Stupid Mouth

The main problem with my mouth is that I tend to open it. It doesn’t like to follow orders.

I’m having a Bart-is-incompetent week. Spanish is a readily available illustration of this. I’ve got all of these rules and conjugations sitting around in my head, but you wouldn’t know it because no one has ever heard anything come from my mouth that would give evidence that they exist.

There is a definite disconnect between the head and the heart. I know a lot of things, but that doesn’t necessarily mean much. I know that E = mc2, and I know the basic physics theory behind how a nuclear bomb detonates, but that doesn’t mean that I have the slightest idea about how to go about making one. (I’ll bet that one makes a hit on the FBI search engines.) I know a lot about Alexander the Great, but there is absolutely zero possibility that I will ever know him. I know a lot about what it is to be a good person, but that doesn’t mean that I know how to be one.

Frustration is a potent teacher. It doesn’t matter how much any of us know, we are all ultimately incompetent people. And no matter how independent any of us are, we’re all social creatures, designed to need others. To be honest, I hate this. It’s a seemingly bad combination: being invalid and connected at the hip to other invalids. I wish I had either one or the other; either competency or independence.

But I understand the reason why we’re made like this, and I appreciate the beauty and simplicity of it. Knowledge is a foreign language to my heart and it doesn’t understand one word of it. Love, joy, hate and frustration… now those are words in the heart language. They give evidence to the fact that my heart in engaged in a conversation, a very important conversation that has been going on all of my life. In fact this conversation is the reason for life: that I hear, learn to listen, and maybe finally come to understand in my heart this conversation in which Jesus is speaking in words that my heart can understand to show me who He is.

Everything hinges on this. Life isn’t about my frustrations and joys. Life is about taking part in this conversation. Maybe I do hate that I’m never going to be able to speak any more eloquently than an idiot. Maybe I do hate the way I’m made. Maybe I should. Maybe it’s ok, because it drives me to listen; it reminds me about what’s really important, about the whole point of life.