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Swearing Doesn’t Mean You’re “Low Intelligence, Low Class, Low Vocabulary.”

Human Nature - Laura G Owens - Writer
ILLUMINATION
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6 min readDec 13, 2024
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I’m weirdly fascinated with the debate about cursing. You either like it or hate it. I like it.

Last year in our weekly church Zoom book club, we read Nina Bolz-Weber’s book Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People.

Nina is a tattooed irreverently reverent outspoken loving Lutheran minister. She lets a few shits and fucks rip in her book (not during her sermon, I’m assuming).

Not to shock, not gratuitously, but to tell her stories, to just be who she is. And sometimes cursing is who she is. And sometimes it’s who I am. I can let em rip.

I have this very cool, very smart, not prudish friend in her 90's that attends my hippie church (UU) book club. When we took turns reading Pastor Nina’s chapters out loud when my friend Robin read this line, “I just want to tell him to go fuck off,” or some such, it sounded unsettling coming from her.

She read it in her usual elegant, strong annunciated style. Her speech is pretty formal. Example, she says, “When one uses course language, one sounds unintelligent. One lacks vocabulary.”

We’re members of a Unitarian Universalist church (progressive). And when I let out a few cathartic rants in book club about this politician or that president, or…

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Human Nature - Laura G Owens - Writer
Human Nature - Laura G Owens - Writer

Written by Human Nature - Laura G Owens - Writer

Obsessed with human behavior. Social commentary & essays with stark honesty. Sarcasm is my super power. 15 years writing about mind & body natural health.

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