It is said that the world was created through ten utterances. You might have noticed this already in the Biblical story. God speaks things into existence. “God said, ‘Let there be light.’ And there was light.” “And God said: ‘Let the waters under the sky be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so.”
Ten of these and – poof! – you have a world. In most of these cases, there isn’t a separate act of creation that follows the speech. The speech itself directly creates the thing. It’s a speech act. That’s a pretty amazing concept if you think about it. The ancient people didn’t believe that God did something physically to create the elements of the world – maybe because God wasn’t envisioned as a physical being. Maybe speech was the one thing that could cross over from whatever dimension God was in to our dimension. Words were the medium through which an idea in the mind of God burst into the physical world and became reality. Speech had power.
And of course, it does. God isn’t the only one who speaks things into existence. Every time we open our mouths, the word-vibrations that come out constitute an act that affects the world. Positively and negatively. In Jewish tradition there is a prohibition against what’s called “evil speech,” that is gratuitously saying something bad about someone or gossiping. An old rabbinic tale goes like this: A man went about the community telling malicious lies about the rabbi. Later, he realized the wrong he had done, and began to feel remorse. He went to the rabbi and begged his forgiveness, saying he would do anything he could to make amends. The rabbi told the man, “Take a feather pillow, cut it open, and scatter the feathers to the winds.” The man thought this was a strange request, but it was a simple enough task, and he did it gladly. When he returned to tell the rabbi that he had done it, the rabbi said, “Now, go and gather the feathers. Because you can no more make amends for the damage your words have done than you can recollect the feathers.”
It’s so true, isn’t it? Things proliferate. When we say things, our words go out into the world like feathers and have a life of their own. Our speech, especially today, has an impact on the other side of the world. Artists recognize this phenomenon that once they’ve created something, it’s no longer really theirs. The feeling is called “creative alienation.” Once a piece of art or music or writing is out in the world it no longer really belongs to the artist. Others are affected by it; others interpret it and reinterpret it, and claim it for their own. Of course this is nowhere more true than with the Bible itself, but that’s a story for another time. The point is that speech may originate at a single source (you or me or maybe God) but then the vibrations ripple outwards pretty much forever.
This principle of proliferation has its inception, according to the story, on the third day of creation. On this day, God separates out the water, makes the dry land appear, and speaks plants into existence. Here’s what the text says about the plants: “And God said, ‘Let the earth bring forth vegetation, the herb yielding seed and the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth.’” Plant-making is a whole different sport than we’ve seen before in this story. Unlike the first two days in which God makes something static or separates two things once and for all, on the third day God designs living things – a diverse multiplicity of living things (different kinds) – that have the built in capacity to grow and to regenerate on their own for ever after. The seed is the focus here – the grown plant is almost parenthetical. (Kind of like the saying, “A chicken is a device used by an egg to make another egg.”) The text specifies, “The fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind” – so, like, a pomegranate tree yielding pomegranates – “whose seed is in itself.” So every single plant is created with its own seed, which will then grow to become another plant with its own seed. There are no dead ends here in creation.
And of course each plant doesn’t just make one seed to replace only itself. A single pomegranate has hundreds of seeds. And seeds travel far and wide by being eaten or carried in the fur of animals. Some plants have seeds that blow away in the breeze like the pillow feathers. Some spores ride on particles of dust as they travel on wind currents across the ocean. Plants don’t have a choice about reproducing. If the conditions are right, they will do it. It’s part of their essence – simply part of the domino effect spreading out from the initial speech-act of their creation.
While we humans are not compelled to literally reproduce like plants, the general principle of proliferation still applies in our lives. We each produce fruit of our kind (in the form of our words and actions) and each fruit that we produce contains seeds of its kind. We can’t opt-out of this system. We can’t waive our right to proliferate. We can’t choose to have our words not affect anything. We can’t commit even a single act in a vacuum. What happens in Vegas actually does not stay in Vegas. It goes everywhere. When we speak badly of someone or tell lies or spread hatred, the consequences of that speech-act ripple outward and spread that harm far and wide in places and ways that we could never anticipate or imagine.
This principle is being illustrated so dramatically in today’s world where terrorist acts are seeded by speech. Robert Dear killed three people at a Colorado Planned Parenthood, saying, “no more baby parts,” a phrase that’s traceable like DNA to the recent false accusations that Planned Parenthood is selling “baby parts.” ISIS has discovered that they don’t even need to send fighters from Iraq and Syria to kill Westerners; they can send words. And, especially with the help of the Internet, the words scatter like seeds, blowing easily across national boundaries, across mountains and oceans. And they land and grow roots and inspire people, like the couple in San Bernardino, to commit violence right where they are. The words become deeds. And likewise the words of hatred, racism, and xenophobia spoken by leaders like Donald Trump are already bearing fruit in the form of hate crimes against Muslims in this country and they will almost certainly breed more terrorism around the world. Once spoken, words are the medium through which an idea bursts into the physical world and becomes reality.
But of course this also means when we do good through our speech, when our words are kind and compassionate, when we speak the truth that needs to be spoken, that goodness also reverberates around the world. It takes on a life of its own – it separates from us and takes on new meanings in new contexts. Examples of this also abound. And you don’t need to be Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. for your words to do powerful good in the world. Some of you may have read in the New Yorker last year about a nonprofit organization called Crisis Text Line. It’s a crisis hotline that operates entirely via text messages. So people, mainly millennials and younger, text in and chat with volunteer crisis counselors. Many describe devastating traumas – sexual abuse, cutting themselves, drug use, illness, depression, brutal bullying at school. Many feel so hopeless and isolated, they talk about wanting to die.
The crisis counselors send good speech out into the universe. They listen and they identify the strengths that the texter already has. They say things like, “Wow, you are being such a good friend to Jackie.” Or “it took a lot of courage to reach out to us today.” Or “you have a lot of grace under pressure.” Or “I can tell you’re a caring person.” Their only tool to help these people is words. Just words. Words in their barest, nakedest form on a phone screen or computer screen. And at the end of a text conversation, which can be anywhere from 15 minutes to hours long, the texter almost always says that they feel better. Sometimes they have a new plan that they came up with for finding safety or starting healing. And sometimes they say, “You just saved my life.” An average of five times a day, Crisis Text Line initiates an active rescue where police or medical professionals find the person and prevent them from killing themselves. Words are the medium through which an idea bursts into the physical world and becomes reality.
The seeds we put into the universe will spread and grow their own plants, bearing fruit of their kind, with still more seeds. We can’t know how far our word-acts will reach. It is said that anyone can count the seeds in an apple, but only God can count the number of apples in a seed. So we are wise to be intentional about the seeds we plant. What are we speaking into existence in this world? What new realities are we conjuring with our words? Even in the way we respond to the evil speech in the world right now, how can we put out healing and compassion? What are the right words that will make space for diverse peoples and diverse voices, space for health and growth?
You can imagine how the ancient Hebrews must have envisioned our planet at the end of the third day of creation. You now had all the elements of a beautifully-balanced ecology. You had earth nurturing a fabulous diversity of growing plants – olive trees, hibiscus flowers, ferns, evergreens, water lilies, cacti, tall grasses – you had light from the sky kissing their leaves, you had rainwater filtering through the rakiya watering them. The plants carried their offspring in their seeds that blew and grew into new plants with their own seeds. And when the old plants died, they fell to the earth and the same light and rain broke down their bodies and they dissolved back into the soil to nourish the next generation. This was a spoken world of natural beauty, diversity, and abundance.
Ultimately, it’s not the cautionary tale of the evil speech and the feathers, but rather this lush and verdant proliferation of goodness that is the vision of the third day of creation. It’s not about terrorism and hate crimes, but about Crisis Text Line and all the ways we plant our loving seeds and proliferate compassion. Because after life burst into the world for the first time and after the herbs and fruit trees were empowered to launch their own green selves forward into the future, the text says, “and God saw that it was good. And it was evening and it was morning. A third day.”