What we speak becomes the house we live in.
--Hafez--

Sunday after church I went to the copy machine to do a slightly complicated copy job I needed for an afternoon activity. And I just couldn’t get the machine to act right. It would not produce the back to back, facing pages I needed. And I cursed it. Loudly.

About then friends walked by in the hall outside the copy room, heard me, and came to my rescue. Of course, it was not the blankety-blank machine’s fault at all. I had been persistently, angrily punching the wrong button, egging myself on with my own foul language.

Speak with gentleness, even to a machine. As Hafez reminds us, our words and tone are more about creating the micro-world each of us necessarily lives in than shaping the behavior of others, critter or machine.

May the gentle serenity of Divine Love be what comes out of our mouths in unguarded moments.