate spelling, reversing the first two letters.

It is hard to explain why I love this, but there is something like ancestry and mystery in this search. It makes every word we speak not just the word itself, but carrying the blood of all the words that precede it. It speaks to the ideas of mutation and evolution in the things we say, but also of how words carry from one culture to another. It makes me wonder if all language draws back to just a handful of Proto-languages, if the variations are predictable, if you could read dozens of languages just by knowing their progenitor, if you could show cultures interacted with each other by word sharing. It feels to me like a puzzle which has been before my eyes my whole life, but I didn't know. I had been admiring the snapshots, but had no idea there was a movie behind each one.

Walking Alone

Today as I prepared for my walk one of my coworkers asked me if I would pick up some food from Chipotle. We tried this yesterday, he didn't get the order in, I had to adjust my path and ultimately I came back to work with his money, not his lunch. So, informed him that if he walked with me, he could pick up his own lunch. At that point he went to Reuben, who I normally walk with, and it turned out it would be too cold for him to walk today. So, Perry would have to get his own lunch, and I would walk alone.

On previous days when I have walked alone, I would bring my iPad, listen to podcasts, have a voice in my ear the whole time. I liked this time, getting the exercise while I listened to a story on This American Life or Sawbones, but all the noises have started to bleed into another. I work and listen to podcasts or have Netflix on in the background. At home, I'm painting or playing games and TV is on in the background. Even when I drive I'm gathering more sound bits. I fall asleep to our bedroom TV, set to a timer. I wake up to the sound of the radio.

At the same time I am doing all this listening, listening to multiple things at once, my prayer life has suffered. I have a prayer list, which I pray through on a regular basis. I pray before meals. I pray at church. So often, though, this is squeezed between other thinks I'm doing a listening to. I'm getting said what I need to say, but I'm not doing any listening. All demand, all request, all confession, all from me up, but not making any time, any void in the wall of sound for God to speak through.

I locked my iPad in my office. I took my phone, but no headphones, and I headed out on a much needed prayer walk. I didn't take a list, and I tried not to even think about my list. My goal was to listen. With nothing in my ears, listen. I thought of my Father-in-Law, who was talking to a doctor. My friend Larry, who is serving in Afghanistan, and his family. I thought of a couple in church, who I haven't seen in a couple weeks. I though of a lady, who I am a deacon for, who lost her husband and daughter in the last year and how I could make her feel needed. I thought of the things God was asking me to do and I tried to fight all those rationalizations which I use to stay just the way I am. It's good enough to please those around me, isn't it.

He wants more from me. At work. At home. In church. In prayer.

Focus, Jason, focus.

We make the pieces fit

It is striking to me, at the moment, how little we know. I don't mean this in terms of compared to the sum of all knowledge, which would be bad enough, but how little we know compared to what we think we know. This isn't because of a lack of evidence, in fact, if anything, it is because of an over abundance of evidence. It isn't because we are led astray or conned by someone else, more times than not, it is ourselves.

When I was in elementary school, young enough I was still riding the bus, which might mean Kindergarten, but I don't remember for sure. Anyway, for that brief window I made a discovery. I learned, rather found, secret of initials. See my name was Jason and my initials were JAS. This meant, your initials must be the first three letters of your name. My friend across the street, Nathan Andrews had the initials NA (first letters of his name). It worked, the pieces fit perfectly. For a brief window, I was the boy who, if I knew your name, I could also tell you your initials. I had evidence, I had made a discovery, tested it and it worked. It would be two weeks and several arguments later I would discover I was mistaken. This was hard, because even though there was plenty of counter evidence, I already had an answer where the pieces fit. An answer that didn't challenge my self worth, or problem solving skills. An answer that made me feel very clever. I didn't want this other truth.

We have the internet now, which means if I wanted to prove my initial theory I could probably find an abundance of people who fit the criteria, I could make a much better case about how initials are derived. Additionally, there would be lots of evidence to the contrary, but I don't have to take those claims seriously. They might be made up, or part of a conspiracy, or just wrong because. They are not as clever as I am.

Politics is full of these links and assumptions and believes supported by evidence. President Barack Obama was born in Kenya, look it up. President George Bush planned the attack on the twin towers, you can look that up two. Liberals all want to steal from the rich to pay for abortions and conservative all want to starve grandparents and kill homosexuals. They are monoliths, giant, faceless united organizations which, if you believe anything about them, you can probably find evidence to support you. What conclusion you come to will be the one where the pieces fit. Not the right pieces. The pieces that fit inside of you.

What do you know about your parents? Your kids? Your wife? The Bible? National Healthcare Reform? What do you know about the dangers of gun control? History? Global Warming? There are millions of topics with millions of pieces of evidence. What do you actually know, and what is just reinforcing a belief you held anyway? Right or wrong we insulate the walls of our own truths with bits that work. A world shaded by our own lens. I wonder today how much I know is just a clever boy trying to prove to himself that he is still clever.