Words & meanings

"An airport in no way represents the totality of a city or country. It is a convenient entry point, a place where you touch down. Only upon leaving it can you discover what the country you’re visiting is really like. Words bear the same relationship to religious understanding – they’re a fine entry point but soon you must leave them and voyage into the unknown, trusting the maps you have acquired. Not all maps are perfectly accurate, but nobody bothers to make one that is hopelessly wrong. You can, indeed must, trust what others have recorded about the routes you can follow – otherwise you can easily get lost and have to retrace your steps to begin all over again. But to see words as synonymous with meaning is like not seeing the 90% of an iceberg beneath the surface of the water."