Psalm 19:
The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge.
James 3:1-6:
Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle....
So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell.
Songbird on FB 9/12/09:
I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903, in "Letters to a Young Poet"
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In my own corner of the world, I am puzzling over today's Fort Worth 912 Project Rally, which my dear spouse is planning to attend. The motto of this organization, as you can see from this Facebook link, is "The Silent Majority will be Silent No More!" Who's been silent in that group, that's what I'd like to know...maybe somewhere besides the Fine Red State of Texas they have felt downtrodden, but here they are alive and well and very, very noisy.
I am grateful for the opportunity to live in a country where he and folks who think like him have the opportunity to speak out. I am grateful that we can stay married to each other with such a tremendous difference of opinion.
Today my preacher friends are writing about the lectionary which begins with the singing joy of The heavens are telling the glory of God...and goes on to James' harsh words about the power and destructive potential of the tongue...and culminates in Jesus' question to the disciples: "Yes, I know what they are saying, but who do YOU say that I am?" I know what I would LIKE to have these words say. Now, I haves teh headache.
And so Songbird's quotation from Rilke, posted on Facebook and reproduced just above, came as a balm to my soul. Live in the questions, that's what I can do. Engage with them, consider them, make them my friends. Bless my spouse on his way to engage with them as well.
God, bless us in the questions.
