Remember the Rice

We did an experiment recently. We talked to rice. Seriously, we did. I had two jars of cooked rice and gave instructions to my family to talk very nicely to the jar full of rice marked "love."  A second jar of rice was marked "hate" and passed around with instructions to talk meanly into that jar.  Why would anyone do such a thing?  Well, I heard two motivational speakers share this idea with large audiences and I wanted to give it a try. So with a few strange looks from my family, statements like "You cute little rice, you are so darling!  You always do the right thing!  We are so proud of you," were spoken to those little grains in the love jar. Statements like "You are terrible! I am so disappointed," and the like were spoken to those little grains in the hate jar.  Then they were both shoved back into a dark corner of the pantry.  A couple of months later I pulled them out and this is what I saw:

I was stunned.  My family would not have believed it had they not seen it with their own eyes. What a difference! Now I know this little family exercise was not carried out with scientific precision. Nevertheless, the results were shocking and their implications for our daily conversation about how we believe in each other and treat each other were even more compelling. Words have power!

Similarly, Masaru Emoto; a Japanese author and researcher born in 1934, conducted experiments that showed words and thoughts can change the molecular structure of water.  He is well known for the water crystals created when he labeled bottles of water then placed them in subzero temperatures and photographed the crystals.  The results are here: Dr Masaru Emoto's Water Experiment - Words are Alive!  Learning of his experiments and seeing the rice give new understanding to the power of words.  When conversations get a little tense here, we say, "Remember the RIce."  Or "Don't hurt my inner rice." 

When you finish reading this, you will have opportunities to share all kinds of words. What will they be? Will they be healing or hurtful? Kind or curt? Joyful or jabbing? Clearly they will have more impact than we might ever have imagined. Literally, we have the opportunity before us to create a better world, word by word every day. 

 Gentle words bring life and health; 
a deceitful tongue crushes the spirit.
-Proverbs 15:4