Proverbs 1:20-33
Proper 19 (24) - Year B
Wisdom is available on the street where you live. In places of business and entertainment and courts, Lady Wisdom calls out. There is no where you can go that insight regarding a larger picture, a more complete picture, is absent.
The question before us is whether or not we are so simple-minded or willfully ignorant that we cannot take the time and pay the attention to this call.
Our usual approach is to scoff and deride. This in turn leads us to being laughed at which, of course, means we respond with greater and preemptive cynicism.
May this deadly cycle be broken before we find the consequences to our carelessness and complacency that keeps us from learning and acting on our learning.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2003/september2003.html
Proverbs 1:20-33 or Isaiah 50:4-9a
Psalm 19 or Psalm 116:1-9
James 3:1-12
Mark 8:27-38
Physiologically, tongues are strong and flexible, made up of sixteen muscle groups. Metaphorically, tongues are also easily bitten and easily biting.
Tongues are equally at home carrying a blessing or a curse. They can cut to the quick or lovingly caress one another. They are a source of encouragement and a keener of despair.
Presume again an original blessing of "It's good." We heard it from our teacher leading us out of chaos, into life. In such an image we honor our teacher by offering a sustaining word tot he weary - those caught in moments and millennia of chaos.
The tongue of a creator becomes a tongue of the nursling. [I have long enjoyed an out-of-print book, The Tongue of the Nursling by P.E. MacAllister - here is a brief bio and an online article by him you might enjoy that could take you far afield of today's reflection (and yet have enough tangents to be instructive).
- - -
we see a forked tongue
and suppose we are
hearing a forked tongue
our senses aren't sensible
we mistake one another for hats
magnify molehills and ignore mountains
we execute desperate thieves
and reward those who contract to steal
missing what's behind the surface
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html
Who knows the journey Lady Wisdom has taken to bring her message. She and Jonah may want to compare notes. Both end up deep within a city to bring their word of judgment, Lady Wisdom's is wordier.
To continue the comparison we can wonder about what happens after Lady Wisdom brings her message. Does she sit under something more subtantial than a shelter and shade plant? Does a forgiving G*D with an expansive and expanding desire for premeditated mercy still have a last word? Is anger Lady Wisdom's response to mercy - how about you?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2009_09_01_archive.html
Howsomever we identify, we eat the fruit of our way.
This approach to the desired and undesired parts of our life and the life of others and all together does not justify the way in which we interact. There will be folks who get away with mean and nasty acts all their life and others cut short well before their prime. This is not about karma or reincarnation. It has to do with self-justification and an excuse to continue a journey we might otherwise shift.
Evelyn Underhill puts it this way:
The true rule of poverty consists in giving up those things which enchain the spirit, divide its interests, and deflect it on its road to God--whether these things be riches, habits, religious observances, friends, interests, distastes, or desires--not in mere outward destitution for its own sake. It is attitude, not act, that matters; self-denudation would be unnecessary were it not for our inveterate tendency to attribute false value to things the moment they become our own.
Eating the fruit of our way is the reinforcement of a habit or a way of approaching life. Some of this seems to be hardwired, but even that can be amenable to choices made regarding what we will attend to. To begin eating the fruit of another way, of another's life or identity, draws us closer to their experience of life. Here lies the possibility of community that calls us to accountability for the whole of life, not just our own.
In the care of the larger the smaller is also cared for - infra-structure for all is a blessing. Concentration of wealth in a few is a fever indicator of the ill-health of a community. O, we could go on about the importance of one life, but note how the larger context is changed. It is not simply that a next best thing is done, but that it is done in a context.
Whose identity needs to enter your life today, to be tasted and enjoyed in its own right?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2012/09/proverbs-120-33.html