Post Father's Day

I don't exactly "celebrate" Father's Day. I'm not against it, but most words and acts associated with the "holiday" make me uncomfortable. The two men who acted as my father figures long ago left this world. I miss them dearly, and time has helped me to focus more on the good they brought to shaping me and less on their human faults. And though my children try to convince me otherwise, I cannot help but feel that I have been more error than hit. At least that is what the world tells me. Often times the farmer dies long before her/his true fruit has ripened.

Walking in the late evening, I considered that even when people do not intend to hurt when they speak, and often wish they could take back their utterances, very often those words reveal something about the speaker the hearer would be happy not knowing, and thus even with forgiveness, wounds remain. James wrote, "How great a forest is set ablaze by such a small fire! And the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness. The tongue is set among our members...setting on fire the entire course of life...no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless our Lord and Father, and with it we curse people who are made in the likeness of God."

descending sun

back full of flame

carrying your words

More guilty than those whose daggers have damaged me or whose scalpels have left me bleeding, I should be begging forgiveness keeping this root of bitterness from taking hold and twisting my already flailing brain. But as I try to consider words in the context of a larger history, I find myself angry at those who demean and diminish my hurt. And so I pray for wisdom and calm. My suffering is not important I know, as it has not come but at the hands and mouths of the fallible and frail, chief of whom is me, and has hardly brought glory to my Lord. However what the head accepts, the heart takes longer to grasp.