Desk Note #2 - At the fringe of words

I often sit at the fringes of words for the sake of title.  This is no way forward into unknown territory!  How are whole word worlds to be tamed with such timidity? But I feel it even still, the weight of writing things down.  There’s a permanence.  No true eraser exists for words spoken into the online world.  No retractions of any real value.  Therefore, one must choose words carefully.  Craft the things to sing to their mark if at all possible and not to veer off into dangerous directions where bleeding and death can occur.  Such power, life and death held in these syllables and yet they are bandied about with very little care.  I do not come to the page lightly.  Now, this is not to say that I haven’t thrown my fair share of deadly words.  Alas, many and often they have flown.  But I’d like to think that as I advance in age, I advance in wisdom.

Here’s a little that James had to say on the subject:

 Don’t be in any rush to become a teacher, my friends. Teaching is highly responsible work. Teachers are held to the strictest standards. And none of us is perfectly qualified. We get it wrong nearly every time we open our mouths. If you could find someone whose speech was perfectly true, you’d have a perfect person, in perfect control of life.

3-5 A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it!

5-6 It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.

7-10 This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can’t tame a tongue—it’s never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth!

10-12 My friends, this can’t go on. A spring doesn’t gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? Apple trees don’t bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don’t bear apples, do they? You’re not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?