Faith Works 11-3-18
Jeff Gill
A strident season, in faith and life
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Checking a couple of dictionaries, I find that the word "strident" has only been in use from the mid 17th century: it was created from the Latin verb "stridere" which means "to creak."
So a creaking, croaky sort of vocal tone, a quality of sound that's harsh and discordant, became "strident" as it was first used; it's only been since the mid-1800s that we took it to be equally useful as a description of political speech, which is the main way it's used today.
Which is interesting to me, having been through a second round of treatment for my vocal cord muscle problems. The injections for spasmodic dysphonia have left me sounding now for weeks what can only be called "strident," which of course no one is calling it. After about three weeks of little volume and much raspiness (but the spasms did go away, it's just that the cure is in many ways worse than the problem), I can be heard fairly normally, but at a higher pitch than normal, and with a strident edge to my voice.
In the last couple of weeks I've done a wedding, a funeral, preached twice and taught twice, and apologized I don't know how many times. Everyone has been very kind, extremely gracious, and kept saying "oh it's no problem at all." Perhaps that's true, but there's a difference, and I feel the need to give an account for myself, even if you've never heard my voice before. In a way, I'm saying "this is not me."
Stridency in the more common modern meaning is all around us. It's a fascinating historical parlor game (does anyone play parlor games anymore?) to debate how much worse it has been in the past. Abe Lincoln was called an ignorant ape by leading newspapers, and it got worse from there during the Civil War; Thomas Jefferson and John Adams didn't exactly play patty-cake in 1800 (do kids still play patty-cake?), and the hard feelings at the Congressional resolution of the election by Alexander Hamilton led a few years later to him and Aaron Burr resolving their dispute with pistols at dawn.
I certainly notice and give silent thanks every time there's an ad on TV where a candidate speaks about their own hopes, plans, and qualifications; most of them are commercials to promote the worst qualities, so called, of their opponents. It gets downright . . . strident.
As in any escalation, the question is who stops ratcheting up the stridency? Who stops first? And if you cease going negative, and your opponent continues, there's plenty of evidence that's a winning strategy: and whose fault is that? If we reward that behavior, we'll get more of it. That's a parental commonplace, and if moms and dads know it, then voters should, too.
Does a strident tone in politics tend to creep out into other forms of communication? I think it does. I dreaded the coming of this season for some time, and the last few weeks have reminded me I did so with reason. Yes, in church life, in community conversations, in personal communications, I believe the overall tone of interactions is getting more strident. And there's little sense that anyone seems to feel they need to give an account for themselves before launching into a strident statement. Is that because they're not aware of what they are sounding like? Is it that they believe their stridency is self-evident, and self-explanatory? I do not know, I just know that there's a tension in the air, and a loss of individual identity and empathy, as a general strident tone has taken over much of our dialogue.
So of course, I simply pray for peace, and seek to give an account of my own strident voice when it sounds different from how I usually speak.
Speaking of peace, next Sunday (a week from tomorrow) is the centennial of the end of World War I, Armistice Day years ago, and more recently transformed into Veterans Day. But it was at "the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" in 1918 that "the war to end all war" came to an end. It is appropriate to ring bells at 11 am on November 11, and especially so this year. I plan to interrupt our second service for bell ringing and silence at 11:00 am, including this solemn remembrance in our worship. Newark's Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 1060 hopes that any church with bells could ring them for two minutes at 11:00 am next Sunday, and I join them in this invitation.
But tomorrow, don't forget to fall back one hour!
Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and pastor in Licking County; tell him about your ways of coping with stridency at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.
