The other day, I hazily recalled reading in high school US History textbook that women buried their Bibles for fear that Thomas Jefferson would do something awful to the Good Book. This recollection led me to googling the phrase that appears as the title of this post and discovering on this page that this craziness actually happened in the Presidential Election of 1800. It also led me to putting together an attack

Dr. Timothy Dwight, the President of Yale, predicted in (unfortunately) a sermon that an America under the Democratic-Republican candidate would see all Bibles burned, women and children forced into legal prostitution, and the country would basically be turned into Western France (there has always been someone in this country who didn't like France).

I have been thinking a lot about my spiritual journey recently. The truth of the matter is that whatever has been done to get me to the nebulous "here" of being ordained is not solely my doing. Not even close. This goes beyond the true answer that God is the source and sustainer of our spiritual being. Today is All Saints' Day. This is a day when we remember the great cloud of witnesses who have gone before us in faith. Women and men whose examples spur us on to follow after God. 

Who I am in faith is the product of thousands if not tens of thousands of people who are living and dead, known and unknown to me, spread across time and some of whom will outlive me in the future. I did not get here on my own. I was carried by many and will continue to be carried as I am continually formed spiritually until my dying breath.

I can readily identity my problem. I feel incredibly fractured right now. With my family still in the Upstate, my heart is between Nashville and Spartanburg. This too shall pass but it all feels strange and, honestly, quite lonely. I feel like I'm watching my present, unfamiliar life from a distance sometimes. I feel like waves of energy that are bouncing back and forth between two timezones. Thus most of what I have sat down to write feels hollow, robotic.

But it is what it is. Bemoaning is not going to change a thing. The move to Nashville has been good. It is where we need to be. December will come and bring my family with it. But in the meantime, I am faced with this armful of questions. How do I make the most of right now? How do I avoid just looking toward the future and thus burn a month and a half of time? How does that creative spark begin to once again glow? How can I not feel disembodied?

"It's just words, folks. It's just words."

Growing up, I always heard that childhood standby: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me." I understand why we're told that. You don't want your kid to haul off and sock a seven year old because they're called a doo-doo head. But that saying is a lie. Words wound. In some ways, a word is worse than a stick or a stone because you can't see the damage done.

Words are powerful. Take away language and our civilization would be in a huge mess. Words convey what is most important to each of us. We express love, needs, and hatred with words.

We speed down a runway at 180 miles per hour and escape earth's gravitational pull. We ascend above the clouds and soar at 10,000 feet; achieving something that humanity could scarce dream of for generations. We hurtle through the sky at something like 540 miles per hour before descending back down to earth at a somehow controlled plummet to land. It's a marvel to me. Even wedged in a space too small for my six foot one frame between two total strangers, I still think flying is amazing.