Evil. Heinous Act. Enemy. Vitriol. Lip Server. Civil Servant.
Listening to coverage of the shootings in Tuscon, I have been struck by the words we use to describe harsh experiences--harsh realities. It is not to say that harsh words should be avoided, at all costs--at the further, unintended impacts they may have.
Evil has not been blared from the megaphone of Tuscon's experience. Thank God. May we commit ourselves to not embrace Evil--be it not in our explanations of actions taken. Evil's Stinger is deep. Deeper than we may realize.
Heinous Act? Yes. In the Vocabulary of our Culture's Speech, Heinous Act does not have Evil's stinger.
Heinous Act possesses the same precision in its attack on our soul.
Harsh words--harsh realities--call for us to be anesthetized. Our spirits--our souls--must be strengthened--not calloused--by our wound's healing. From our anesthetized wounds, we must commit ourselves to remember the color of our wound in the person we live on to be--to become. Our wound may lose her sting. Her color may fade. Yet, her lessons to the better persons we might be must be heard. Her lessons must be given voice in the persons we live on to be.
May we never enunciate the words, "the Enemy," to explain a Heinous Act. May we not ignite the vehicle Enemy offers to transport our wounded soul. May we never be a lip server--an endorser of The Enemy's word.
I pray Vitriol's lesson may be our guidepost on our journey to Civility.
May we be Civil Servants to our lives, not Lip Servers to our moments--to each day we are given to live.
I am hope-filled. A fool I may be. Yet, rather a hope-filled fool than a cynic's champion, or a skeptic's slave I hope to be.
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