scrabble

What is rooted is easy to nourish.
What is recent is easy to correct.
What is brittle is easy to break.
What is small is easy to scatter.

Prevent trouble before it arises.
Put things in order before they exist.
The giant pine tree
grows from a tiny sprout.
The journey of a thousand miles
starts from beneath your feet.

Rushing into action, you fail.
Trying to grasp things, you lose them.
Forcing a project to completion,
you ruin what was almost ripe.

Therefore the Master takes action
by letting things take their course.
He remains as calm
at the end as at the beginning.
He has nothing,
thus has nothing to lose.

What he desires is non-desire;
what he learns is to unlearn.
He simply reminds people
of who they have always been.
He cares about nothing but the Tao.
Thus he can care for all things.
-- Stephen Mitchell, Chapter 64, Tao Te Ching

Jesus, Lao Tzu, and I were playing Scrabble.

"That's no word," Lao Tzu said.

"It is too," I said.

Jesus grinned.

"I-R-R-U-P-T, irrupt!" I said.

"You spell erupt E-R-U-P-T, don't you, Jesus?" Lao Tzu said.

"You can't lean on Jesus in this game," I said. "We follow the dictionary."

Lao Tzu looked thoughtful.

"If you are a word in the language of the cosmos, what is your meaning?" he asked.

My mind went silent.

"And who is speaking you?" asked Jesus.

"The same one speaking you and Lao Tzu," I said.

"And your meaning?" asked Lao Tzu.

"To whip your butt at Scrabble," I said.

Lao Tzu erupted with laughter and laughter irrupted Lao Tzu.

"Play the dang word," he said.