Our good friends from new Orleans stayed with us recently and we found ourselves talking about accents and how w’all (sort of a personalized y’all) pronounce words differently:
Route – rhymes with boot or out?
Root – rhymes with boot or sounds like ruht?

My mom’s nurse asked her what a particular med was for. Mom told her it was to keep her heart under control. But of course being from The Boston region it sounded like she said to keep her “HOT” under control. 🙂 I figured out a long time ago there are just so many “Rs” in the world. The ones that are dropped in New England (where they “pahk the cah”) are found as extra letters in southern Iowa and Missouri (where they “warsh” the “carr”).

I find these things interesting since I live in central Iowa where it is a known fact that we don’t have any accent at all.

But joking aside, there is another factor of communication and that is, “How do we say ‘Love’?” Not how do we pronounce the actual word, but how do we convey love? After all, most would agree that when all is said and done, love is the primary stuff that makes up a meaningful life: to have loved well and to have been loved deeply.

I wonder how many times we ‘presume’ love is spoken by the lack of other emotion to the contrary. Like Goldie in Fiddler on the Roof when her husband Tevye asks her if she loves him: “Do I WHAT?!” she replies. “For twenty-five years I’ve washed your clothes, cooked your meals, cleaned your house, given you children, milked the cow, after twenty-five years, why talk about love right now?”

You may speak love with gifts, with deeds of service, with gentle and encouraging words, or with quality time. Sometimes there are no words and simple touch conveys love the best. However you speak love, make sure you speak it today. And speak it often.

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.” 1 Corinthians 13:1,13