Jonathan Glover, circa 1948. |
At just over 5-foot tall with shoes on, and 130-pounds soaking wet, the Someone else that Jonathan embodied was not easy to identify upon first glance. Unlikely vessel, perhaps. But then again, I hear, He was the least of these. What was clear, however, was that the Word inside Jonathan was bigger than he was. It overflowed incessantly. Everywhere. To anyone. He couldn't keep It in, nor did he try. Moments when Jonathan would become the Word were readily visible. His body would pulse with excitement. His short spine would stretch to hold him higher. He would spring up on the balls of his feet, lest Satan catch him on his heels. The volume and cadence of his voice would alter, rising and falling, quickening and pacing, punctuating and pausing. He would pronounce "God" differently, as though it was spelled with a "w" after the "G." A learned melody and sing-song style. The Word had an accent. Weberian charisma. The Word had charm. Jonathan had mastered a craft. Jonathan had been mastered by a craft. To watch Jonathan manifest the Word was like watching a bird in an updraft, effortlessly gliding, animated, held aloft, driven by an invisible thing.
Jonathan Glover's forebears. Circa 1908. |
Jonathan and Gwen, circa 1990. |
It was strange to see Jonathan's vessel emptied. Without the Word, he was not he. Jonathan wandered aimlessly. He spat, he pinched, he hit. Nurses fed him, changed him, cleaned him. He did not know me, and I'm not sure I knew him. Minus whatever sundry neural pathways that register selfhood to selves, in the last months, I'm not sure he even knew himself. But such are bodies.
Thinking about Jonathan's life and death, the work of Candy Brown, Matt Sutton, John Modern, and Susan Harding kept coming to mind. Words. Media. The ability of things to get under the skin. The evangelical presumption that things can get under the skin. The Living Word in the world is a cornucopia of possibility and potentiality, just as much constructed as it is constructing. Jonathan took comfort in the process of the Word. As a proud representative of a thing beyond him, the horizon of Jonathan's selfhood is less bounded.
The Word is released and created in memory and oral history. The Word is a reality beckoned through cognition and speech. Forever entombed in binary code and the digitized ether of a blog. Resurrected through Google or an archival search. Summoned at a thought. Present in a recollection. Apotheosized through public prayer.
As a datum, it seems, the Word is as omnipresent as the media used to mediate it. Text, speech, radio, silicon, neuron, and Jonathan. As a datum, the Word is both strikingly mundane and eternally complex, existing outside of us because of us. Structuring structure.
But as a friend, the Word ate slow. So slow. The Word had a sweet tooth and ticklish knees. The Word once tried to put chocolate sauce, still in his pantry from 1994, on my ice cream ... in 2007. The Word watched Andy Griffith reruns every day during lunch. Perhaps you didn't know.
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