Stealth
Within our valiant pines
bark beetles
gnaw the inner life. Left
unaddressed, they will
riddle the heartwood.
Their labyrinths glisten
with eggs that hatch
and hatch—over time,
the infiltration, fatal.
Here on the ground, among our kind, a similar fate looms. Chronic negativity may infect our sense of self, our family members, even our projects; it eats away at our moods, impairing growth.
In a heartbeat, online interactions veer into all-cap shouting. Name calling. Threats.
Who will soothe the raveled temper with a cheeky bon mot?
One dictionary translates the French expression to mean a “good word”; another defines it as “a message whose ingenuity or verbal skill or incongruity has the power to evoke laughter.”
Think charm.
Generosity.
Genial wit.
Do you, like me, long to somehow counter the chronic, insidious sowing of doubt—the kind that kills rather than spurs constructive debate?
I often miss the moment. During heated conversations, I retreat. Hours later the sparkling comeback arrives. No matter. I can still make a call, send an email or text, perhaps mail that droll card I’ve been saving. Or write a blog post.
In increasingly uncivil settings, at work or at church, in the family or in the public square, we can still alter an atmosphere—one word, one byte—at a time.
Call it a disarming enactment of upbeat stealth.
“A word spoken in due season, how good it is!” Proverbs 15:23
A joke won’t save an infested tree. An invitation to shared laughter just might defuse a human standoff—perhaps preserve a relationship.
But . . . it’s harder than this, right? We must also challenge today’s fractious culture that vetoes extending respect. A listening ear.
The beleaguered tree—consumed from within—seems a fitting metaphor. What about metamorphic bias we already harbor? Meta, means “change” and morphe, “form.”
When shocked or frightened or wounded by others, or just plain bugged, sometimes I want to lash out. Might a good word from God’s Word alter my stance by several degrees?
Or will I succumb to a hardening mindset?
Take obsidian: rapidly cooled magma transformed by volcanic heat and pressure becomes natural glass. It’s black. Hard. Glossy and sharp enough to cut someone.
Volatile human interactions lacking respect tend to consume or even calcify hearts and minds.
- Hear both sides, I tell myself. Especially when it chafes.
- Learn by observing those who can converse with enemies.
- Go gently among those with a half-glass outlook, their alter Eeyore expecting the worst.
Pause. Lean into the small silence. Is this the moment to speak?
Perhaps the Spirit will reveal a comic incongruity. Shared laughter reestablishes common ground.
You might also feel nudged to offer a bon mot. Or trust grace amid the shared silence to work in ways beyond comprehension.
Either way, in the moment or afterward, offer a stealth prayer.
Friends, have you overheard a quote or a bon mot that dispelled angst? Do you have one of your own?
Please share in the comments!
Photo by Estée Janssens on Unsplash
You might also enjoy this one from the archive: Own a Better View
I loved loved loved the alter Eyore! What a perfect description! When we are stretched and pushed we desperately want people to recognize and be sensitive to the fact that our glass is half empty, and to compensate accordingly – which some may do, but others most definitely do not. But am I alert and charitable enough to make the same allowances for them?
How very true that a shared laugh – even perhaps a gentle rib – can do so much to diffuse the tension. How sadwhen someone makes no home for humor in their lives, but sees with dour ‘reality.’
When Aslan had created the talking creatures, a jackdaw says something that embarrasses himself. The other animals want to laugh, but perhaps feel it might be unseemly to do so.
As I recall the passage from long years past, Aslan intervenes, ‘Laugh and fear not creatures,’ he bids them, ‘for jokes as well as justice came in with speech!’
How much less room there is then for the ever burrowing beetle!
Dear Robert, I’ve joked about my alter Eeyore for most of my adult life. T’is an often “trying” aspect (for others, and myself), seemingly welded into my personality. I so appreciate the “good words” you offer, the two sides: both “compensate” and “charitable enough to make allowances.”
I’m also struck by “no home for humor” in a life.
I remember the jackdaw scene! I just found this commentary, on the Gradesaver website. (And saw myself in it …)
“Aslan asks the animals to promise to use their higher intelligence for good in this land, known as Narnia. (O I long to live this way, too!)
“As all the animals speak their assent, the Jackdaw accidentally speaks loudly after everyone has already finished speaking. (The hymn, last Sunday: I came in too soon, too loud — oh, so isolating and embarrassing!) All the animals begin to laugh, but try to suppress it, for fear their response is wrong.
“However, Aslan informs them that with the gift of speech, the animals also have the ability to joke. They all laugh.”
The quote you give us is so timely, Robert: “for jokes as well as justice came in with speech!” (Please, America, could we carve this in the walls of Congress?)
Bad beetles, begone!
Thank you, Robert, for reminding us of this incomparable scene by C.S. Lewis. I’m full of grins and good intentions (and now chuckling over my little hymn snafu!)
A “stealth prayer…”
Perhaps that is the answer to so many conundrums. To keep at it rather than succumbing to the downward spiral. To be unmoving from it. Thus the stealth prayer might become a way to throw rocks into that well worn superhighway to despondency.
Maybe I cannot manage finding or making a new path. Or put on a new attitude that I’m not. But I might be able to stand still. Stand firm. Give a little stealth prayer. And find peace.
Peace is contagious.
Dear Susan, thank you
for envisioning
stealth prayers: ongoing action;
quietly adamant, with no fanfare,
little by little disrupting
the oft-consuming,
twisted yank
that swamps the spirit.
You are so right. I’ve experienced this so many times.
Peace IS contagious.
Now I want the t-shirt!
Wait. Better yet, to BE the t-shirt . . . practice it, enact it, live it . . .
I’m afraid I can’t offer any clever quotes or bon mot sure to invoke laughter in any situation. But you’ve got me thinking, Laurie, it could be great fun to be stealthily upbeat by being cheerful, shifting focus, diffusing angst with a compliment, etc. The fun part will be to see if I can get the other person to smile!
Nancy, that’s a marvelous intention — one you probably already fulfill more than you recognize.
We could play it like a game, yes? Think of the stories . . .
Thanks for this idea!
Dear Laurie, my husband and I have been in a conversation (still ongoing) with family members via Zoom. Yay Zoom. Our talk was weighted with some deep stuff…and in the middle of one of our sentences the Alexa next to my husband and I on the desk announced, “This just in from Reuters Newservice.” Of course the other party heard it as well and we all cracked up. So there’s my quote to disspell heaviness…. from Alexa.
Also? I couldn’t help substituting the word ‘alter’ for ‘altar’ when I was reading your reflection here. A good deal of my musings on the above conversation have been the Holy Spirit reminding me to sacrifice what I want to say and listen to what God might have to say, sacrificing my great ideas on the altar of my pride.
Lord, help me remember that lesson!
Alter to altar… I like that.
Dear Jody, that’s outstanding! Talk about a disarming interruption! I imagine the line now indelibly entered into your family lore, an inside joke that will be raised in a tense moment at some future time.
About “altar,” we are on the same wavelength, yet again. I, too, heard that small bell chime within my thoughts as I typed.
Thank you for adding the word “sacrifice” to the conversation here. And “pride” (as Rick also did). These are “good words” for me to ponder, perhaps set before me like a plumb line. I have an innate urge to comfort others, and direct them . . . even when I’m not the one being called to do so. (The word “meddling” comes to mind as I think about my tendencies.) Perhaps I need to imagine Alexa changing the subject . . . 🙂
For the past year, every Friday I’ve been doing whats called a Ricky Rap on social networking.
10 thoughts.
Sometimes random.
Others with more intent.
Always have a few in the queue.
Just today planning for Friday I realized I wasn’t settled on what to post.
I wanted to do something funny, that usually includes my wife, but also sitting on a couple with more serious thoughts.
Once again the Laurie blog is timely.
Thank you.
Here is Fridays Rap…
Ricky Rap
1. Cynicism.
2. I don’t like it.
3. In you.
4. In me.
5. The roots are insecurity and pride.
6. The power of response is a superpower.
7. There is one who speaks like the thrust of a sword…
8. But the tongue of the wise brings healing.*
9. When slow to speak…
10. We make better healers.
*Proverb of Solomon
Rick, this is a powerful list, one I want to internalize. Thank you!
When witnessing someone’s pain, how often I’ve wished for a superpower. You remind me that because I have the mind of Christ, I also have the “tongue of the wise, [to bring healing.]”
Where do you blog, friend? How do I sign up? I want to partake of the ongoing Friday Feast . . .
Facebook & Instagram.
Thanks!
A quote from my wise father:
We wouldn’t worry so much what people think about us, if we only knew how seldom they do.
Oh Mike, I love this. Kudos to your dad for passing this on to you. And to you for sharing it here.
I so often get caught in this (too often effective) snare. Ego and hurt and worry snaking around my ankles and heart and mind. Such a brisk and welcome wind for restored perspective!
Do we listen to understand or to
respond?
Mike, that’s a great question I want to carry like flashlight for dark places and regularly pull out, checking in with my motives. Thank you!
Laurie, this is uncanny. Not 30 minutes ago, I posted online that I am looking for some “humorous-and-generally-kind” reading material. I feel like it is so difficult to find on the page, as well as in real life. And here you are extending an invitation to think about listening and the role that kindness and humor make in community life. Thanks so much for this. Smiling here. I would so love to write in this way, and hope I can spark inspiration through reading and happy discourse.
(BTW, I don’t think I have a bon mot of my own, but I’m listening to others. I have to say, Anne Lamott often cracks me up.)
Bethany, I love it when these timely overlaps occur. What a delight! They remind me of the twinkling, though invisible, enduring safety net that encompasses us.
Have you already read A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles?
Fellow Readers, chime in with titles of books you’ve loved rich in humor and kindness . . .
What a fitting image you’ve written here about discord.
“Within our valiant pines/ bark beetles/ gnaw the inner life.”
Hoping to find ways to nourish a life-giving outlook and enjoying the suggestions in the comments.
Writing down the name of your recommendation—thank you! I’m all ears for ideas in that genre. I *love* humor but have a hard time finding work that’s pared with an ultimately kind perspective.