Words from Dic(tionary)

Allocution: (n) a speech giving advice or a warning

Really?

See, I always thought “allocution” is what they do on Law and Order when it’s time to own up to their crimes and give the details to the judge, to let everyone know that they understand the depth of their depravity before they receive their sentence. I guess that could be considered a warning. I don’t know about advice.

So I am going to take the more “street savvy” definition and apply it to my own life. I think one of the greatest human weaknesses is the tendency to keep secrets about our deeds, which leak out anyway through our insecurities and bigotries.

So since we are heart, soul, mind and strength people, I will allocute about each member.

Heart: I will allocute to you today that I have lusted so many times in my heart that I just might require a transplant.

Spiritually, I have failed many times to remind myself that everything that is Godly has to have some sort of human application–because the way we treat our fellow-travelers is actually what we privately feel about the Divine. So because I have treated some people like crap, I must really think I have a crappy God.

Mentally, I will allocute that I have lied about my education, to try to make people think my thoughts were legitimized, or to allow them to confirm my conjectures based upon the “degree” of acceptability. Honestly, if you don’t trust your experience to be enough to back up what you believe, having a sheep skin doesn’t necessarily carry any more clout with the sheep.

And finally, physically, I have over-eaten, over-indulged and even been overly curious about my own human sexuality–even once when I was eleven years old, on a very hot day, lying naked on my bed, not offering any objection when my dog started sniffing me indiscriminately.

You see, you might say “too much information.”

But I disagree. There’s a cleansing which happens when we are no longer afraid of who we are, allowing us to become more than what we are.

Until then, our defensiveness will keep us waiting for the jury to produce a verdict … rather than deciding our own fate.