First, let me give you a warning. Today’s reflection is a very long hallway to a very small room. Second, my grammar teacher taught me never to use first unless you had a second or a third. Third, she also told me “very” is a very weak adverb. Fourth, the room is small but it’s worth the walk.
First (or would that be fifth), the very long hallway. It is always hard on parents when they discover the children are not chips off the old block, when they realize that even though the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree it often does fall on slanted ground and roll all the way down the hill of beans. I’m not saying I don’t love my children. I do, especially the first Friday of every month. My daughter is innocent of the following charge but my boys, now that’s a bird of a different feather. Two birds with lots of feathers. What I’m saying is that when it comes to sayings I’ve discovered they are challenged you might say. I get a kick out of the fact that they get a kick out of their old man and my propensity for sprinkling my talk with—sayings. It’s in my jeans, you might say—a bit of the blarney I picked up from the blocks I’m a chip off of (My grammar teacher taught me never to end a sentence with a preposition but my philosophy teacher taught me never say never).There was a time when my sons thought I was speaking another language. And although they never turned to each other and said, “It’s Greek to me,” I could tell from their brotherhood of cacophonous laughter, which was at my expense, that what they were thinking in so many words was, “He’s no block. He’s an alien from another planet.” Never the worse for the wear, and admittedly with a bad taste in my mouth, I resisted taking my ball home and playing with it by myself. For I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that these two babes in the woods still wet behind the ears– how should I say it– didn’t know an adage from a subtraction, an idiom from an idiot, a proverb from an adverb, an axiom from an axe handle, an old wives’ tale from a new (age) partner’s story.

Imagine my shock (and awe) when such sayings as “a day late and a dollar short,” “that’s opening up a whole other can or worms,” “six of one, half dozen of another,” “that’s a long row to hoe,” or “let’s call it a day,” sent the two of them into knee-slapping, high-fiving, laughing spasms. Quoting the old blocks from whom their old block chipped off fared no better: “As granddaddy Jack always said, ‘the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” or “As grandmommy Nena used to say, ‘doesn’t that just frost ya?’” or “As my mom used to say, ‘You’re full of blue mud.’” These Miller favorites practically made them wet their pants in hysterics. You catch my drift?

Here the hallway makes a slight turn. I remember a “game” I made up when I was a graduate student in theology called “As it says in the Bible,” knowing that so many Catholics my age or older did not grow up exactly saturated with scripture. I was quoting box scores when the Baptist neighbor boy was quoting from the Book of Job which yes, I thought, when I first came upon it in the Holy Book, was a treatise on employment. I also thought John 3:16 was a pretty darn good batting average. But I digress (from my digression). The game started when after becoming a tad bit more familiar with scripture I heard someone say, “As it says in the Bible, ‘God helps those who help themselves’.” It does? I was suddenly seized by a hermeneutic of suspicion and went running to the concordance. “As it says in the Bible, ‘What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.” Really? It says that? “As it says in scriptures, ‘Fatigue makes cowards of us all.” Na ah. That was Vince Lombardi. “As it says in God’s Word, “It’s a dog eat dog world out there.” No way. To quote the Bible, “You can’t always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, well you just might find, you get what you need.” C’mon, man, that was Jagger.” You know what I’m saying.

So now we come to that small room I mentioned at the beginning of this (pre-)amble (Get it, pre— never mind). And in this very sparse but special room is a very simple but special stand that holds a very special jewel in the form of a maxim, a maxim that rings so true and clear that it is provocative enough to quell the brothers’ laughter and evoke a thoughtful, assenting head-nod. And to boot, it’s in the scripture. No, really. It is. It’s in the lectionary reading for the day. I’m serious!

As it says in the Bible,

“In everything
do to others
as you would have them
do to you.”

Not a bad room to sit in and ponder in silence. Not a bad Lenten practice. I’ve heard it’s golden.♦

As it says in the Bible: “peace be with you.”
djm