by Carolyn Myers
Greetings! My name is The-Resa Thesaurus, daughter of Rodg-it, who wrote the famous one. In his final moments, my illustrious (THESAURUS: memorable, well-known, famous) father called me to his deathbed and assigned my destiny: “The-Resa,” said he, “English is a sacred language, though debased from below by gutter talk and from above by the endless needs of rampant capitalism, with its demand for ever expanding subversions. Sanskrit is a sacred language, Hebrew is a sacred language, so too is English. But it needs polishing to expose its revelations. Start with the most common phrases of misery The-Resa, the clichés, and bring to light the sacred truths each contains. Move from the petty to the good to the great expanse. Period. Question mark? Exclamation point!” And so Rodge-it died. And so I travel and revel and reveal.
Take any cliché or saying. For example: “Look before you leap,” or “He who hesitates is lost”—not only do they contradict each other, they tend to have a nasty, scolding, warning tone. An “I told you so” delivered too late to do the poor hearer any good at all. Yet within each is a celebration of humanity and its link to the divine. I will diagram one for you now:
Let’s take: “You made your bed. Now lie in it.”
“You made your bed. Now lie in it.” We start with the great “Y” or “why?” which denotes the novice questioner asking for deep truth. And the universe responds, “Yo!” – such an affirmation! Say it to yourself, “Yo!” Then “o-u,” which reminds us not to cower but to chide the inner critic (who contains all outer critics as well). We do not cower! We chide! “Oh, you poor thing” “Oh, you silly thing, you.” That takes care of the inner critic and the first word.
Yo u made y our bed. Now lie in it.” Ahh, first we pause, “u m.” Then, before us, “u ma” the great mother goddess of the Hindi pantheon reveals herself; supported by “ma.” Under her protection we feel safe to own that we are “mad,” we are “made mad” by all the “ad” talk which makes us feel less than we are every “de y!”
“You made y our bed. Now lie in it.” Lest we get carried away by rage, we are reminded of “our” – that within every “your” there is also “our.” We are all on this sacred journey together. Then we pause “ur.” (Note: Dear reader, you made laugh at my inclusion of “um” and “ur” — but in English they hold place, much as does “0” in numbering – “um” signifies “Wait a moment please, while I think,” and “Ur” means “here is a new thought, I acknowledge its arising, incorporate and am now ready to move on.” As are we.)
“You made y our bed. Now lie in it.” Here we come to “our b”, the orb, the great Earth itself, and what a bed she “be.” We lay our “ed” on her to rest – meaning both our weary head and our education that comes from dreams. And we are “bed n,” or bidden to do so.
“You made your bed. Now lie in it.” “No,” we proclaim to the warning of unforgiving cause and effect that this aphorism contains, “No” this saying makes us hurt “ow” and “Now” in the eternal present moment, we take full responsibility for whatever bed making we may have done, and thus self-empowered, change the result, change our future.
“You made your bed. N ow lie in it.” Wise as a “ow l,” we are not “lie-in’’”, no, we speak truth! We hold a great “lie in,” as did John and Yoko, and revel “in it.”
“You made your bed. Now lie in it.” If we borrow a “u” from either the “you” or the “your” above, which surely we have the right to do as those words were aimed at us; we get “in-u- it” a great culture of the far north. And what a perfect way to end as the Winter Solstice surrounds us! To make the earth our bed, to imagine ourselves lying in it at the far north, lying in a bed of snow perhaps, stargazing, or watching the Northern lights at play, seeing in the glory of the sky the reflection of our own true nature and saying back to the universe, resoundingly, “Yo!”
Oh fellow wanderers, we have made our bed and now we lie in it indeed! Thank you.