When You Open Your Mouth

A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything—or destroy it!

It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.

This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can’t tame a tongue—it’s never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth!

My friends, this can’t go on. A spring doesn’t gush fresh water one day and brackish the next, does it? Apple trees don’t bear strawberries, do they? Raspberry bushes don’t bear apples, do they? You’re not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?

Live Well, Live Wisely

Real wisdom, God’s wisdom, begins with a holy life and is characterized by getting along with others. It is gentle and reasonable, overflowing with mercy and blessings, not hot one day and cold the next, not two-faced. You can develop a healthy, robust community that lives right with God and enjoy its results only if you do the hard work of getting along with each other, treating each other with dignity and honor.

James 3 (MSG)

I need to learn and to train myself to stop fearing and resenting the birds of the air. Those helpless, hopeless common rodents with wings that belong nowhere but are found everywhere in any cityscape. They dwell and reside among our manmade glories; our grand architecture, sites of wealth and cultural complexes and in most cases, go completely unnoticed. But I notice them. I bob, duck, cringe and recoil when one comes near me. I am all too aware of the common creature, but I have no ounce of love or compassion for them. Instead I feel terror and disgust. Isn’t that the sort of attitude that Mary Poppins’ “feed the birds, tuppence a bag” aims to deal with? People’s pride and callousness?

Today I thought it would be a fabulous idea to stop by Prada, Tiffany’s, Jimmy Choo and gaze upon the beautiful collections inside Belinda. But I came out feeling no sense of fabulousness after being made all too aware that I didn’t belong inside those shops. Trawling around in head to toe Bardot sale gear and having a very bad hair day with barely an available dollar to my name; some, albeit small, amount of cultural capital by knowing each label in the Belinda collections but possessing no further fancy knowledge to appreciate the pieces for this season, having no status worthy to be gazing at Tiffany engagement rings and having to play along when the salesgirl at Jimmy Choo asked me “how I was liking my bag” (the one I purchased from a dimly lit stall inside a stuffy warehouse turned market in Green Hills, Manila), I had saw no choice but to sit in Hyde Park, and duck, bob, cringe and recoil beside the birds.

This was the only stop that didn’t require me spending money I don’t have. So perhaps this is really where I belong. Here in the cold, open air on a park bench staring up at St Mary’s Cathedral. Viva La Vida. We all fall. But it’s better to know that and choose to fall on your knees than have the harsh realities of life push you down.  Here, with nothing to lose, there is much more to gain. When we are empty, we can be filled.