Words are great. I use them every day. When Benjamin was not talking at four years old I was concerned. Then he blew us out of the water by spelling with cookies. There are people on the spectrum who never harness the power of words, which can lead to frustration.
But there is also a parallel existence that gets along nicely without them. Infants do not seem to have a truncated sense of joy nestled in their mother's arms, simply because they can't chat. The experience of standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon or the cliffs of Scotland is not dependent on our ability to blab. Neither is the rapture of listening to Bach or a forest of birds at dawn. There is a
recording of a wren's song, which includes 64 notes in 8 seconds. The researchers thoughtfully play it again in a slower speed so we humans can keep up a bit better.
Touch is its own language, and can express what an annual report never will. Flowers live a meaningful lifespan without whispering a single syllable.
The other evening I sat next to a man who is involved in the organization IANDS. People who have lived through a near death event have a lot to expound about it. But then again some of them never utter a word to anyone for a long time.
The wisdom of angels is indescribable in words, but can only be illustrated by some general things. Angels can express in a single word what man cannot express in a thousand. Again, a single angelic word contains innumerable things that cannot be expressed in human language. For in every single word spoken by angels, there are secrets of wisdom in a continuous connection to which human knowledges never reach. Again, what the angels fail to express in the words of their
speech they make up by the tone, in which there is an affection for the things in its order. Thus it is that the things heard in heaven are said to be ineffable.
-Emanuel Swedenborg, Heaven and Hell 269
