SCOTT hamilton

Lost and Found

Well I am emerging from the Christmas season with a spinning head.

You see my Christmas gift was the third season of Lost on DVD.  And as per our family tradition we watched said DVD in marathon mode.  Yes . . . 991 minutes, 22 episodes later we moaned knowing we still didn't ave all the answers.

The only thing that rivals my family's smoothie addiction is our dependence on Lost.

Here are my observations of the series:

· Trust is too easily given to the co-inhabitants of the beach (e.g. 5 minutes after being tortured by a character the victim is buddy-buddy with the perp. Or now that you’re done threatening my life let’s go fishing).

· My girls haven’t comprehended the concept that you have to continue watching in order to get resolution. They must have immediate answers by asking dear ol’ dad. And my pat answer, “Keep watching” as I do the I’m-watching-you gesture to the TV.

· Anything found, seen, or talked to must be kept secret from everyone else on the island for no apparent reason.

· The Dharma orientation film scientist looks uncannily like my 8^th grade science teacher.

·  Most of the “Others” have mastered the creepy eye stare

· Lost is basically a soup of Gilligan’s Island, Days of Our Lives, and The Twilight Zone

· As soon as word gets out that you have the DVD set the in-laws want to borrow it

(Now throw in a new XBOX360 with Call of Duty 4 and you have an idea of why the absence of posts)

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Words

I just finished watching the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee. Introducing the champion . . .

13-year-old Kerry Close.

She won with the word Winning word: URSPRACHE

My brain hurt just listening to the words and definitions that were presented for these amazing young people to spell. I’m not sure which I’d least like to do, enter a spelling bee or a marathon.

The power of words is incredible. They have the POWER to transmit a thought/idea/concept from one mind to another. Each word given while I watched was extremely specific and concise in meaning. They conveyed a very particular thought. Knowing the definition now all you’d have to do is utter a single word and I would know exactly what you were thinking.

Just meditating on the concept of speech, ideas, and language I am filled with wonder at the beauty of it all. My mind floods with images of a half-time locker room speech that rallies the inner strength of others, tender words of motherly comfort, timely words of encouragement, Presidential speeches in Berlin that mark the change of the geo-political face of the world.

 

And then I remember the power of words and am filled with dread. My mind is flooded with images of liquor filled curses, teenage cut-downs that cut to the core, speeches of a dictator in Berlin that mark the change of the geo-political face of the world, and killed 6 million Jewish people and 3 million Polish Catholics.

Simply put –

The words of the wicked kill;
the speech of the upright saves.
                                   - Solomon

 

God gave each one of us the most powerful instrument known to mankind – words. Will you use yours to promote life or death?

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