“The tongue is a fire…and it is set on fire of hell.”
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It was a long time ago and far away when the Apostle penned this theorem. He was sitting under a date palm near the Dead Sea discussing women with his tongue-tied camel.
The validity of the theory was confirmed later that day when with a slip of the tongue he mentioned to his wife something about, “That’s woman’s work.” His tongue ignited a flame that burns in infamy to this day.
The tongue is a torch. It ignites. Sparks from words fly off and can set on fire the course of nature. The tongue is an unruly evil. It’s impossible to tame.
I learned this lesson the hard way. I was born with a forked tongue. It manipulated facts and fabricated untruths. I was five or six at the time. I had discovered some packets of what looked like candy. Like a dog, I ate anything. I remember exactly how the events unfolded.
“Son, what are you eating?” Mama asked.
“Uh, candy grandmama gave me,” I said. The deceit slid off my tongue like greased lightening. I didn’t even have to think about it. There I stood, drooling. Five packs of empty Rolaids wrappers lay scattered about my feet. The severe tongue-lashing and stinging switch-thrashing convinced me that the tongue was not my friend.
Tongues wag uncontrollably. They’re attached in the mouth but lack connectivity to the brain, clearly a flaw in the original human design. No doubt it originated in some mythic fruit tree garden. Sadly, medical science cannot correct the glitch.
Tongues boast great things. This is the main use of it among men. It becomes quite lively after vast infusions of firewater. The context of such wagging tends to be centered on exaggerated achievements concerning money, athletics and embellished, tongue-in-cheek youthful dalliances. Not necessarily in this order, and nothing believable!
Shakespeare made this discovery by accident while nursing a hangover. He passed it on to Polonius who warned Ophelia, “…(when) the blood burns, how prodigal the soul lends the tongue vows.” The tongue boasts more than it can back up. Ask any politician.
The tongue’s fire begins as a spark in the back of the mouth. It roars forward at warp speed, gathers a host of demons and exits the tongue’s tip with a searing flame…too late for a recall.
My friend Marvin, a renowned deep thinker, forgot to bite his tongue when his wife asked him how her new dress looked. His tongue betrayed him. His knee-jerk response went something like this: “It makes you look fat.”
“Just kidding,” he added, tongue-in-cheek. His apology was so shallow it was like trying to put out a house fire by spitting on the roof. Marvin now lives alone in Ludowici, thinking about what went wrong.
Last September was the anniversary of Einstein’s profound equation: E = mc2. It simply states that a tiny mote of mass can yield enormous energy. In fact, the nuclear bomb that exploded over Nagasaki contained less than an ounce of plutonium. Einstein made this discovery by accident.
One evening he came home, frustrated from thinking. The equation was eluding him. A stiff nip of rye sharpened his tongue. In his best Yiddish he snapped at his wife, “Velkh iz oyf varmes, eyfele?” Translated, it’s “What’s for dinner, baby.” E = mc2 came to him at the precise moment when the matzoth ball exploded on his forehead.
Others have made such discoveries. I once remember commenting to my wife with a smug, silver tongue that nobody made banana pudding like mama. For some reason banana pudding has not been in our refrigerator since that comment. Such is the power of words.
Is there hope for the taming of the tongue? Nothing yet has been discovered that will mitigate the damage caused by this double-edged sword. I found this out again the hard way only last week.
We’re pulling out the Halloween paraphernalia. Among such is a sign board that reads, “The Witch Is In.” I show it to my wife. We laugh. She leans it against the pumpkin on the front steps. My tongue suggests we should nail it to the door permanently. Only a pitiful, “Oops” escaped my lips. Too little, too late.
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Out there in the vibrations of digital arcana the tweeting tongue twitters…and the fires of hell begin to rage.
Bud Hearn
October 20, 2017