Princess Bride: Man in Black: “All right. Where is the poison? The battle of wits has
begun. It ends when you decide and we both drink, and find out who is right...
and who is dead.”
Living your life with civility is a battle of wits. All
the time, every day, all day long; keep your wits about you and you might make
it through the day. The Free Dictionary by
Farlex on the Internet defines the word wits as this: “The natural ability to perceive and
understand; intelligence”
But I like the second definition even better:
“the ability to
perceive and express in an ingeniously humorous manner the relationship between
seemingly incongruous or disparate things.”
Hmm..sounds like
how my week is beginning; trying to remain, and keep my wits. While I am wishing I had the first definition
of wits – the intelligent part, I feel I will much more need the second
definition where I am needing to perceive and express, hopefully in a humorous
and not impatient or angry manner, incongruous and disparate things such as
what happens when lightning hits the church steeple and blows out a multitude
of unconnected equipment and makes for one headache of a time.
Civility in our day to day life is just plain not easy.
I’ve come to learn that over these past 42 weeks. I hear of an injustice that
makes me mad and wonder if I can do anything about it without loosing my cool
or hurting anybody! Have these weeks
taught me anything? The guy that cuts me
off in traffic now barely gets a roll of the eyes. Ha! Okay, got that, but
worldly injustices still make me want to take arms and wreck holy you-know-what
on terrorists who shoot young girls and decide she must no longer live because
she does not share their beliefs.
But, you know, Civility does not mean we don’t defend or
protect ourselves. God made our bodies as temples of the Spirit and must
protect that temple. He also gave us Righteous Indignation, Fraternal Correction
and so on. We are charged with instructing the ignorant not only just feeding the
poor.
So maybe this lesson in Civility has helped temper my
temper. It has made me look over those areas of my life I get upset about and
say, “Is this worth my time to be mad?” If not I need to move on to bigger and
more important things. And that has worked for me. It has calmed me down, made
me look at the bigger picture on lots of things.
There is hope yet! And only 10 weeks left!!!
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