Sticks
I am not quite sure where the idiom “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me” came from. However, I am jolly well sure that whomever this ideocracy can be attributed to has never had a stout verbal lashing, and may well deserve a lashing with the sticks they seem to so ironically embrace over the words. Words can do immense damage to the mind - indeed, the soul - since, after all, we live in a world where words are not simply ostensive referents to objective reality but a world that is made up of words itself: “And God said…and it was so.” What’s more, when God said “Let there be light”, or anything else for that matter in his creative form, it’s not that light simply came into being by obeying his word (though that is true enough), it is deeper than that. The light itself coming into being WAS God speaking, saying “Let there be light”! It’s not that the light obeyed God’s word by coming into being; it’s that the light was God speaking! God’s word doesn’t simply create reality, it is the reality that all of creation stems from. It’s not that the light had no choice and simply had to obey God’s word; it’s that the light itself was God’s word when he said “Let there be light”. I don’t know that God ever said “Let there be sticks”, but he did say “Let the land produce vegetation…”, from which the sticks came. Sticks can be multi-functional. For example, sticks can be used to start a fire, fuel a fire, build a shelter, or tear one down for that matter. Sticks can be used for practicing duels, or practicing aside, can be used to duel in actuality. Sticks can be used to beat cumin, as the prophet says,
“Caraway is not threshed with a sledge,
nor is the wheel of a cart rolled over cumin;
caraway is beaten out with a rod,
and cumin with a stick.” (Isa. 28:27)
They can also be used to beat the living tar out of someone who thinks that words can’t hurt them, as if words cannot affect them. Imbecile! You are made up of words, sustained by words, and the Word Himself became flesh. Dispense with the foolishness, or a beating with sticks will seem light in comparison to the word that will be spoken over you.
Though we may be prone to despair at this potentiality, we must recall that God can draw straight lines with crooked sticks.
