ALL WORDS MATTER

I love words. Cross word puzzles. Code words. Books. Scripts. Poetry. Words inspire.

Words MATTER. This maxim has become more & more evident as I have gotten older and gotten married.  But never has it become more clear than in our current context. All Words matter. 

Most American school children were taught “Sticks and Stones will break my bones, but words will never hurt me.”  What a positive thought put into such a powerful lie.  Children, young people, and even adults today know that words can hurt, and leave lasting scars. The above pithy lie was put out with the good intention of trying to help people not take insults too personally. But in our day and age of social media and images and constant attention to the web world, we know how powerful words can be.

The current context in which I live, in the United States in 2018, I shockingly find that the current occupant of the White House is popular because of, and lives by, hate speech. The long list of those bullied or insulted by Trump and Trumpisms include: the disabled, Mexicans, women, the press, Muslims, President Obama, Senators Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, and John McCain, transgendered peoples,  Palestinians, the NFL and players who take a stand, MLB, Kim Jong-Un, the United Nations, most G8 political leaders, the FBI, James Comey, Republicans, the cast of Hamilton, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Penn Jillette,  Common Core, the IRS, various Major Department stores, and the White house itself. By end of his first year, Trump has hurled over 350 insults out on Twitter, one of his chief platforms. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/donald-trump-twitter-insults.html/

 

The most surprising thing is, not that Trump built his presidency upon caustic rhetoric, attack, innuendo, blatant lies, name-calling and outright racist, xenophobic, homophobic, misogynistic, Islamophobic bullying, but that many American constituents parrot this hurtful, not merely politically correct, verbiage.

Words in our current context have become true sticks and stones that wound, hurt, and blatantly, knowingly pull wool over people’s eyes. Not just because we were built on being a decent country with morals, or the dubious rationale we were a Christian nation, but just because it is the right thing to do, we must oppose such hate speech. We must not let it become our new normal.

Recently two very important illustrations showed me clearly how words can matter in a positive manner. They inspire. Words lift up.  Words bring clarity. Words define. Words change lives. How they change lives!

A friend’s recent Facebook post depicted how even simple words matter deeply. My friend, Judy, was at a medical appointment, and a nurse came in and asked the usual, “How are you?”

My friend responded typically, "Fine, how are you?" answered by an equally typical "Good. I can't complain."

My friend rejoined with an earnest, "Well, if you did want to complain, I'd listen."  Judy, a good listener and people lover, knows that when people share their burdens they get some perspective and relief by finding a way to laugh about the situation.

The nurse, taken aback by my friend’s frankness, felt, her day was blessed. "Most people say, 'If you complain nobody listens anyway,' but here you are telling me you'd listen. Thanks."

Judy assured her new friend that it was her pleasure, especially since they both shared “the condition.“

“What condition?”

“The human one! People are pretty much people wherever you go," my friend said smiling.

After sharing more small talk, my friend began to leave and the nurse caught up to her saying: "I want you to know that you have blessed my day and changed my outlook. I left the house in a bad mood but now I'm uplifted. All because you said you'd listen to me."  My friend got a little teary because she knew how she had been uplifted too.

It is that simple. Words matter. What we say and how we say it does matter. You never know who is listening. Or what they are hearing on a daily basis. Will you speak the powerful truth and love to them? Will you compose a word of meaning and care? Will your words convey light and life?

If we take another adage at face value, “a picture is worth a thousand words”, than images too can have a potent punch. 

My counselor provided the witness of words effecting us deeply on a molecular level. She shared the book, “Messages from Water”, the work of Japanese scientist Dr. Masaru Emoto who showed how water was affected by words. In one set of experiments he played classical music and folksongs and heavy metal music through speakers at containers of water. He took samples of the water and froze it to form crystals. Then he compared the crystalline structure of the various samples. With the different musical pieces, the different water samples produced different shapes. The classical and folk music produced geometric shaped crystals with intricate patterns. The metal music saw the basic shape of the crystal break into pieces.

In another experiment, he took it further.  Dr. Emoto and over 300 volunteers stood on the shore of a badly polluted lake in Japan and spoke words of love, peace, and gratitude to the water.  The water crystals changed from cloudy broken images before the words to geometric beautiful crystals after the words. This experiment has been repeated successfully at other lakes around the world.

Above are some of the images from the experiment

Finally, Dr. Emoto conducted an experiment that affirms what counselors, pastors, psychologists have shared – Words and thoughts matter and impact a person’s well-being.  Dr. Emoto taped positive and negative words facing inward in water bottles. He then looked at the water under a microscope and discovered water molecules appeared different based on positive or negative words or phrases. Such as thank you, love/appreciation and love thyself produced a variety of beautiful geometric forms. On the other hand, phrases such as “you make me sick” or “you fool” produced crystals that were disconnected or chaotic. 

Words matter. If they affect water and we are made up of 70% water how are we affected on a molecular/ cellular level by the words spoken to us and around us.  Or the words we think about, and say to, ourselves.

The theologian in me recalls that in Genesis, God breathed into us at point of human creation. INSPIRED - breathed into -us with Gods spirit, and called by name, with love. We are good created for good things and goodness. But what happens as negativity affects our whole being on that molecular level? Corrupting and changing our spirits-souls-lives? What and who do we become when we are steeped in toxicity? Or rarely are moved by a positive voice.

At Christmas, Christians celebrated the Word of life, Jesus, who “moves into our neighborhood” so love would be personified. Jesus seeks to lift people up. To bring truth into each situation. To heal. To challenge for wholeness. He also bespeaks the possible power to affect change by the possession of positivity. Jesus didn't have the internet where words spread quickly - ad nauseum. We do. And the words we lodge there do not go away easily.

Actions also matter, because they back up words spoken. While it is not so black and white, we have a problem. We let words and images run amuck in our world and do some major damage to hearts and minds, young and old, male and female, all backgrounds and cultures. The question is do we love ourselves and others enough to change?  To make a difference? To carefully consider what we set out into the universe? How will we chose to use our words. Words matter. All words matter.

I have been writing about words in this blog trying to consider their power and potential from inside and out. I invite you to challenge my ability to see both the cutting edge and the positive power of words by sending me words that interest you most , for me to play with and posit upon. Suggest them in the comments and you may see my thoughts on them sometime  this year.

Also, feel free to share a word in the comments about how my musings inspire, or when they don't, call me on that too.  Perhaps the words we share can build each other up, and create the world as we hope it will be.

A Squirrel, a Pickle, some Nuts and my Prayer

Growing up, I was terrorized by squirrels. They would chatter at me from the sidewalk, run in front of me, letting my friends pass, but not me.  I do not know what I did to upset the squirrel gods in this or another life, but it must have been awful. My mother who would escort me home can attest to how squirrels had it in for me.

Squirrels annoy me still! And they make me laugh. They relentlessly ransack my bird feeder. They do crazy dives, hang upside-down and chase their brethren in the pursuit of seeds and play. They sit, sunflower in hand-like paws, haughtily nibbling away as I rudely encourage them to leave. Then suddenly they are bounding after a buddy, or two, racing up a tree, diving branch to branch. Each season these little guys are the neighborhood jesters.

In their antics, I realize humans have forgotten an important aspect of living – the season of frolic and play! Sure we know how to be weekend warriors and soccer moms, mud-runners and ice plungers, but do we really relish the joy of being foolishly exuberant? Playful even?  And (shall I say it), go a little nuts?

Sure, this is Be a Fool week and National humor month, but how many people get involved, actually play? How many “grown-ups” are lovingly called, and accept being called, a fool? How many of us spontaneously belly laugh til we ache?? In my experience, adults grow cautious and closed as we grow up.  Life is just too darn serious! Few play the fool and have fun, just for fun. I think life would be a whole lot better, more peace-filled, healthier and, sure, more fun with a bit more squirreliness running around. Laughing releases endorphins; generates feel good emotions and health in the body. Humor creates space to breathe in life, and really live.

In Christian Gospel writings, Jesus declares, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 18:3. It is a child who brings an open, believing, playful, trust to life where fun, love, wholeness, and forgiveness are possible from moment to moment. Built in is a very unique and marvelous take on life and living that I wish more adults could adopt – especially those in our halls of politics and political-correctness.  The world of reasonable adults brings a hard-bitten, well-reasoned dogma where fences and defenses are built, where hate is groomed, where ideas get cemented and change is an enemy.  Adults seem to give sway to the world according to money, power and fame rather than a world built according to the Word of humility, love and peace.  

Children are candid, not knowing the adult games of fudging the facts and being “politically correct”. Have you ever just played with someone under 7 years old? Their voices of veracity usually come out of devastatingly loving hearts. They call life as they see it and say what is on their heart. Yet we adult-types often scold the truth out of them and turn the love into hard and fast rules.  An example: a nice normal 6.5 year old child, in apparent gateway to extreme bullying and violence, told a classmate that he smelled of pickles. The pickled child complained and the dill-declaring youngster was rebuked. Where is a lesson in good humor? Or speaking the truth in love? Where is an opportunity to strengthen the character of both children? Not only are we discouraging genuineness, we are pandering to idea that human children are weak.  Exorcising such benign honesty, being playful and fooling around right out of children’s lives, creates weak, rigid and morally expectant adults.

Playing the fool has not always had such negative connotations. For centuries the Trickster, a vital archetype, used to be such an important part of most all cultures and their tales around the world. The trickster would disobey normal rules and conventional behavior of the day in order to bring a new truth and integrity to a community. The Fool was an actual profession in Medieval courts, an important member of the royal entourage to give the ruler a truthful assessment in a humorous or off-beat way or to give an alternate perspective to a royal’s own reservations about a plan.  

In native American culture, this character was called the Coyote. The Coyote was often a clown, the fool in a situation or sometimes he was seen alongside the Creator Chief with powers of transformation and resurrection. The Coyote’s purpose was to engage in changing the world (physical and spiritual) around him to create something sacred for the lives of his people.  All mythic tricksters and rebels help their people survive one invasion and calamity after another while maintaining their spirit and soul.

“The shamanic rascal is capable of juggling realities and transforming fantasy into something powerful. This Coyote spirit can help guide us in many ways: by mixing up all our rigid assumptions, by instilling in us the hope of an underdog, or simply by making us laugh when we most need it.”  (Jon Spayde – “Tricksters of the World Unite – How going crazy will help save America”  Utne Reader May/ June 2004)

And don’t we really need such humor now?! In The Way of the Wacko, Jon Spayde describes, crazy wisdom as “a rich strain of illogic, paradox, and play that erupts throughout history to interrupt, mess with, and renew ideas and faith of an era. It is intuitive, boundary-busting, ever-youthful, turbulent and even scandalous.” (Utne Reader, May/June 2002). We need a “crazy wisdom” to take over our spirits and souls individually and nationally.

Our world is broken and battered by death, violence, hate, illness, injustice, bigotry, and abuses of every kind. We do not know how to forgive. We take everything as a slight against us – “It is me against the world.” And I do not use “us” because there are more me-s than us-s. Bonds today are very surface. We would not hurt people with whom really related. Relationships require humor, levity,humility and forgiveness to really make them work.  Relationships – individual, communal, or organizational lack depth without an ability to find playfulness for

 life.  I picture the squirrel community hashing things out through tree climbing races not weaponry races, with which squirrel dares to collect and share the most nuts for hibernation season rather than horde them, or by who hangs the longest by her tail to grab the last tomato frustrating that tomato-hording human.

I think we are in dire and serious need of fun! Seriously, we all need chill pills and to get some hilarious, outrageous, crazy, wacky fun. In college my roommate and I were well-known for turning our exam stress into some tension busting lunacy such as flipping everything we could in our room upside down; or creating “Better Cheddar” soccer games or putting a sign on our door that read “The International House of Flapdoodles” to signify out loud our wackiness. We worked hard to be wacky and it benefited our community life and friendship as well as stimulated our learning and growing as students. It helped us reach and grow our imaginations without harming others.

I write this one week after Easter when, in the Christian tradition, life pulls one over on death! Death has lost and life and light has won. Yet so many fellow “Christians” act as if bad news and death still hold sway. Why do Christians take on the worldly stature of serious business in the church as though real life has not won the day?  Why argue and rail about things that ultimately do not matter like music or money or whose name goes on memorial benches when we can be relishing and sharing the good news – that God has had the last laugh on death, destruction, sorrow, hate, violence and the whole worldly caboodle of negativity. All the while we should be showing the crazy joy of life’s victory from the soles of our feet through our enlivened souls.

Don’t you want some laughter and healing in your part of the world? Take in a big breathe. The Spirit is alive in you. Whatever is going on around you just let out a loud guffaw.  Look that bad news in the face and for this moment issue an enormous flying chuckle, a chortle or make a funny face. Stick out your tongue. Wave and smile at a passerby. You will find it is contagious, and begins shattering the blackness in your life. Be filled with energy, joy, a little awe and a renewed appreciation of life.

I think we need a willingness to be playful amongst us again to bring perspective and change. We need more than one of these types to bring light and laughter to a broken, violent world.  Or better still we need to laugh more – at ourselves and the world around us. For God’s sake, do not take everything so damned serious.

I am making the squirrel my religious totem, to remind me to live a little, to go a little zany for LIFE. Life is not all about gathering nuts, it is about being a bit nutty to loosen tension, open hearts and make life worth living.

Give life a chance. 

Won’t you do something a little nutso today!?!

Of Peacocks and Lions and Pride, Oh My! Part 2

 I am stuck on PRIDE.    It has spiraled around me this week. So I reflect again, or more.

Having been schooled a bit after my last blog, that as a white, straight, non-oppressed (even though I am a woman) person, it is not right for me to claim PRIDE in things, groups or ideas. That pride is my sin as an oppressor. And pride goes before a fall.

I do not start out to oppress or be “more righteous than” (except with respect to those drivers who never use turn signals, and smokers – then I am a little self-righteous.)  I realize that I live a privileged life. It saddens me that the world is broken by haves and have-nots, is seen separated by skin color, and is judged by whom people love.

To me that brokenness has – yes – most often been created by pride and its by-products. The sort of pride that allows folks to take pride in what they are and the way they live as better, wiser, more knowledgeable, more loved than others including the Creator.  The sort of pride that leads to a feeling of always being right, never needing to apologize or ask for forgiveness for the built in belief that nothing has been done wrong in the first place. This is the sin that the Bible speaks against. This type of pride in self or clan is what leads to war, hate, discrimination, judgment, and injustice. And it begs lamentation and sorrow.

I am not a bad person, but nor am I an “always right” person. (Although my husband and mother may disagree I said that!)  I try to live in harmony with all others. I know there are things I am open about, and other areas I work to find a chink in the armor of my closed-ness.

My concern in my recent dialogue and the rhetoric about PRIDE is that it became an all or nothing context. Much like Red States vs. Blue States and political discussions. I get that groups that have not been allowed to have a voice should have the ability to share and show pride.  I am all for that.

“You can't give people pride, but you can provide the kind of understanding that makes people look to their inner strengths and find their own sense of pride” Charleszetta Waddles

For most group-living species, the definition of social means knowing your place and showing it at every opportunity. So it is with peacocks, lions and humans - oh my!

 Peacocks stand out with their array of feathers, but it is the female Peahen that chooses her mate based on the size, color, span of these outrageous feather displays. 

These grand birds like peace and harmony and are a symbol of integrity and the beauty we can achieve when we endeavor to show our true colors. In history, myth and lore, the Peacock symbolizes: Nobility, Holiness, Guidance, Protection, Watchfulness, Spirituality, Awakening, Immortality, Refinement and Incorruptibility.¹
In rare cases some assembled group animals do not form dominance based hierarchies. Lions are an example of this. They do not bother to assign rank to its group’s citizens. While males distinctly dominate females, they do not establish class systems as other social animals do. All the lion males in a pride are lazy and let the females do the work. The females live in a “democratic sisterhood.”

"It's still completely astonishing to me that we can find virtually no evidence of dominance ranking in any pride," said Dr. Craig Packer, a field biologist at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and a leading authority on lion behavior.

Dr. Packer suggests that lions are simply too deadly and well-armed to not live by egalitarian rules.  "A lion's got claws that can disembowel a zebra, as well as those god-awful teeth, so an inferior could cripple a better opponent," said Dr. Packer. "It's like a cold war, with mutually assured destruction. It's better not to mess around with your opponent in the first place." ²

Same could be said about mutually destructive humans. Or at least we did in the 60’s and 70’s as nations. But rather than merely avoiding common destruction, how about we build toward mutual trust, love and acceptance?!

“Pride is a personal commitment. It is an attitude which separates excellence from mediocrity.”
         William Blake

I guess I do not care that “Pride” is considered a sin when I am proud of my husband and his loving-care, his generosity and his compassion toward others. Proud of my siblings and siblings-in-law for the way they raise smart, polite good-at-heart children. I am proud of my parents and in-laws for the way they raised our generation – for it was a team effort, sometimes succeeding and other times failing but always continued trying. Parents worked together then. I am proud of my nieces and nephews for the dignified, healthy, creative way they are facing the future of this time and their lives.  I am proud of a number of organizations I have worked with or volunteered for in the way they follow their mission and help others with passion, transparency and hope. I am proud of friends that live fully as who they are and care for others. If pride is bad, well I am proudly all in. Like a peacock, I will share these feathers. Like a lion I will roar out my passion and delight for my family, friends without exclusivity or thinking we are the best, most right or only voices in this big diverse world.

I am humbled in knowing that these things I am proud of can be said of many in this and each generation. There is a lot of work we have ahead as people.

“Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.”  Margaret Thatcher

 

¹ www.proudasapeacock.org/

  ²  The New York Times  “Lions Find Peace Without Rankings”  Natalie Angier  Published: April 18, 1995