Banished

Lake Superior State University in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, has published their list of banished words for 2008, so I checked to see if mine was on it. The judges suggest we throw "perfect storm," "webinar," "sweet," "it is what it is," and "___is the new___" "under the bus."

(It's too bad about "under the bus" though --- as in: "The committee botched the assignment so they threw their team captain under the bus." The phrase was deliciously descriptive. Oh well, it is what it is.)

Is it me or is "default" a much used word these days? The reason I ask is because it's become prominent in my own thinking, and so I was wondering if the whole country is really paralleling my spiritual journey or if I'm just abnormally sensitized to occurrences of the lexical item.

Specifically, I have in recent years had the epiphany (I wonder if "epiphany" has made the University's past lists. We used to have realizations and discoveries before we started having epiphanies, didn't we?) that I need to be aggressive about believing God's Word, because if not, my default mode is not faith but unbelief. It's like Isaiah said: "If you are not firm in faith, you will not be firm at all" (Isaiah 7:9).On another subject, when I asked my son what he was doing this weekend and he said "Chillin'," I told him that not so long ago we used to say "Hangin' out." And before that I believe it was "Hangin' around." But I can't remember what it was before that. You?