At some point in our lives, we realize how absurd language can be. This may have come from learning a new phrase or grammar rule. But I suspect for most of us, the revelation arrived when we were young and decided, for whatever reason, to repeat a word numerous times in our minds or out loud. 

If you haven’t tried it, you should. Pick a word, any word. 

Let it roll around and off your tongue a hundred times, then try to tell me that the word didn’t take on new meanings and convey different feelings.

If your word was a noun, did it make you think new thoughts about whatever your word signified? If it was another part of speech, did it make you question your previously held understanding of sentence structure? 

Did you feel weird? 

There is a phrase for this phenomenon: semantic satiation. The idea of semantic satiation posits that when you say something repeatedly, your brain begins to work in different ways and move at different speeds. The repetition can cause the brain to slow down and demand rest. 

However, I recently had a conversation where semantic satiation did the opposite, lighting up my neurons in ways that stimulated my thinking and expanded my sense of wonder. 

I was talking with a friend when the subject of one of our mutual acquaintances came up. (For anonymity, I will refer to the mutual acquaintance as “Reagan.”) I had not seen Reagan in over a year, but my friend had recently met and spent some time with Reagan. 

To stave off your frustration, I shouldn’t bury the lede any more than I already have. Reagan prefers people to not use pronouns to refer to Reagan but, instead, use Reagan’s name in any place a pronoun would typically be used. 

I won’t lie– when I was first exposed to the reality of transgender and nonbinary identities, I winced at all it might require of me. But here, in the Year of our Lord, 2024, I have had practice. So when I heard about Reagan’s preference, I thought, “No pronouns, gendered or otherwise? Just proper names? Ok, that’s different, but I can do this.” 

The conversation with my friend about Reagan went like most conversations between friends about other friends go. We talked about Reagan’s current job, where Reagan is living and what my friend and Reagan talked about when they recently hung out with each other. I talked about how I knew Reagan, how kind Reagan always was to me and about how fulfilling it has been to see all that Reagan is becoming. 

The conversation began clunky, just as it may have felt for you reading that last paragraph. I messed up a lot, from slipping into using the gendered pronoun I once referred to Reagan as, to using the non-gendered pronouns “they” and “their,” which I am slightly more familiar with. But with a little practice, I began referring to “Reagan” as “Reagan” with (relative) ease. 

Once it became more manageable, I noticed the semantic satiation doing something different than what the experts say it does. Rather than slowing down, my brain began to speed up. Instead of Reagan’s name being diluted of meaning, which can happen with semantic satiation, Reagan’s name became charged with what I can only call concentrated holiness. 

The Imago Dei in Reagan became more pronounced with every repetition of Reagan’s name. 

Respecting people’s preferences concerning pronouns shouldn’t be as controversial as we make it. Many languages don’t even have gender pronouns. This requires extra work when they speak languages that do, but they figure it out. 

The Estonian language doesn’t have gender pronouns. (It also has no future tense, which lends itself to the joke that “Estonians have no sex and no future.”) In conversations in English with my Estonian friends, they often slip up, referring to someone who prefers male pronouns as “she” and vice versa. 

Usually, after a lot of practice, they catch themselves and immediately find the preferred word. Sometimes they don’t. 

But I have never once heard an Estonian get angry at this linguistic challenge. They simply approach it with curiosity, work and wonder. 

One of my favorite television series from the past few years is “Reservation Dogs.” The show tells the story of the lives of a group of Indigenous American teenagers in the aftermath of a traumatic event. 

The three seasons of the show were teeming with humor and heart. They also were educational, revealing cultural differences between indigenous people and those in the dominant culture. 

In reflecting on one of these cultural differences the show revealed, an acquaintance recently wrote, “Our sense of wonder has been replaced by suspicion that generates an illusion of certainty. Their posture creates space for revelation, like, ‘Well would you look at that!’” 

Instead of suspicion and frustration, what if the wild world of pronouns evoked a sense of wonder in us? What if, every time we learned something new about the different ways people want to be referred, our response is a childlike, “Would you look at that?” followed by an, “Ok, I can do that.”  

For those who follow Jesus, it’s not like we don’t have guidance. In Galatians 3:28, we are told there is “neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek.” Of course, a faithful reading of the text recognizes that the existence or non-existence of the categories of male, female, Jew or Greek is irrelevant. 

Their irrelevance is the point. What matters is what follows, “You are all one in Christ Jesus.” 

Well would you look at that? 

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