Meditation for February 12th, 2016
Grammer and Spelling
Writing is an integral part of spiritual growth. We write in journals, read meditations and books and we write letters. Just the act of writing can be a form of meditation especially when we put pen to paper. Some of us use a daily journal to watch our progress and make sure we aren’t stuck on a pattern that isn’t allowing us to grow.
God is in the execution of writing. If there be one grammatical mistake in what you read, the power of that writing is forever lost. Only the truly educated or obsessed can write with true meaning and heart. Why this very meditation is rife with grammar mistakes and misspellings so it should be read with great soul puking sadness.
In monk life we travel the countryside correcting and judging the less fortunate in the literary arts. We even embrace the evil side of life with admitting to being a grammar Nazi or that we are anal about spelling. We are likening our distaste for mistakes or someone’s poor education with killing people based on religion and ethnicity and a sexual act that can be painful if not performed by a gentleman or gentlelady.
It is our job as spiritual teachers to ignore someone’s message by only seeing the mistakes. Only see the few ugly trees in the forest, the one ugly member of the Kardashians or only see the disgusting flavors at Baskin and Robbins. Comment on how much you couldn’t stand reading something because the tense kept shifting and their was alot of misspellings.
Prayer
Yaweh,
Remember that time you were all like, hey that tower is getting awfully close to, like, my home and shit, so you, like, knocked it over and took everyone’s language and jumbled it all up like, ‘shika, shika, shika’, so that all the people couldn’t understand each other and everyone sounded like they were babbling instead of saying anything that, like, made sense?
That was kind of fucked up.
Jehovah,
Smite all those who use emojis,
all caps,
numbers instead of spelling out the words,
confuse your and you’re,
there, their and they’re,
misspelling, even if it’s on purpose,
and put them on trains that take them to Eastern Europe,
and gas them in ovens,
because I am hour humble grammar Nazi.
Mighty Steve Buscemi,
please give me the power to be humble.
Please keep me reminded that people didn’t get the same education as me,
or were taught the importance of language.
Please give me the patience to see the message,
instead of the messy way it was written.
Allow me to find text and IM shorthand cute.
That one can say so much more with a GIF than with English.
English is too complicated and sounds ugly anyway.
Amen.
Craft
What you’ll need:
Paper
Pen
Typewriter
Stapler
Glue Stick
Fold the paper up the middle so the smaller edges meet.
Write poetry on the paper. Be creative with not just what you are saying, but with your layout.
Use the typewriter to write some of the poems. Cut out the typed words and glue them all willy-nilly on the paper.
Draw pictures to go along with your poems.
After you get a few of these papers filled with poems and drawings, staple them along the crease creating a magazine like effect.
Name your little creation.
Sell your little booklets to people.
Sign up at a poetry open mic or Poetry Slam.
Try not to sound like human is just a wounded animal yelping and whining in pain thinking it can tell someone something of importance at all and the moon stares back down with indifference as the animal bleeds out into the snow and soon is completely forgotten…except for that small booklet might make a smudge of a legacy.
Goal
To be so scared of what other people think of you that you must correct other people in their grammar to wrestle some sense of control over your situation. To shake your head when someone is not well spoken and ignore the message. To use grammar and spelling against someone in an argument as a reason that the person’s point being made is wrong. The whole reason you are not buying the social democratic thing is because the Bernie Sanders supporter said, “me and my mom”, instead of, “my mom and I” and now you are voting for Dr. Ben Carson. He’s a doctor, so he knows how to read and write good.
Be a Grammar Monk. Grammar Monks must be hermits in plain sight.