Shouts From Down Under

Word's spiritual tongue twister origin

My computer's died, and am waiting on a laptop getting fixed, but my PC is ancient anyway; we've been getting the spiel about how they won't be making any patches and stuff for XP next year.

The word to describe my state of mind at the moment is frustrated. Frustrated. It's a three syllable word.

Do you ever wonder about words? About language? You know, the origin of the different tongues, the forming of new words, new trends, new frontiers for meaning, grammar, slang.


There is a time recorded in the Christian Bible, a time when everyone spoke with one speech, one language.

Men cooperated together to build a physical, literal building to reach unto heaven.


When God saw that the people were determined to do this, with no consideration of what he might feel about the wisdom of their purpose, then God divided mankind up into different groups, and I'm guessing he placed these groups so that it was more difficult to get together, as they then inhabited different continents of landmass, I suppose.

He also put a stop to their ludicrous idea, of using bricks and mortar as a way of reaching heaven, by confounding their language. The idea was silly, because God is a spiritual being, and heaven is a spiritual place, not intended to be reached or inhabited by physical bodies.

Well, this is my understanding of it, anyway.

So, it brings me back to thinking about language and the origins of people's words.

Whatever anyone's particular beliefs, words do have power. They have power to cause action, and reaction. They have the power to create.
They have the power to destroy. To garner trust and to lose that trust. The power to negotiate by saying things in a different way, by explaining the meaning and the reasoning about why something should be done, or should be changed.

Words can empower, or can set free.

You may or may not know that there is a frontier of conflict going on right now, between the freedom to express, and the power to prevent that freedom.

But who is right? We all want to preserve what we feel is our heritage. We like to have ownership. Of our Country. Of our children. Of our predecessors. Of our ancestors. Of our distant beneficiaries.

We all like to feel that we were instrumental in leaving something for future generations.

We all like to feel that we are right. Other's are wrong, or at least not as right as us. We feel we are honest, or more honest than others.
We like to feel that we are the Kings on the thrown of the control of our particular life, kings over what we say, do, think, care about, fight about, love about, keep and throw away.

Sometimes there are pillars, like those big posts underneath the pier in Melbourne, or at Circular Quay in Sydney. Those big timber posts that are driven into the Harbour Bedrock.
A lot can happen around pillars, but they remain there, resisting totally any change, any tides of passing fads, any impact, collision or influence that seeks to topple, or at least nudge them a teensy bit. They are pretty much inflexible.

We like to feel like that with what we believe in, and in the way we live our lives.

We like to feel there is that inflexibility in words. A word means this, or that and that's it! No shadow of doubt.

Well, I feel personally, that the meaning of words might change, but the meaning of God's word will never change.

That's my own belief, and I have reason to feel strongly about it, and nothing to do with being good, or better than anyone else.

While time goes by, sun up and sun down, there are words that have meaning that won't be changing ever.

Those words are ones I want to read, think about, say but most of all, to do. Because in the doing is where we see the fruit of the word. The word is said by someone, passing out their mouth, through the air as sound waves, and enters someone's ear. That person hears it and understands the word, thinks about it, about the meaning.

Then they process that meaning and possibly put whatever it is, into action. That word has been through a lot of different processes and in different forms but still carries the same power as it had when it was first thought of and spoken into the void of space.

Words are definitely food. More than food for thought, the right words can be bread. We can enjoy reading and understanding something so much, that we feel physically different afterwards.

Well, I don't feel that that power is ours. I feel it belongs to someone far greater, who formed the worlds with his words.

He also formed entities to oppose his word. If there is no opposition, then how can we behold, how can we see and comprehend that power of these words?

Sparky