Wednesday May 26, 2010
Saying the wrong thing
By Jim Taylor
I have a neurotic cat. He has an irrational compulsion to scoot through opened doors. Any open door. Into the garage. Into a broom closet. Even into the trunk of the car. One time I barely saw him in time before I slammed the lid down.
I’d call him obsessive-compulsive – except that I might have to apply the same description to my own behavior. Not about doors, but about words.
Every now and then, I hear my mouth saying words that I had no intention of saying, thoughts that had barely crossed my consciousness before they started coming out, words that a small voice in my skull never had a chance to tell me not to say.
And like the cat, I do it again and again, even though I should know better. It’s irrational.
I don’t always know the right thing to say. But somehow I know instantly when I’ve said the wrong thing. Perhaps it’s the hurt look in a friend’s eyes. Or someone’s startled expression. More often it’s an internal recognition – I’ve said too much, gone too far, crossed some invisible line in the sand…
By then it’s too late.
Second thoughts
Writing is so much safer. The words don’t actually go out until I’ve taken a second look – or a third, or fourth, or seventeenth look – and excised that pejorative description, that unfortunate phrase, that unnecessary sarcasm…
But words once spoken can’t be recalled.
This is not an argument for keeping one’s mouth shut. Because not saying what needs to be said can do just as much harm as saying the wrong thing. Indeed, sometimes I think most of our social troubles result from too many people trying not to say anything – while a strident minority persuade themselves they have the silent majority backing them.
Eating my words
There’s revealing incident in the biblical book of Revelation. I confess that Revelation is not my favourite text. I lose patience with those who use isolated verses to prove that a reclusive visionary, living on the island of Patmos in the Mediterranean 19 centuries ago, wrote prophecies anticipating situations in a nation that hadn’t even been imagined back then, on a continent that no one knew existed.
Whatever John of Patmos was writing about, it was not Barrack Obama’s health care policies or an oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico.
But in the midst of his apocalyptic images of a final showdown between good and evil, the writer describes an angel holding a small scroll.
He asked the angel for the scroll. The angel told him, “Take it and eat it. It will turn your stomach sour, but in your mouth it will be as sweet as honey.”
And indeed, says Eugene Peterson’s translation, The Message, “It was like honey in my mouth, but when I swallowed, my stomach curdled.”
I don’t understand most of Revelation. But that description certainly resonates with my experience.
It’s exactly what happens when my mouth outruns my brain. It tastes sweet to score that debating point, to puncture that pomposity, to grab that cheap laugh. But when I have to eat my words, their sweetness turns as bitter as bile.
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Copyright © 2009 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups permitted; all other rights reserved.
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Your Turn
Henry Yorke, a newcomer to the Soft Edges list, broke his status as a lurker to send these comments: “Today’s column, In Praise of Dreamers, had one subheading – ‘Self-Imposed Limitations’ — that reminded me of my favourite hymn, There’s a wideness in God’s mercy, by Frederick William Faber.As far as I can find, the current version of the hymn was written by Faber for a book published in 1862 which I think, would have been at the height of the controversy caused by Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’.
“The particular verses that your column made me think of are verses 4 and 5:
For the love of God is broader
Than the measures of man’s mind;
And the heart of the Eternal
Is most wonderfully kind.
But we make his love too narrow
By false limits of our own;
And we magnify his strictness
With a zeal he will not own.
“It’s wonderful that God in his son, Jesus, took on all the limitations of humanity — of time, of place, of knowledge — to open the way to the relationship that he always wanted.”
Henry added that he’s a Methodist lay preacher in Northumberland in the United Kingdom who originally found my columns on the textweek website.
Alison Playfair was caught by my aside about trees remembering: “Your thoughts about ancient olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemene remembering is supported by new scientific research. Just yesterday on CBC [a botanist described] how the ancient forests carry with them memory of climate and environmental events that occurred during their lifetimes. Also, that the trees in forests do communicate with each other through chemical changes given off from their leaves — warning of disease or climate changes or other environmental threats that are quite specific. It was a fascinating talk that confirmed what I have always ‘known’ — that trees and all matter in Creation has conciousness, even if many are unable to tune into their ‘language’ There are many references in scripture to Creation singing it s praises to the Creator. If dreaming is an expression of yearning and hopeful movement toward growth and wholeness, is the apple seed’s dreaming such an impossibility? [As Jesus says in] Luke 19:40m ‘I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out.’”
Art Gans and Mark Strobel both corrected me: Robert Farrar Capon is indeed a priest, but an Episcopalian (Anglican) not Roman Catholic.
Somehow, in putting together last week’s mailbag, I failed to include Ted Schmidt’s response to Lena Horne: “Nice tribute, but Lena was not much of an activist and an average singer to boot…She got by on good looks and not much else, not up there with Ella, Carmen, Billy… But I did dig the tribute.”
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About My Books
This is a special note to the several hundred readers who subscribed after Ralph Milton shut down his Rumors e-newsletter. Every week, Rumors printed a psalm paraphrase, written by me. Some of you used them regularly in worship, either as a substitute for or in parallel with the regular lectionary psalm reading.
Those psalms are still available, even though Rumors is not. They were published in book form by Wood Lake Books in 1994, and republished in 2005. The book is called Everyday Psalms. I have a few copies of my own, but you’re better to contact Wood Lake Books directly. The cover says $19.95 Cdn, $15.95 US, but Wood Lake often has sales.
Contact them at
[email protected]
www.woodlakebooks.com
1-800-663-2775 in Canada, 1-888-841-9991 (Pilgrim Press) in the US
by mail at 9590 Jim Bailey Road, Kelowna, BC, Canada, V4V 1R2
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF…
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For other web links worth pursuing, try
- Charlene Fairchild’s United Online site,
- David Keating’s “SeemslikeGod” page
- The Canadian Centre for Progressive Christianity home page
- Alan Reynold’s weekly musings, punningly titled “Reynolds Rap,”
- Wayne Irwin’s “Model T Websites.” a simple (and cheap) seven-page website for congregations who want to develop a web presence
- Alva Wood’s satiric stories about small town attitudes and bumbling bureaucrats are not particularly religious, but good fun anyway; write [email protected] to get onto her mailing list.
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