Spiritual Disciplines for the Tongue...

So, what can we do to help control that feisty little member, that rather small muscle that boasts of such great things?

There are "spiritual disciplines," or exercises, that can help.  We talk about some of these in our newcomers' class section on Formation - how we grow and change as Christians.

First point re. spiritual disciplines:  like all disciplines or exercises or training, that basic idea is that you do what you can do now, so that later you can do what you can't do now.  For example, if you want to participate in a 5k race to help support a local organization or for the camaraderie or just to see if you can do it, you would do what you can do now - which might be walk around the block and jog a little - so that as you keep at it, eventually you'll be able to run 3.1 miles - or just traverse the 3.1 miles...

So one spiritual discipline to help our tongues is, of course, Silence.  This can be engaged in a number of ways:

• a personal or organized retreat of one or more days where you don't speak to others people, only out loud to God.  
• Or you might pick a time, perhaps just an hour or a morning, where you will not speak unless you absolutely have to.  
• Another variant might be to basically observe silence for a day (unless you have to talk, and some of us have to talk regularly during our work day!), but you commit to writing down what you talked about, who you talked about, etc.  This is to intentionally reflect on the nature of our speaking: is it critical, negative, upbuilding?  did I volunteer info about people I should not have?

I'll share another spiritual discipline tomorrow to assist us.  

One that Robert shared with me came from a Cursillo talk on Sin, where the speaker, a priest, began what was to be a 15-20 minute talk by saying:  "Sin,  don't do it!"    We could say, "Negative or critical speech, don't do it!"  

Lord have mercy.  May our words reflect your word - healing, creative, blessing.