In the Beginning was the Word (The Gospel According to St. John I:I). I wonder. The trouble was and still is that the Word--or any word for that matterùconveys quite different truths to different people. Culture, education, religion, perception, state of mind and healthùall filter the word to conform to acquired and conditioned behavioral patterns. Another problem is that "in the Beginning" there was no word, and there still isn't in new beginnings. Was primitive man's grunt a "verbal" expression? How about the lion's roar? Or the baby's cry? Can't Manùand God, to maintain the mythùcommunicate without speaking?
Doesn't a grieving mother's face express grief, pain, desperation? Didn't a Hitler's or Mussolini's arrogant gestures entrance the masses? Doesn't a ballerina's graceful body language charm the viewer? Behold the eyes of the lover or of the poet or of the spaced-out drug addict: Don't they tell something? Watch the arthritic hands of an oldster trying to grab a pen, or of an Italian discussing politics!
In the Beginning there likely were the cry, the grunt, the scream, and the gestures, body language, hand movements, and facial expressions. As there are today. Nonverbal communication was in the Beginning; the verb was a late human invention which developed into sophisticated languages over the millennia. And yet, nonverbal communication still overshadows verbal communication today. Sometimes it alone speaks, sometimes it complements the verb.
So, let me rewrite John's Gospel (After all, quite a few others have rewritten the Bible--and who knows how the original was?):
In the Beginning was the Sign (The Gospel according to me, 1997). And Man came to express the sign in a number of ways, such as these:
Kinetics, i.e. "The systematic use of facial expression and body gesture to communicate meaning. The notion relates especially to the way language is usedùfor example, a shrug of the shoulders to replace or accom...