Our theme for the month of October is “states.”
They told me, “a picture is worth a thousand words,” and I used to believe them. I used to believe if I only had the proper vocabulary and patience, I would be able to do or describe anything. Words were the fist that could reach out and grasp the wisp of an idea, pull it out of the ethereal atmosphere of thought, and into the tangible realm of reality. I could explain music and art, express thoughts and emotions… Words, I believed, were the ultimate vehicle for expression.
Words even carry an enormous amount of theological significance. The book of John, for example, refers to Jesus as “the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). In the book of Genesis, God spoke the universe into existence (Genesis 1: 3). And there are countless other places throughout Scripture—like the books of James, Ephesians, 1 Corinthians, and 1 Thessalonians—that emphasize the power of words: internally, relationally, and spiritually.
I never thought words would fail me, but they did. I never thought I would ever be speechless, but I was. I lost my words when I entered the fictional world of Twin Peaks, Washington.
Each episode of Twin Peaks opens with us soaring over the tops of fir trees. We fly over iconic Washington waterfalls and feel the cold, horizontal spray as we get too close. We get lost in the layer of fog that settles right under the peaks of the evergreens, and see the shapes of the mountains that close the town off from the rest of the world.
A high school girl, wrapped in plastic, washes up on the bank of the river in Twin Peaks. The whole town is devastated, and is suddenly waking up in the middle of this web that nobody realized was being spun around them. At the center of this web of mystery, surrealism, drama, and heartwarming characters is one question: who killed Laura Palmer?
The show can be an incredibly frustrating experience for someone (like me) who is very literal, analytical, and spends a lot of time fretting about how to make sense of our very confusing and complicated world. There are lots of unanswered questions (even by the end of the final season), and lots of things that seem to happen for no apparent reason. David Lynch doesn’t spoon-feed his audience with a simple narrative, and is quite comfortable with letting them feel uncomfortable.
In watching Twin Peaks, I could ask all the questions I wanted—but none of them had straight-forward answers. I could attempt to analyze, interpret, or explain it—but there would be a thousand different conclusions. For the first time, I was faced with a story that refused to let me understand it, and forced me to simply experience it.
This freedom to simply experience is antithetical to the American-Christian culture I was raised in; a culture that worships comfort and answers. And unfortunately, those two things are hugely incompatible with my two favorite things—and two things that are hugely foundational to the world of Twin Peaks and to David Lynch (the creator and director): art and spirituality.
In art and spirituality, there is rarely a straightforward path. You may not have the comfort of knowing all the answers, but you have the freedom to be honest with yourself—to wrestle with God, with our own questions, doubts, and fears… You have the freedom to shed the armor of apologetics, leave your book of catechisms at home with your phone, and go for a long walk in the woods. You have the opportunity to find truth in the places you might not have expected in our confusing and complicated world.
There’s something about letting images, feelings, and questions wash over you like those waterfalls, with your arms wide open, without always having to apologize to your friends or explain where the tears are coming from. There’s something so thrilling about unbuckling your seatbelt and saying, “I don’t know!” Or—if you’re brave enough—to take that a step further, and say, “I don’t need to know!”—and really mean it.
Twin Peaks, Washington, is where I learned that there are some things words simply cannot describe, and where I learned some things aren’t meant to be described. This is difficult news for me as a writer, but it’s the most beautiful, hopeful, and exciting news for me as a human. To know in my mind and then slowly realize in my blood that there are things in this world that I can experience and yet will never be able to explain is elating. To know there is a God that is beyond what even the words of the Bible can describe is a relief. Letting go of the words frees my mind from the slavery of constantly asking “what does this mean,” and instead allows me to be quiet. It allows me to catch the answers for fun and throw them back in the lake like a fish.
This small town in Washington is the most unlikely setting to host the strange, the staggering, and the surreal. It’s the humble manger that somehow cradles the greatest mysteries of the universe. And it taught me that sometimes even a thousand words could never possibly be enough.
Photo by Flickr user Esther Lee (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Sophia (‘19) double-majored in theatre and religion and insists that her life is a “storybook.” She lives in an apartment above a flower shop in downtown Chicago and has multiple roles working across the arts in comedy, music, theatre, film, and visual art—though her greatest passion is writing. Her work includes stage plays, screenplays, and articles, focusing mostly on cultural trends, comedy, reviews, and religious satire. She loves road trips, visiting her family in Grand Rapids, hunting for the perfect latte, and rescuing plants from the flower shop’s dumpster.
