I've decided to work on a daily devotion based on blogs, newsletters, and sermons and I would like to title it Maybe Swearing Will Help. I think that will go over as well as A Waste of Time.
There is a random mix of quotes and poems on my desk, but I keep a little sign that says "Maybe swearing will help." It is not meant to be offensive, but sometimes swearing does help me.
Swearing and singing come from a different part of the brain than regular speech. Singing has never been my gift, but I learned to swear well when I was young. I'm going to blame it on my speech impediment. When I was unable to enunciate s, z, r or l, I could say shit and damn until the cows came home. When so much of language was work for me, I loved swearing for the break it gave my tongue and brain.
Swearing also often helps people feel comfortable. I'm a pastor and my very presence at a gathering brings guilt. People walk up to me and start to tell me why they aren't in church. I write it all down and pass it on to Jesus for them. Not really. It's just slightly awkward, but if I swear then people end the lame excuses and say something like, "it's good to know you are human." I hope they thought I was a cyborg before I started swearing.Humanity and profanity so often go together.
Sometimes we look at our humanity as lacking sacredness, but I would like to focus a daily devotion on God's work transforming the profane into the sacred. Jesus continually takes the ordinary stuff of life and encourages us to see God at work redeeming and loving.
If humanity is living with our impiety and limits, then I would say divinity is imagining the creative power of eternal love. I see this stab as a devotion as an attempt to make connections between humanity and divinity. How do we pay attention to our profane moments and see how God is making them sacred?
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