Words teach us to love and to hate.  They bestow honor and bring disgrace.

Words can heal and they can hurt. They have secret powers.

Beneath the surface they harness creation.  Imagine words of salvation.

In the beginning the word was divine.

The world sprang into being as words formed into things.

Darkness. Light.  The heavens separated from the firmament.

Creatures of the sea, sky, and earth swam, flew, and walked.

All of it was good because it had been named with love.

Words have secret powers.  Beneath the surface they also destroy.

Trees are felled when circles of people yell at them to die.

Plants shrivel in school hallways when as an educational exercise

children bully them like the outcast they fear to be.

What happens to children when the encircling words wound?

What do the wrong words— the out of control words do

to women and men? Entire races of people? Religions? Nations?

Anyone who makes someone uncomfortable

because he, she, they offer rainbows to a gray world.

Catch offenders in the act of violence.

Shine light on what’s beneath their words.

Catch ourselves.  Listen to what’s behind our own words.

Then beg forgiveness.  All of us. Ask humble questions.

Strive to understand.  Plant seeds that flower.

Speak more words that glow and bloom inside another being.

And when words come at you like weapons, disarm yourself. 

Hold up a mirror.  It’s hard to hear the hatred in another’s voice—

even harder to hear it in our own.

A thousand voices we think we don’t want to hear

are telling us the whole blazing glory

of the complete and complex human story.

                                    -April 6, 2021