Open book

Over the weekend, I found myself with a bit of a communication problem. The details aren’t important: I wanted to help and encourage someone to do something he was finding hard. I tried a few different approaches, succeeded only in being annoying, and finally asked Yi for advice on how I could help. Yi gave me hexagram 27, with no changing lines.

‘Nourishment: constancy brings good fortune.
See the jaws,
And the origin of your quest to fill your mouth.’

This was one of those times when an unchanging hexagram means ‘!!!’ and ‘Pay attention – look what you’re missing, it’s not exactly rocket science, woman!’

I hadn’t given a thought to what my own desires were, and how they were driving me, and what messages I was putting into circulation with my ‘encouraging’ words because of this. Hexagram 27, uniquely, actually tells me to see what’s going on.

‘Below the mountain is thunder. Nourishment.
The noble one thus reflects on her words in conversation,
And is discriminating about what she eats and drinks.’

It’s so easy to get caught up in thinking about the other person’s ‘problems’ and completely miss the real dynamics of the whole situation. I rapidly became a bit more reflective about what I said.

Anyway… the following day, I picked up the huge, beautiful New Testament I’ve inherited from Mum. It has the Greek text across the top of the page, and all the English translations up to and including the King James version underneath. I opened it to dip in: unlike Mum, I can’t read the Greek, but I still love the old English. And I found I’d opened the page to:

“That thing which entrith in to the mouth : defoulith not a man, but that thing that cometh out of the mouth : defoulith a man.”