One down, one to go

OK, so the Democratic National Convention is over. Lots of speeches. Some soared. Some stunk. Some apparently did both at the same time, depending on which commentator you listened to. Or which buddy you listened to. Or which cell-phone user at the mall you were forced to overhear.

In the introduction to his Dave Barry Hits Below the Beltway, humorist Dave Barry (I am not making that up) describes an episode of Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing. In the episode, the cast did a lot of back-and-forth about whether or not the president should denounce an environmental group that hadn't denounced eco-terrorism. Barry notes that the topic of discussion was "whether the president should say harsh words to a group because that group had failed to say harsh words to another group." Nobody, he says, was talking about doing anything, only about what they would say. I remember watching a similar episode, only the issue was whether or not the speech the president would give when he talked about -- I think -- running for a second term was ready. The press secretary lied to the reporters who asked if it was ready and then berated people who were supposed to make it ready. The central focus, though, was on the words and only the words.

In a footnote on the same page, Barry notes that when the government does something, it is often silly, such as regulating the size of holes in Swiss cheese. Page 2. It'll throw you at first, because the United States Department of Agriculture doesn't call them "holes," but "eyes." I personally do not want in my cheese eyes of any size, be it Swiss or otherwise. So maybe it's not a bad thing when they spend so much time worrying about what they say, instead of what they do.

Here's the thing about speeches. They're words. People wrote 'em, then they or sometimes other people say 'em. Speeches are talking. Maybe they're great talking, maybe they're mediocre talking or maybe they're awful talking. But they're just talking, and I think I've mentioned that preachers learn early how much just talking by itself is worth.

In The De-Voicing of Society. communications professor John L. Locke used an interesting phrase to describe the spoken word. Breathing, or respiration, has two parts. We take air in, which is inhaling or inspiration. Then we let it out, which is exhaling or expiration. Technically, spoken words come when we exhale and use our lips, tongue and teeth to modulate the sound the air produces when it passes over our vocal cords. So, as Locke notes, spoken words are "expired air." A speech -- any speech, just like any sermon -- is in reality a whole lot more expired air. I guess it's up to the listener just how much the other use of the word "expire" applies to whatever they've just heard, but in any event, that air's expired. That thought sobers me when I think about what I'm going to say when I preach, to hope and pray that the air I'm going to expire has an impact beyond itself or I'll wind up with just a lot of used-up air.

Some would note that blogging is pretty much the same thing, only without the breathing and speaking part, and that I've just spent a whole post talking about talking. Well, sure.

But I didn't use up any air.