Flos Carmeli

And there is no point to any truth that does not lead us to love.

Reminds me of these words from St Ignatius that I recently read, in the General Examination of Conscience, part of the Spiritual Exercises:

"One must not speak an idle word. By idle word I mean one which does not benefit either me or another, and is not directed to that intention. Hence words spoken for any useful purpose, or meant to profit one’s own or another’s soul, the body or temporal goods, are never idle, not even if one were to speak of something foreign to one’s state of life, as, for instance, if a religious speaks of wars or articles of trade; but in all that is said there is merit in directing well, and sin in directing badly, or in speaking idly."

Talk about things that cycle around. I was looking at the set of blogs that I usually check out and realized that most of them are excuses to argue and justify viewpoints held by the arguer - mostly about the US political situation.

And the little voice I listen to from time to tieme said, " And what does this profit?"

And all I could do was acknowledge that alot of it leads not to the careful spreading of the seeds God would have us spread, but intensifies self-rightenous viewpoints, and helps to intensify ill will where none will grow buy it.

And I realized that I need to be very careful at playing those games.

Idle words.

Now I can't imagine that I'll totally stop checking out the sites, but I hope the Lord will guide me away from the idle words that build walls of self-righteousness, and keep the truth of God from coming in, walls of anger, which means I reject my brother or sister, even though they are a child of God, walls of scorn.

Hard to do sometimes. I love to play the word games too. Lord, help me to love you more than to win at arguments that lead people away from your light. Amen.