I am a lover of words. A quick random flip through my old hardcover dictionary yields a delicious harvest: perspicacious... luncheonette... deuteronomic... flannel... quench... slovenly... deign... slugfest... electrostatic... harbinger... wobble.... I recently wrote down 100 of them from a dictionary hunt, every one a tasty treat. What makes words so delightful? The phenomenon of language itself is such a profound mystery. What is this awesome capacity humans have to breathe out sounds (or form symbols) to express our thoughts and feelings – often with the intention of influencing others to think, feel, and act? It is tempting to argue that words are “just words,” and that they don’t have the power to wound or influence us unless we choose to let them – which may be true some or even most of the time – but it does seem that there are some hateful, blood-soaked words that convey the very real threat of physical violence. Aside from those few powerful words, though, might it be possible for us to become less automatically reactive to the day-to-day stream of words that we encounter? Must we continually react as though our very beings were under attack by what is in reality “mere breath”?