I have been reading Philip Hefner’s work for a while now – not a big surprise, since his work is a major part of my dissertation – but until now I did not know he had his own WordPress blog. So I am reblogging this just to share my little discovery in the first place. But also because his writing can be very – no pun intended – inspiring. See for yourself in this post on ‘spiriting’.
Can “Spirit” be a Verb?
I want to float an idea—the idea of “spirit.” The English word “spirit” is not very versatile. It’s almost exclusively used as a noun, most often referring to a supernatural power or presence, although we often speak as well of the human spirit. Once in a while you will run across spirit as an adjective as when we speak of a spirited horse. I want to raise the question whether spirit can also be a verb—an action word.
Let’s go further: if spirit is a verb, who or what is the subject of the verb? Suppose the subject is my body. I want to go beyond that and say that “my body spirits.” Yes, there’s a certain amount of linguistic acrobatics going on here, but then new ways of thinking often require that we do new things with our language.
Before I…
View original post 1,117 more words
Weekly Gardening 