Short Words

Short words are tricky. They lull you to sleep with their apparent simplicity. After all, short words are often merely conjunctions or prepositions; and everyone knows that that the meaty words are nouns, the action words are verbs, and the descriptive words are adjectives and adverbs. Short little words that are conjunctions and prepositions are almost as popular as the number Zero (0).

However, the difference between "and" and "or" can be significant. In math, for instance, the difference between "and" and "or" may sometimes define an expression, an inequality (compound or continued), or an equation. But for us mere mortals, we see the difference more easily in simple statements like these, as there is a difference between (i) "Please take the dog to the kennel and get gas on your way home," on the one hand, and (ii) "Please take the dog to the kennel or get gas on your way home."

Nevertheless, I've grown accustomed to recognizing the difference between "and" and "or." I look for it, and it rarely catches me by surprise any more.

But there are two two-letter words that I haven't thought as much about: "on" versus "in."

The first thing that's amazing about these "simple" 2-letter words is that the Apple dictionary on my Mac has 16 or more definitions for each of these two words. There are 12 definitions of the word "on" when used as a preposition and 4 definitions when used as an adverb. For the word "in," the Apple dictionary lists 8 definitions as a preposition, 5 as an adverb, 3 as an adjective, and 1 as a noun. These two simple 2-letter words are powerfully flexible.

The second surprising thing about these two words is how many words it takes to define them. The first definition of the word "on" -- for example -- is "physically in contact with and supported by (a surface)." And yes, I think it's ironic that the word "on" is defined, in part, by use of the words "in" and "and."

The first definition of the word "in" is even more comical. Believe it or not, it takes 17 words to define the word "in," as follows: "expressing the situation of something that is or appears to be enclosed or surrounded by something else."

I warned you at the outset that short words were tricky.

All of this nonsense awoke me this morning for some reason. It's a Saturday morning, and I had the opportunity to roll out of bed slowly and think. And then pray -- this time, on my knees because the footstool presented itself, for a change, free and clear of any of my unfolded clean clothes. Prayer can literally be exhausting at times -- as I become overwhelmed with my own failures and the sheer large number of people I want to pray for and the extent of all of my and their concerns.

So when I quickly ran out of fresh new words to say for Zach, Jonathan, Drew, Kiersten, and Linda, I suddenly remembered the prayer Jesus taught us to pray:

On earth.

In heaven.

I am (we are) on earth -- physically in contact with and supported by earth's surface.

But heaven is different. When we refer to heaven, we never say "on heaven." We always say "in heaven." And just like difference between the words "and" and "or" can be significant, so here the difference between the words "in" and "on" is rather important.

In heaven expresses the situation of something (in this case, perhaps me and you) that is enclosed or surrounded by something else (in this case, heaven).

And so when I prayed this morning the prayer that Jesus taught us to pray, I prayed that God's will would be done for each member of my family on earth as it is (already) in heaven. In other words, may heaven somehow envelop each of us on earth today, tomorrow, and in the life to come.

I acknowledge that I'm not sure what to make of heaven. It sure doesn't feel like heaven here when I'm stressed about work and my body aches with aging and arthritis and the cares and concerns of my "on earth" experience rise up to try to overwhelm me. But is it possible that heaven already envelops us, but we simply can't see it with these mortal eyes? Teilhard de Chardin may have been asking this very same question in The Divine Milieu, about which I've written a lot earlier in this blog.

If Jesus was the intersection of heaven and earth (if he united the two), and if we are to become like Jesus, I think I somehow need to see my place in that intersection more often and more clearly than I presently do.

Short words are complicated. I need to rest my brain.