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Day’s Verse:

The tongue also is a fire, a world of evil among the parts of the body. It corrupts the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell. All kinds of animals, birds, reptiles and creatures of the sea are being tamed and have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.

James 3:5-8

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Picture: taken on an abandoned ferry terminal dock at Port Townsend, the black silhouette is Ian leaning on the railing. Across the water you can see some island or another. I just liked the composition of the black outline opposing the white sailboats on blue water.

Today’s verse is the same verse I a few days ago; no I am not copping out lazily. Ironically, it’s become something of a theme with me of late and applies particularly well to yesterday’s events (which I won’t actually discuss because of their personal nature). Suffice it to say I’d like to verify that the tongue does “corrupt the whole person, sets the whole course of his life on fire, and is itself set on fire by hell.” Sometimes I think it would be a blessing to be mute—and I do believe some of my friends and family would heartily agree with me. Yet if controlling the tongue isn’t my forte, I at least know that James himself acknowledged this problem and counseled early Christians on it. I’m not alone.

Yesterday whirlwinded through seeing Ryan & Co. at BCS, catching a bus into Seattle as practice for next week, spontaneously running to the Westlake Bus Tunnel and randomly catching the number 73 to near Tiffany’s apartment near the University Ave (just off 45th). We “hung out,” shopping for a birthday gift for my mother-in-law, walking up a notable hill-bridge, and spending far too much time in the Wow Bubble Tea shop. This involved splitting my time watching Tiffany drink a coffee-drink with little black dots at the bottom and watching some ESPN pool competition in which guys do cool tricks with unorthodox pool-ball setups (one involved landing the cue ball into a carefully-propped up cowboy boot). In the “background” loud Christian music played counterpoint to the shrieking whirr/grinding of bubble-tea makers. I heard about one word in three of what Tiffany said. By 4:30 I was itching to get back to the ’burbs so when a random bus crossing 520 came by I hopped on it, accidentally paid too little ($1.50 rather than $2.00), and managed to get off at the right place to wait for Ian to fight traffic to pick me up. BUT! I could not plead exhaustion to remove myself from a birthday dinner at Chantanee Thai Restaurant. I fear I didn’t make good company, and later I shot my mouth off at Ian after an exhausting half-hour walking up and down the Ferguson’s big hill with my 30-lb backpack on. Turns out it only takes 4 – 5 minutes to walk up the hill, despite the fact it’s ridiculously steep in places and my legs wanted to just stop. Thank you, Sloan and Cross-Country, for giving me the work ethic to hurt myself for exercise.

An interesting day, made more interesting by our waking up at 5:30 this morning to discover our air mattress had deflated significantly, precipitating a muzzy move to the smaller bed. How does a whole, un-punctured air mattress lose all its air overnight? With no signs of leakage?!

Moral of the story: none.

– KF –