Wordplay - ‘care’

Several words include the root 'care' in them, but the meanings go in sometimes very different directions. Take care (of yourself =be well; of the danger =caution), work with care or carefully (pay attention), care-free (=no worries or anxiety, unconnected to consequences or accountability for one's responses; responsiveness; responsibility), careless (=unconnected to consequence, awareness, feedback, calibration), caring sort of person (=expresses concern for others that is genuine and warm), not to care about - nobody cares - who cares about that (=disinterest or actively turn away in ill will), care-worn (=burdened by the weight of cares).

     The life unexamined, unencountered and not cared about is a dull and hollow thing indeed. The core of following Christ's way centers on one's heart; that engagement with one's neighbors/self and with the Creator. So a by-word for 'heart' could be 'care'. Another expression could be 'paying' or 'giving' attention when listening, when seeking to understand others or to discern God's will. More than money, time or talent, it is giving one's sincerity; care; heart-felt attention that is the coin of the realm in the economy of The Way. This is how one's heart grows, exercises, grows stronger --by giving attention and by receiving the care and interest (respect) of others.

God's servant Job; growing one's heart; 20-20 hindsight

Book of Job --medicine for the heart

Imagine a Venn diagram for the fields of meaning for the words Humble (attitude opposite to self-pride or hubris), Humiliate (to cause a person or other sentient being to give up pretense, status, self-respect, pride and in so doing perhaps to plant seeds of resentment, mistrust, vengeance), and Humus (the detritus broken down to elemental forms on the forest floor). The intersecting parts of these words centers on flattened structure (as opposed to towering edifice) and therefore the easy connection and openness to things adjacent in time or location. But with regard to one's heart of hearts, there is an all-important distinction between humbling oneself and humiliation by an outside force or agent. A parallel distinction can be found between Meek (the Meek shall inherit the earth --powerful but harnessed for gain) and Powerful; or between Righteous (of one's own heart conforming to God's Will) and Self-righteous (governed by one's own will).

A Program to grow one's heart big enough to hold God

As a scaffolding or supporting structure, the person actively pursuing a knowledge and growing familiarity with Gods Ways, there a many life experiences one can recommend (the sequence is something to consider with care, since the seasons of life lend themselves to certain experience before others):

• worship at the houses of many religious traditions to find God no matter the language or customs

• disciplinary practices of the ages: lectio divino, fasting, pilgrimage, seclusion (monastical stint), ?penance or mortification of the fleshly desires, meditations (walking, seated, icon-making, verse chanting, musical sequences)

• compare a handful of key verses across multiple translations to find God no matter the phrasing

• microscopic scrutiny of word roots in key passages to add depth, connotation, and wider resonance of the time then and dynamic equivalence in our times

• missionary experience --participate, organize, present to others, support those afield

• others to add to this list of experiences for spiritual growth?

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The value in "learning from experience" and the sense of In God's Own Time

Experience can be a great teacher and one that does not always require explanation or language to communicate the significance. Likewise, hindsight affords clear vision --either to replay what now appears to be a better response, or else to give a longitudinal scale of understanding so that an isolated wreck can be connected to a series of unfortunate events ahead of time. In any case, since the all-important place where one's ground of being resides is one's heart, then to look back at mistakes and correct them in one's heart does in some way re-remember and rework memory. As such there is some therapeutic value in making meaning, rationalizing, analyzing or discovering remedy to what caused heartache. Just as the loss of one's loved ones does not end the heart to heart relationship, so too of Life Lessons Learned. We profit by replaying past events and by visualizing future events. In a small way this a taste of God's Own Time, where past, present and future all concurrently occupy the same space of infinity.