When Will We Ever Learn?
So goes the refrain from a song of innocence
that was sung over and over again as I lived through the 60’s. “When will they ever learn,” was the haunting
and repeated words in the folk song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”
So we now have yet another hate
filled killing, this time in a synagogue.
As I write this a sixteen year old kills a fellow student because he was
bullied. We seem not even be able to
step toward any kind of gun control in the midst of calls not to trample on
individual “rights.”
Civility has become something of a dinosaur. The language of division and even hate has
become accepted. We no longer are even
aware that the room is smoke filled. We
have become accustomed to angry rhetoric and so we breathe in the smoke and go
on.
The trouble is that we are not “going
on” really. We are going down. We long to be a “great” nation again but the
price of the longing is the danger of losing our collective soul.
My heart aches to hear the psalm of
lament coming from my Jewish brothers and sisters. They are of course accustomed to such
Psalms. There are forty-two individual Psalms
of Lament in the Judeo-Christian scriptures and another sixteen that are deemed
“collective or national” Psalms of Lament.
Seems there is nothing new about the soul’s ache in the face of
oppressive forces.
But at least can those of us who say
we are people of faith begin to take seriously the power of our words. The biblical book of James warns us that it appears
that “no one can tame the tongue, a restless evil, full of deadly poison..with
the tongue we bless the lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are
made in the likeness of God.” (James 3: 8-9)
Two old expressions come to mind:
Watch your thoughts for they become
your words
Watch your words for they become
your actions
Watch your actions for they become
your habits
Watch your habits for they become
your character
Watch your character for they become
your destiny
The political and civil rhetoric in
our land is leading us to a destiny that is below the character of a nation
that longs to be great. The other
expression is, “A sent arrow, a word unkindly spoken, and a missed opportunity
cannot be retrieved.”
We are in danger of missing an
opportunity to regain the knowledge that our words determine our character and
destiny. It all begins with our words so
I challenge us to “watch our words” in a land of rising violence and name
calling.
I close with some words of blessing
that I wrote for a recent sermon I offered on the before mentioned words from
James:
May your tongue be tied
when it can cause harm
May it be loosened when
it can offer blessing
May it rest when it
could have cut another soul
And may it speak clearly
when it can offer love.
When will we ever learn that our
words matter and that they so often become our destiny…
Jody
Seymour
