Preventing Forest Fires
"How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire…[w]ith it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing."
James 3:5b-6a, 9-10a
After reading through James in anticipation of St. Martin’s “Just 4 Epiphany” small group study of that Epistle, this passage has been bugging me. I wondered if, like those who decided to observe a “dry January,”[1] I could refrain from speaking for the month of January! Because total silence might be what it would take to avoid verbal missteps on my part, having set quite a few forest fires ablaze myself. Yet unfortunately, I did not think the Rector would give me a month’s sabbatical to be able to refrain from speaking …
Some “blazes” are probably started innocently or unintentionally. Maybe you are with a group of people and just cutting up, having fun. Someone “teases” someone, others pile on and eventually, the words begin to have edges that cut into someone’s feelings. Or other times, we hear someone say something that (to us) sounds so outrageous we have to set them straight. Or maybe someone says something that seems to attack one of your deeply held beliefs and you immediately go on the defensive. Bonfires ensue.
There is a famous quote attributed, unsuccessfully,[2] to both Victor Frankl and Stephen Covey that goes something like this: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. And in our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
Too often, we blow through that space without reflecting or thinking, and that’s when, as James tells us, our tongues go from blessing to cursing. And it can happen within a nanosecond. If we paid more attention to that space between stimulus and reaction, we might find room for blessing, either giving a blessing or maybe even being a blessing to someone else by what we say or do.
How can we do this? How can we stop being so reactionary? In her book, “Practice the Pause: Jesus' Contemplative Practice, New Brain Science, and What It Means to Be Fully Human,” Caroline Oaks writes about a seven-second pause that trains us to be better equipped to respond to these stimuli as Jesus might and avoid our almost knee-jerk reactions that will only start forest fires. I wonder if pausing for reflection … if for only seven seconds … we might be able to avert a few forest fires.
Maybe if I cannot take a sabbatical from speaking, I might be able to develop the spiritual practice of “pausing,” pausing to listen, reflect and seek understanding.
[1] “Dry January” is a challenge to forego drinking alcohol during the 31 days of January.
