A Five-Letter Word

It's amazing how seeing a word, truly seeing it as if for the first time, redefined my perspective in an amazing way.  That one word carried power that removed mountain loads of misconceptions, mistakes, and missteps  Zowie! as a dated comic book character might exclaim.  Dinah Washington, a back-in-the-day jazz singer intoned, "What a difference a day makes. Twenty-four little hours, brought the sun and the flowers, where there used to be rain" Well I declare,  a word  rightly read can produce a cataclysmic result. This happened only because I didn't subconsciously, accidentally, or unconsciously place  another synonym in the original's place.

James Cleveland, the venerable gospel singer, vocalized his plea, "Father, open our eyes that we may see to follow thee. Oh Lord, grant us thy loving peace, and let all dissension cease.  Let our faith each day increase, and Master Lord, please open our eyes."  What in the world am I writing about? Where's the rhyme or reason to this? Glad you asked. What I've come to realize is that my mind can unconsciously insert a word not on the page yet accept without questioning its accuracy.

Want an example? For years, I had read "Truly, I say to you, whoever says to the mountain, 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him"  (Mark 11:23).  For no known reason and for much too long I had substituted mind  for heart!  No problem, you might surmise.  In fact, you might use them interchangeably. Evidently, that's what I had done, for decades! I had fallaciously assumed that the work of the verse began in my mind!  Good Lord!

This subconscious substitution produced all kinds of problems, ones I had been unaware of until recently.  Let me try to explain (even if it might not make sense even to me).  I view the mind and the heart as two separate (albeit sometimes connected) entities.  If I think the mind is what needs to be at work, I  envision hard, arduous toil and travail.  I've believed the heart is more malleable, loving,  impressionable.   King David cried out (Psalm 51:10a) "Create in me a clean heart" and had his prayer answered. My thought process posits that the heart accepts, receives, or changes easier than the mind, unless you have a heart of stone, which hopefully happens rarely.

On the other hand, I see the mind as complex and difficult to manage  One has to navigate serpentine portals, memories, and who-knows-what-else to understand  the work the brain performs in the decision making process. The mind sets itself in unyielding ways which may need to be dislodged.  The mysterious brain, with its difficult-to-pronounce vocabulary, and its nexus of entwined circuits, takes charge and one's will becomes puny putty in one's own thoughts.  I think.

Could it be that the "dissension" James Cleveland references occurs between the physical and spiritual, the mind occupying the physical while the heart abides in the spiritual? That not doubting in the heart frees miracles to happen? That being careful to recognize the words one reads (or pronounces)  might make the differences between seeing  the sun and the flowers where there used to be rain? When I taught reading skills to students, we made it a habit of reading each word aloud so we could truly hear sounds.  It serves to increase comprehension and comfort.

Of course, both heart and mind matter but in many ways the heart predominates.every day,  no matter the weather of the mind.

I invite your comments, views, and thoughts, as always, on Facebook, ordainedelder@aol.com, or here.