Words Become Worlds

I'm listening to Speaking of Faith while I work, as I often do. The program I've chosen today is about the Ojibwe language of a fairly isolated group of Native Americans in the Great Lakes region. I found the way the speaker described his peoples' "creation myth" beautifully astonishing, a thread connecting his origin to mine, and a brilliant testimony to the preeminence of Christ, The Word Who was with God, who spoke, and breathed us all into being.

"The same idea that words give life, is also something you find in Ojibwe culture. In one part of the creation story, we were made out of fairly inert materials, and we had no life until touched by sort of the breath of the Creator. We were blown on, and then came to life. And this link, of course, between language and breath, speech and breath, is very much alive"