There are moments in life when language fails us. Not in the obvious way,where we forget a name or stumble over a sentence,but in the deeper, quieter sense. The way a meadow feels after the last bird has flown. The echo of a bell after it’s been taken down. It is not merely the absence of speech, but the absence of those who once spoke with truth, with beauty, with brave imperfection.
Many of our heroes are gone now. The poets, prophets, and tender question-askers. Those who knew the power of a single word shaped by conscience and steeped in care. Their absence leaves behind not just grief, but a kind of linguistic orphanhood. We still remember their cadences,the rhythmic lilt of Baldwin, the ragged clarity of Mary Oliver, the thunderous hush of Toni Morrison,but the world feels a little more hollow without their breath moving through it.
And so we find ourselves standing in the quiet aftermath, wondering: What shall we do with the language they’ve left us? What do we make of these fragile inheritances,sentences scribbled in margins, prayers folded into books, slogans that once stirred revolutions?
Some try to enshrine these voices, setting their words in glass. But the danger of enshrinement is stagnation. Sacred words become relics; relics become distant. Others attempt imitation,flattering mimicry, echo without root. But language, like spirit, must be breathed anew. It must find its form again in the mouths of the living, reshaped by present urgency and particular tenderness.
To be a steward of the word is to take up this task with reverence and courage. It is to recognize that language is not neutral,it either nourishes or depletes, heals or wounds, opens or closes the future. Stewardship means we do not speak just to be heard. We speak to build, to bind, to bless, to beckon others toward what is possible.
This does not mean our speech must be perfect. Quite the opposite. There is something deeply sacred in imperfect speech when it is honest, vulnerable, and offered with care. The world doesn’t need polished sermons or algorithmic eloquence. It needs voices that tremble with conviction, that carry memory in their marrow, that know when to say, “I do not know, but I will stay with you anyway.”
In this series, we will walk together through the textures of faithful speech,speech shaped by justice and mercy, by wonder and grief. We will reflect on grammar not as a technical matter, but as an ethical one. On silence not as withdrawal, but as hospitality. On metaphor not as ornament, but as resistance to the flattening forces of the age.
But before all that, let us pause here. Before the first word is uttered. Let us honour the voices who walked before us,not with mimicry, but with a renewed vow: to carry forward the gift of language not as possession, but as offering. To speak not louder, but deeper. To remember that every time we open our mouths, we are either building a world or breaking one.
In this fragile, fractured moment, the question is no longer whether we will speak. We already are.
