The Tongue is a Fire

The things you learn in a foreign culture...like this throw-away comment on the bus ride to town that yielded incredible insight into the Maltese, on the way to the prayer house: 

"Paul dealt with a poisonous snake on the island after his shipwreck.  Since then,  no snakes on Malta are venomous."

Really?! 

"Yes.  But the venom of the snake went into the Maltese mouth."

Yikes! 

Some laughed; some of us thought that was a pretty awful self-cursing sort of thing.  Taming the tongue is no small feat, and I'm sure not where I want to be with it, but I would hate to identify myself as someone with a venomous tongue.  But the Maltese carry a certain pride in their sharp tongues, directness, and ability to argue.   

Talking with an equally-shocked friend later, we decided we wanted to be people who do not speak the fire of hell but the fire of heaven: healing, purifying, refining words.  A visual immediately came to mind, refined during the bus ride, as I passed the many houses covered with the now-familiar grillwork of the Mediterranean windows--grillwork that now appeared to be snake-like, covering windows so no light of understanding could get in, just the lie of a debasing identity about themselves.  I wondered what it would take to dismantle the self-cursing proverb.  What would remove the venom from the Maltese mouth?     

A quick acrylic capture:

Ran out of time to finish - was trying to remove the 'snakes' from one side of the painting, to represent the heart choice of how one speaks.  (Heart also incomplete in the middle.)  But I hope you 'get the picture."  :)

(Text: "The tongue also is a fire."--James 3:6)