If You Say It Fast Enough

My sons and I were sitting around last night shooting the breeze. They are 11, 13, 15 years old. For some reason we were talking about Haiku. Haiku is rather addicting even if you don't know much about it or are pretty bad at it. We were soon rattling off Haiku on all sorts of topics and I would have to say we pretty much fall in the "bad" category.

It wasn't long before an argument broke out when someone tried to use one of those words that can be either 1 or 2 beats depending on how you say it. My oldest son, Ben, has a pet peeve about people who try to get away with a liberal use of this so of course the other two started stretching things way beyond the limits. Can you say superchalephragelisticespiallidousous in one syllable?

From there we ended up in a discussion about pain and poetry with the consensus being that pain produces the best poetry. Is that true? Are we at our creative best when working from a painful experience? No doubt many are also inspired by beauty but my kids say pain wins out. Mmmm. I'll have to think about that one. I wonder if my sermons are better when prepared in pain. Okay, no wisecracks about my sermons causing pain.