Words

Dr. Bernard Lown, Nobel Prize winner, tells of a middle-aged librarian, Mrs. S, who had difficulty with her heart, specifically the tricuspid valve.  The chief cardiologist of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston came in to the patient’s room and said to other attendant physicians, “This woman has TS.”  He then turned and left the room.

As soon as he walked out of the room, Dr. Lown noticed that S she looked frightened; her breathing rate accelerated.  Not long after the woman’s lungs filled with fluid.

Bernard Lown looked at S and asked her why she looked upset.  

“Because he said I was TS.  I know that is medical jargon for a terminal situation.”

Dr. Lown explained that was not what the physician meant. For him, TS stood for “tricuspid stenosis”

The words of Dr. Lown didn’t help.  Later that same day Mrs. S died of heart failure.

Words are only beginning.  Like seeds or viruses they quickly embed themselves, germinate and then creep & grow until consume us all.

What difference does it make when a car races by, its windows rolled down and foul words yelled at passersby, maybe you.  They did not assault anyone.  They committed no crime. And yet. Would you be surprised if they spoiled someone’s day?  Would you find it incredulous if that hurt person then took it out on someone else?

Swastikas painted on a local synagogue are a malicious act of property destruction.  Charlottesville, New York, Colorado Springs, Chicago, Madison are a few of the communities that experienced this defacement in the past couple of months.  Does it really mean anything?  Just a scrubbing, a new coat of paint and all is remedied.  Right?  What about the vulnerable members who feel like they have been violated?  The staid and contented folks who lived there for decades who suddenly wonder, “Who hates me?  And Why?”

           James Bird, a black man was tied, attached to truck and dragged until died.  This comes well before al the recent acts of violence.  Eric Garner and the Emanuel Nine?  Their families still wonder, “Where did this hate come from?”

Countless churches across the Mideast have been burned.

Remember Matthew Shepherd?  Shepherd, of Laramie, Wyoming, was brutalized then crucified on fence.  An item not often cited in the press was that his face was thickly caked with mud.  And still through that raked earth could be seen jagged slivers running from his eyes to his chin.  Matthew Shepherd cried as he slowly died.

You will wonder “why”?  Why do people do such terrible things to one another?  Do they not realize the magnitude of pain and horror they inflict?

I suspect not.  You see, it all begins with words, words misused, misspent and abused.  Those words then convert into small acts of nastiness that inflict great psychic pain. It begins with words, innocuous things that are only vapor and as I often ask, how many people did Hitler personally kill?   All he did was speak.

            Good people must never be silent.  When you hear someone defaming a person or group, tell him or her they are birthing hatred.  Even something as innocuous as speaking ill of another (lashon ha-ra) is enough to cause dangerous lesions that can infect and kill. 

It all begins at home.