The meaning of “the”

“Don’t mess with your Mom,” said my husband to our son. “She knows all about words.” My son said, “Oh yeah? Then what does ‘the’ mean?”

I said, “It means God.” And I went on to point out the word “Theos”, and the Spanish and Arabic for “the” - “el” and “al” respectively, and how they are like the Arabic “Allah” and the Hebrew “El”, which is also found in words like ”element”. Not that I had learned this anywhere - it had just come to mind and it seemed true enough to repeat.

I’ve been visiting Carlos (not his real name) in jail. Carlos has brown skin, two fore and aft creases on each side of his bald head, a Cuban accent, and a ready smile which, though showing true light, also illumines a sense of having lived in a faithless world long enough not to be taken in by much. We had been reading the Bible Lesson, and he had asked me about a passage in Science and Health that referred to “Elohim.” So I had started talking to him about “El” - God in Hebrew, “the” in Spanish; and “Al” and Allah, “The” and “God”, respectively, in Arabic. He showed me how, if you put your hands together in a certain way, the lines on it spell “Allah” in Arabic.

The next time I saw Carlos, he had just spent eight days “in the hole” - solitary confinement - because he had gotten into a fight with another inmate. He felt that the other guy had started the fight, but things in jail often go that way. After we did some reading in the Bible and Science and Health, he said, in a weary sort of a way, “well, maybe I’ll be saved.” He said that although he had been trying to pray, he didn’t have any confidence that it was doing any good.

So I told him about “the”. I told him “the” is the existential article, which means it is the sign that something is. And God is the only thing that is, and the only evidence of existence. I said, you can tell that God exists because you exist. And God is good, and you can tell that because inside, you desire goodness, and you know you are good. So you don’t have to wonder if God is here - you can tell God is here. I said, that knowledge inside that you are good gives you the map of how to be good. It is also a basis for your prayer for justice - since you can tell God is here, you can also be confident that God is in charge of everything, so nothing unjust gets to stand - it has to be wiped out by the understanding of Truth.

When I left the jail, out to the cool wind and the overcast day in downtown Seattle, the aliveness of the air caught me with a desperate poignancy. I thought, it’s not right for people to put other people in jail. It’s not right to deprive them of this air, and this ability to move down the hill and around the courthouse under the sycamore trees, with people and pigeons moving around, and seagulls in the distance. I know there is a need for some basis of rule by law, but I think many of the laws that put people in prison, and many of the allocations that provide for prisons, were made for political purposes. Let’s get tough on crime. Let’s make our streets safe. Things people can’t disagree with, but I think the laws that get passed and the facilities provided don’t actually fulfill the purpose for which they were ostensibly established, nor do they meet the needs of the people in there.

The following week I was back at the jail, waiting (in one of the many inevitable waits) for my next visitee to come out. I remembered the way the air felt the last time I left, and I suddenly had the sense that what I had felt was essential goodness, in other words, the presence of God. In that instant it became clear to me that no structure, however imposing, could keep God out. And in that instant, I felt the same enlivening, joy catching uplift that I associate with being outside when the air is fresh. I thought, no unjust systems get to stay. God is the establisher of all being. God’s present good is here and is the only thing that determines what is. No structures can stay if they’re not built according to the pattern of Truth, because Truth establishes everything.

Even if it looks as if many things are broken - people’s lives and the laws that try to regulate them, social and economic systems and the people trying to live in them - the truth that God is what is, as present and everpresent as “the”, can course through all experience and show goodness to be the necessary law for everything.