One Way Out

As seen in the HEARTbeat and the Village Voice 

One Way Out

            Towns are laid out individually, as if it has its own personality.  Go to a midwestern city like Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.  If you could look at it from above, you’ll find the majority of the streets run due east and west, and due north and south.  The named streets run in one cardinal direction and the numbered streets run perpendicular to them.  It is an easy city to get around in (except in rush-hour traffic).  Then take a city built in the mountains.  The streets contour to the lay of the land.  They run the base of a hill instead of traversing directly over it.  One such city which comes to mind is Seattle, Washington.  Streets wind around the Sound and meander into the surrounding hillside.

            Often there are subdivisions abutted against an area upon which houses cannot be built.  Either it is bordered on the other side by private land, or the ground is such that it cannot hold the weight of a house.  You can tell such areas by looking at the street sign.  It usually has the name, and beside the name the words, “No Outlet.”  You will know this particular area does not support through traffic.

            People are a lot like this civil engineering phenomenon.  We eat different foods, they are digested, and once meandering along the digestive pathway, the “through traffic” of the digestive process occurs.  However, sometime, for a multitude of reasons, things don’t set well in the digestive tract.  If you are like me and have no gall bladder, the organ that aids in the digestion of high fatty food, sometimes this high fatty food reverses course and it comes out the same way it went in.  In other words, the fatty foods have a sort of “No Outlet” sign on them.  And if you are like me, you know which foods these are.  But sometimes you just can’t help yourself in having just one more slice of bacon!

            Old Testament Jewish law states animals with cloven hooves and that chew the cud are kosher and can be eaten, while animals with only cloven hooves or that only chew the cud are unclean.  It is believed that if the meat of an animal is eaten which does not meet the criteria of being kosher, it causes the person to be unclean.  Jesus spoke a lot of cleanliness, but not in the sense of being dirty or not on the outside.

            On one such occasion, the Pharisees approached Jesus in disgust because His disciples did not ceremonially wash their hands before they ate.  Jesus let them have it, pointing out how they broke the commandment of not honor their father and mother.  But He also put to rest the reason for being clean and unclean.

            Jesus said, “What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them.”  What comes out of our mouths is not something we have ingested, but what we have thought.  We put things into our minds, not our mouths, through our eyes and ears, and it sinks into our hearts.  If it is garbage, then garbage comes out of our mouths.  But if what we put in is good and clean, these thoughts produce conversation which is good and clean.

            Today, be careful what you put into your mind.  The heart is a wellspring.  Make certain it produces sweetness instead of vinegar!