awful coffee and a Lorna Doone

Bleary-eyed and hours from home, struggling to stay awake... Awful coffee and a Lorna Doone cookie at the rest stop... Okay, I think I can make it for another chunk of miles.

Thank God for the Rotary and Kiwanis people who cheerfully host those simple oases.

Maybe that’s what weekly church services are for: offering simple, spiritual hospitality and helping souls stay awake to their faith journeys.

Feral

“...no one can tame the human tongue.” James 3:8

I have sometimes thought biting my tongue, so to speak, did no real good because whatever I’d been about to say was already in my mind anyway. But I have come to believe that saying something out loud is like pushing a stone downhill: chances are, it will start rolling once gravity gets a hold of it.

The sense I have is that words spoken create momentum toward another thought, then another remark, which propels toward another thought,etc. Given conducive circumstances and willing conversational partners, the momentum can quickly become strong enough to pull me into attitudes I didn’t mean to visit.

It’s better to train the tongue to set good things in motion: encouragement, affirmation, kindness, provocation toward love and good deeds...

But maybe we need to accept the fact that it is never completely domesticated; it remains at least partly feral.