Letter # 46: Best Word Ever

Now you, too, can be an insufferable snob.

Ye Olde Dad,

A minor tragedy of my life is that my favorite word in the English language makes you sound like an insufferable snob if you use it in casual conversation. I know, I know, world’s smallest violin. But it really is a great word. And I guess if I didn’t want to sound like an insufferable snob, I shouldn’t have spent all that time in school training to be...an insufferable snob.

The word is “palimpsest.” It comes from two Greek words meaning “erased again” or, more loosely, “written over.” See, in ye olde papyrus times, writing tools were hard to come by. You had to spend hours pounding reeds flat just to get a surface that would hold ink so you could write a memo to your assistant: 

Tiberius,
We’re out of reeds.
—Myron

Imagine the time it took to write a grocery list. So if you needed extra space, instead of spending hours at the reed-pounding store, you’d just grab a used papyrus, rub out the old stuff you didn’t need (say, the last remaining copy of Aristotle’s lost dialogues) and write in something more important (say, a receipt for goat milk). Voilà! You have a palimpsest.

Naturally, priorities have changed somewhat since papyrus times. Often we find we’d very much like to trace the faded outlines of the hidden text. And that’s why I’m talking about all this. It’s not just to be an insufferable snob. It’s because a palimpsest is a perfect metaphor for the relationship between spirit and flesh, history and allegory, symbol and meaning...well, for basically everything you and I have been talking about.

We live palimpsestic lives. We muddle along, buying goat’s milk or protein bars, making breakfast or getting married, messing up, getting sick. But layered faintly under the basic facts of our vividly physical experience, there’s another story—a story of triumph, desire, tragedy, love. A story with cosmic significance.

John’s Gospel says that on the cross, Jesus joined his mother Mary to one of his disciples: “woman, behold your son.” Some Christians think that in that moment he bestowed her on us all, as the mother of all believers. Others think that’s putting Mary too high, elevating her on a par with the divine when she was just a woman.

If someone’s about to settle that debate, it sure ain’t me. I can’t tell you for certain what the cosmic significance of that moment was. But I can tell you that it had cosmic significance, because every moment does. Yes, Mary was just a woman. So are you and I just men. So did Jesus himself, in his godhead, consent to be a man.

But because he did, none of us are simply human: as C.S. Lewis said, you have never met a mere mortal. There’s another layer written on the same surface, scrawled over by sin and death but still visible, still charged with meaning. God makes palimpsests of us all.

Love,
Palimpspence