Come again...

Baleful means threatening harm, menacing.  Come again??

Recently, on a Facebook friend's post about wondering if he should use a word in a sermon some might not know, I wrote about how people are essentially contextual readers.  By that I mean that we do not read each and every word of the texts we read.  In fact, our eye movement, as we read, is vertical as well as horizontal.  That is why, by the way, when reading aloud, one can find himself inserting a word in a sentence that is a line or two below where he is actually reading.

But back to context.  We are contextual readers.  We glean meaning from the whole, so it matters not if there are words here or there that we do not know.

Here, I know--even if I remember not--that I have written in the past about my word journal, just as I did on the Facebook post.  Whilst studying for my Ph.D. in literacy studies, I started to realize just how many words I skipped in my own personal reading.  I bought a blank journal and started writing down the words I did not know, looking up each definition and recording it.  I numbered each entry and keep an index so that I can look back up words whose meaning I knew I looked up but could not remember.

Whilst reading a book, I would keep a sticky note on the inside cover and a pen handy.  Sometimes I would stop reading to look up a particular word, but mostly I would wait until I was finished my reading before determining the meaning of the words I did not know.  Once learned, I tried to insert the new words in my speech and in my writing.  It tickles me that, on more than one occasion, I used to have folk tell me that they needed a dictionary to read my blog entries.

I fear my diction has shrunk considerably over the past few years.  I doubt anyone would say such to me now.  SIGH.

A few days after that post, I found a new word in a book I was re-reading for the tenth time.  I posted the sentence to that FB friend's wall:  "Tapping his pipe out on the heel of his palm, Rand ground the dottle underfoot in the dust."  I was sure he would know which word was new.  Do you?

Well, just the other day, I was using a feature on Kindle in which you click on a word and the meaning pops up.  I was randomly clicking on words, because I was in too much pain to concentrate on reading and yet I did not want my mind to still long enough to remember my father's death.  I am not sure how long I played with the feature, passing time, when up popped the word baleful.  And I was stunned to learn the meaning.

You see, I was certain the word was positive, not negative.  I had it in my mind as sort of a combination of rueful and chagrin and wry.  So, you would shoot such a look at someone who was telling you something that you did not exactly wish to hear about but could not argue the truth of ... something usually about you, about something you had wrong or missed or otherwise forced you to admit that the other person was in the right.

Certain!

And, now, I know that the word was/is something different.  All those times reading it, all those stories, were/are now different.  I wonder just how often it is that I am reading something one way when it is actually another.

I mean, such has been much the case since I first picked up the Christian Book of Concord with regard to the Gospel, to faith.  And surely I have written of many such Come again? moments.  They popped up in the bible studies I attended in Virginia, in sermons, in pastor visits, in blogs, and even on Facebook.  In fact, one of the more incredulous moments was a blithe response on Facebook that a pastor made about how the beatitudes were not a set of instructions for Christian living.  I think I have written of that, too, but surely it bears repeating.  The beatitudes are not an instructions for proper Christian living, but rather who we already are in Christ.  

Blew my mind that blithe comment. I posted several comments asking the one who made the comment what he meant, even after he told me what he meant.  I just couldn't wrap my mind around it ... or how much his blithe comment revealed that I did/do not know about the sweet, sweet Gospel.

In a way, that's how I feel about the word baleful. How in the world could I be so utterly wrong about what that word means?  How!

At times, I feel so lost.  So much is slipping away.  So much I learned wrong.  Words, at least, I had right.  Words are my center, the true north of me.  From the time I was a little girl, books and writing, were what was true and right and me. 

Of late, I have been learning many things I did not know.  Revelations.  Rememberings.  Blows to the head.  Punches to the stomach.  Being pulled down to the ground again and again.  But words?  Must it be words, too?

I am Yours, Lord.  Save me!