Good Morning Friends & Digital Neighbors across Local's! Most of this week I posted something on fun words from the Little Book of Lost Words. At Triggernometry I tend to just do the Daily Far and comment on what others post.
Words are fun, words are interesting, words are dangerous. They are not so dangerous that words can really hurt you when that is the only thing that they are, words. The real danger of words is the power to grab minds & hearts towards action. Once enraged or emboldened people can act heroically or horribly. In the Era of the Perpetually Offended & Pre-offended you never know what is going to break the fragile. Today's fragile are unlike the fragile of yore who would just go sit in a dark room and cry and wrestle with dark emotions once they were wounded or offended. Today's Fragile will gather the mob, light the torches and storm the castle or chase you to the old windmill. You know how the story ends. Your words made you the monster or the oppressor.
Words use to convey ideas, communicate experience, ask questions and chase after meaning. I am still an old school sticks & stones type of person, one cannot really be harmed by words unless you let them. I wish it were that easy all the time. Exhaustion, personal issues, just a bad day can make one unexpectedly sensitive to a statement you would laugh at on a good or normal day.
@bridgetphetasy made a comment in a recent podcast (She has done so many in the last week) I can't remember where, I think it was on You are here. Something to the effect of if your skeletons are in your front yard, you can't be harmed. There is a lot to mine in that statement. If you softest spots, your most embarrassing moment or your greatest shame is known and you no longer feel the pain of them, you possess an unreal level of freedom.
I don't know how many of us can do that on a personal level, one or one. You hopefully confide in your spouse, your closest friend, your therapist or sponsor. To articulate that to someone gives you a level of freedom in confronting the difficult chapters of your story. Words actually take away the pain, reframe the issue, and transform the experience. One on one it can be liberating, there is a power to acceptance that is amazing.
Your tribe - Know its weaknesses, know its history, know the worst behaviors it has permitted and the best it is responsible for bringing to humanity. Everyone belongs to some group - only someone completely isolated out in the wilderness might be able to claim no membership in a group or tribe as it were. Seek wisdom in shifting what are the fair criticisms of your tribe and the attacks by the haters. No tribe is perfect, nor or any of its members. Discourse, debate, the world of words should be a fair exchange, if they can cheap-shot your tribe, you can return the favor. One ought to be able to laugh at oneself, and even at one's own tribe. The absence of laughter is one of the signs of an unhealthy sense of self. Not everything is funny, but almost anything can be a cause for laughter.
Words - We create them, others respond to them, even the wonderful non-humans in our life that learn their meaning. Words - charged with meaning and filled with more wonder than we give them credit for possessing since they are so commonplace and superficially ordinary yet extraordinarily powerful. Thanks for indulging my words today. Off to autumn beauty!
Mt Shuksan from the trail - Washington state
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
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XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
