God's math

in my adult life (and i start counting with my first marriage) i have moved 15 times. the one on sunday will be my 16th.

in my childhood, i moved...........once.



i remember that childhood move. i remember the first night in the new house and how, with this super mean scowl on my face, i kicked the bathtub. hard. because i thought it was a stupid bathtub. and a stupid house.


in other words, i was scared.


i was scared that even though my friends were only a few blocks away, i would never see them again. i was scared because the stairs to the basement were open. and i thought i would fall through.

i was scared of breaking something in this stupid new house and getting into all kinds of trouble for it. who cared if i broke something in the old house - it was an old house! and we were leaving it!

i was scared that my parents would make me do a bunch of stupid chores in a big stupid house on a saturday morning when i would rather be sleeping. or writing in my diary about it.

but, none of those things happened (well, except for the stupid chores, dang it) and i grew up relatively unscathed by having moved to a stupid house just a few blocks away from my non-stupid house. 


and i never thought any more about it.


until now.


you might think that moving (for the 16th time - 17th if you count the childhood move to the stupid house - and 25th if you count the moves during college and grad school) would be old hat for me by now. and, in some ways, i guess, it is. i know how to pack. i know how to organize a move. i still don't know how to carry heavy boxes. nor do i want to learn.  :)

but what never seems to become old hat - at least not for me - are the feelings associated with a move. they're not always scary, like that first one was, but there's always something emotional about them - because there's always something you're leaving behind.



this time, i am leaving behind more than i ever have before: i am leaving 5 grandchildren.



i have left my daughter and son-in-law before and i have left my parents before. i have left friends before. i have left jobs.

i have left houses that i loved (yes, even the stupid one which, by the end of the summer of that fateful move, i had grown to love).

i have left really cool kitchens.

i have left homes with exposed brick and giant arching windows that look out over the skyline of columbus.

i have left neighbors who waved hello to me on the first nice day of spring, in their shorts and flip-flops.

i have left the security that comes from having lived in one place long enough to have put down roots. yes, roots can be put down, even if you move 25 times.


and so, i have a history of having left. a lot. i think everyone does. but i am not sure that everyone has a history of gaining even more. or, at least, of realizing that they have.

i realize that i have.



i realize that in the aftermath of the worst thing that has ever happened to me, God waved His hand and fixed it.

He fixed it in a way that i never imagined He would do nor did i even want Him to do. i did not want God to ever ever ever in a million years let me fall in love again. please, God, if you love me even a little, don't do that.

but, ha, God and His sneaky little ways. you know?



and God's math, i realize, is much better than mine (although i know that's not saying a lot)........

and He says 16 has always been His favorite number.
 


but what He says mostly is,



you can stop counting now, nancy.

move. no, wait.

instant oatmeal,

surrounded by

boxes.


gave the tv stand

away so

the tv is on

a

chair. two chairs

to be

exact.


down to

one plate,

one bowl,

one mug,

two

wine

glasses.

because a girl

has

her

priorities.


i can hear

the

furnace.

it's warm,

but not

very good

company.


the radio plays

"cool

change" by the

little

river

band.

i think about

calling

the

station and saying,

"are you

playing that

for

me?"



but.

i

don't.



i think i hear

my

echo.

helloooooooooooo in

there,

is

any

body

hoooooooooooome?



meanwhile,

in

georgia,

some

body

answers yessssssssssss.

says,

"you will be, too.

real

soon."




hold

on.

on the other hand, Christ said The Lord's Prayer is how to do it.

growing up as a presbyterian, i would describe the general (not always) style of prayer to which i was accustomed as "formal." formal and looooooooooooong.

as a catholic, i would describe it, generally, as "formulaic."

as me, i would describe it as........me. i pray exactly how i talk. and i have never been entirely sure if that is o.k. maybe i need to use fancier language or something. after all, i am talking to God. maybe the vernacular ain't cool with God.



i pay a lot of attention to style of prayer. i always have. some jews shuckle (also called shokel), i.e. they rock back and forth, when they pray. some catholics hold their hands in very specific ways. mormons cross their arms. muslims get down on the ground. 

evangelicals say "just" a lot. "i just ask you, Jesus" and "we just lift up....." i just wonder what an evangelical prayer would sound like without it. just not right, i guess.

most people close their eyes when they pray - but not everyone. clearly......i don't always. :)

some people wave their arms through the air. i don't do that, but i love to see it when others do. if you wave your arms through the air at a rock concert, don't you think you oughta do it when you pray to God?

hard to wave, though, when your arms are folded across your chest.
  


some of you reading this are gonna say none of this matters. but if none of it matters, then why don't religions agree on how to do it?

some of you reading this are gonna say because religions don't agree on anything. like it's their job not to agree with each other. but i disagree (ha!). i don't know of any faith tradition that says, look, let's be different just (not even the evangelicals!) for the sake of being different......just (not even the evangelicals!) to tick the other guys off. if there is a faith tradition like that, i don't know about it. and i don't want to know about it. so don't tell me.


one thing's for sure:


the worst style of prayer is none.

maybe this is what heaven tastes like.

c.s. lewis said, "...the angels are, i suppose, pure intelligences. they understand colors and tastes better than our greatest scientists..."



it wasn't until i was in college that i realized that i was unusual in that i could do something that not very many people can do - i can taste sounds. others who have another form of this gift can hear colors. others can feel numbers. it's called "synesthesia." and it's a thing.

it's a thing that only to a very limited degree can be measured. but scientists study it anyway. they try to figure out who has it and who doesn't.

anyone who has it can tell them: i do. (we can't make this stuff up.)



being "able" (it's not like i do something to make it happen)to taste sounds has, i guess, opened a lot of doors for me that otherwise might not have been opened. maybe it's why i'm a half-way decent cook. i know it's why i like words and why i like to write. it also got me through school without too much effort (not sure if that's the good news or the bad)...i used to memorize stuff based on how it sounded/tasted. i'd go into class to take a test and just write down a menu. who was the third president of the united states? pancakes. pancakes with a LOT of syrup.

i mean, jefferson.



being "able" to taste sounds has added a dimension to my life that you probably don't have in yours. when was the last time you listened to mozart and tasted tomato sauce with garlic when the strings section played?

when was the last time you ran through the sprinkler with its whish-whish sound and enjoyed (my mom's) homemade mushroom soup?

you know all those notification sounds? sauerkraut, meatloaf, tacos, and chocolate milkshakes. just for starters.



but the best thing about being "able" to taste sounds is that it is a gift. a gift from God. a bodily gift that for some reason He decided to give to me.



and the rest of what c.s. lewis said about angels and colors and tastes is this:

"but for our body, one whole realm of God's glory - all that we receive through the senses - would go unpraised. for the beasts can't appreciate it, and the angels are, i suppose, pure intelligences. they understand colors and tastes better than our greatest scientists; but have they retinas or palates? i fancy the "beauties of nature" are a secret God has shared with us alone. that may be one of the reasons why we were made - and why the resurrection of the body is such an important doctrine."



and to think that i just thought i could taste sounds. 

snow angels

i know i am

leaving

the

snow.


i am leaving 50

fingers, 50

toes,

5

smiles.



i am leaving

what comes out of

small

mouths. 



the way their heads

turn

when i walk

in.


the way their eyes

are.

their hands,

their

hands.



the things i will suddenly

remember in the

night,

when i can't

sleep or the snow falls

up north,

alone, without me there

to

catch

it.




the kind of things i would

write to them 

in the

snow.



if i

could.

phases of "dancing queen" or, 12-steps to joy

phase 1, song by swedish band ABBA released: august 1976. LOVED it.

phase 2, met a swedish man: september 1996. DOUBLE LOVED it.

phase 3, swedish man bails: january 2010. CAN'T LISTEN to it to save my life.

phase 4, divorced from swedish man who bailed: january 2013. STILL CAN'T LISTEN to it, but can hum it.

phase 5, moved to a new home to get rid of ghost of swedish man who bailed: may 2013. SANG IT the whole way over to the new home. but it was in between tears.

phase 6, swedish man who bailed calls to tell me why he did it: may 2014. CAN'T SING it again. dang.

phase 7, re-met nice, sweet, smart rudy jones: august 2014. DIDN'T EVEN THINK about it. (thought motown instead.)

phase 8, shared (back and forth) motown songs with nice, sweet, smart rudy jones: september 2014. DIDN'T EVEN THINK about it.

phase 9, shared (back and forth) motown songs, rock and roll songs, country songs, r&b songs, jazz songs, top 40 songs, Christmas songs,  every kind of songs except no opera songs with nice, sweet, smart rudy jones: october 2014. DIDN'T EVEN think about it.(not even when i shared top 40 songs.)

phase 10, shared (back and forth) all of the above songs. repeated some. repeated many. shared every song ever written with nice, sweet, smart rudy jones: november 2014. ABBA WHO????

phase 11, married nice, sweet, smart rudy jones with whom i shared every song ever written: december 2014. NO, SERIOUSLY...ABBA WHO????

phase 12, heard it on the radio: today. february 18, 2015. SMILED. TURNED IT UP.
 


FREAKING LAUGHED.

OUT.

LOUD.




:)

ashes, ashes, we all fall up

today is ash wednesday and so, when you see someone with a black smudge on his head, roughly in the shape of a cross which really won't look much like a cross at all because the priest was either in a hurry and/or the guy forgot it was on his forehead and accidentally rubbed it half-off in angst over being stuck in traffic, don't act all ignorant and say something stupid like, "you got somethin' on your forehead." because for one thing, "you got" is bad english and for another, it's freaking ash. wednesday, people. 



ash wednesday is probably the number one thing, as a kid, that made me want to be a catholic. i remember my st. teresa friends coming home from school with black crosses (more or less) on their foreheads and when i saw them coming, it was like, here comes Jesus.


it was that important of a symbol.

and i wanted to be a part of it.


those black smudges fascinated a presbyterian girl like me whose church and its practices were stripped almost entirely of anything symbolic. of anything that might remind me of what faith means. i never looked at those ash wednesday foreheads as something strange or worse, unnecessary. i looked at them as what they were: BILLBOARDS for the rest of us to wake up.

to fall up.

to fall up in loving Christ. to grasp it. to get it. and then,

to spread it. to spread the good news of the gospel, starting with one easy, startling post-it note for the world to see: ashes. on your forehead.



i also always loved the rosary beads. not so much because they were pretty (not all of them were) but because you could see them. touch them. i remember the first time i  held a strand of rosary beads in my hands. i was 5 and they belonged to my best friend, marilyn. when she handed them to me, because she knew i was curious, i remember seeing my hands shake. i don't know what i was afraid of - that i would drop them, i suppose. and that the tiny cross with the little Jesus on it might break.

i didn't want the beads to fall down. 


i wanted them to lift me up.


and they did.



but of all the things that catholics do - and i loved them all - wanted them all - the one that i loved the most was (is) the one that i saw them doing the most:

making the sign of the cross.



making the sign of the cross wasn't just something that happened on ash wednesday. it didn't just happen on easter or Christmas or when it was your turn up to bat. it happened all. the. time. it was thee most visible TV commercial of all: come to Christ. He has saved you.



one day in the middle of an especially hot (don't get me started) summer, marilyn decided enough was enough. if this little friend of hers (me) wants to be a catholic this bad and her presbyterian parents ain't budgin' (also bad english), then marilyn decided to take matters into her own hands. and she did. we did.

we rigged up an altar out of cardboard and a couple of boards we found in her garage which, sidebar here, marilyn's dad had an awesome garage. and he spent a lot of time in it. it was his man cave - only nobody knew what a man cave was back then. everything was perfectly in place - all his tools, all his car stuff, everything. he probably kept inventory for all i know. and i have no doubt that he noticed right away - as soon as he got home from work that evening - that those boards were missing.

if he ever said a word to marilyn about it, i don't know it. good old catholic cliff jacobs no doubt kept his mouth shut.

and smiled.


but i digress.


so, we got some cardboard and some regular boards and made an "altar," and marilyn put some kind of very ugly (sorry, mare) scarf around her head - to make herself look like a priest, i guess - but she looked more like a gypsy on halloween - and she got a glass from the kitchen cabinet, took it outside and filled it with water from the hose (which we probably sprayed all over each other because even though we were about to do something very serious, it was hotter than frick, folks), and she said some kind of (to me) magic words over the water, dipped her fingers in it, said some more "magic words," and declared me a catholic.


and then she told me to make the sign of the cross.


which i did.



upside down.





i like that story.



i like it because what i did upside down was actually what i did upside up.

just like those rosary beads.



just like those ashes.


just like ashes, ashes.


we all fall




up.

chapter books

nobody ever called them that but that's what they were - chapter books. books with chapters. they  meant you were growing up.

they meant the print wasn't gigantic anymore and the storylines were more complex. you didn't just have to sit there and watch tom run and then watch betty run (we didn't have dick and jane where i went to school - we were hip - we had tom and betty - courtesy of "ginn basic reader's "on cherry street" series). more hip, maybe, but just as boring......after reading first about tom running and then about betty running, we then had to read about tom and betty running.

and to think they were trying to inspire 6-year olds to want to read.......

but once you got to second grade, they let you read chapter books. except they didn't call them that. they just called them "books." and they suddenly opened up a whole bigger world than watching tom run. run, tom, run.

i remember the library at my elementary school and how, starting in second grade, you got to go once a week. my library had a bunch of biographies about the people from colonial america, especially the ones who founded this country, and i read every single one of them. i can sit here now and remember the exact shade of blue that each of those books was bound in. i remember the square size of them - about 5" by 5" -  and especially how old they all smelled. like somebody's grandma's kitchen. the corners of the pages were worn or folded over, as every good book should be, and you could look in the front flap, find the library loan card, and see the names of every kid before you who had read that very same book. or at least checked it out. it was like a history lesson of its own, right there.

i was reading chapter books. and i didn't even know it.

when i got a little older, i read all kinds of books,including every single nancy drew book. i read most of them twice, several of them 3 times. "the secret of the old clock," which was the very first one in the series, was and still is my favorite. i remember that book like it was the cookbook i just used last night.

eventually i got to high school and that's when reading became a problem, not a joy. whereas i used to stay up way past my bedtime with a flashlight under the covers, suddenly, when i had to read a book......and i had to analyze it......discuss the characters, the setting, the theme.....and take one entire test on it, well......suddenly i loathed books.

and to think they were trying to inspire 16-year olds to want to read.

college just made it worse and graduate school about did me in. frankly, it's a testimony to my something-or-other that i even went to graduate school. considering how much i hated books by that time.

and then, finally......real life started to happen. and books, no longer a requirement, became fun again. i read everything i could get my hands on - in between diapers and parent-teacher conferences and high school musicals and graduations, that is. which probably means i read about 5 books. but it felt like everything i could get my hands on.



my taste in books as an adult has changed over the years. i guess everything has changed over the years. but not my love of chapter books. and not my love of chapters.


a new one has my name written all over it. the characters are a boy and a girl and the setting is georgia. the theme is love and the girl needs to get there quick.



run, nancy.

run.

in the beginning God

thanks to rudy, i am reading "The Joshua Code: 52 Scripture Verses Every Believer Should Know" by O.S. Hawkins. and the first scripture mr. hawkins thinks every believer should know is genesis 1:1 - "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

actually what mr. hawkins thinks every believer should know - and what i'm pretty sure he thinks every non-believer ought to figure out - real fast -  are simply the first 4 words of that verse: in the beginning God.

hawkins talks about worldviews and how they shift and change over time and in accordance with the political tone of whatever decade you wanna pick. pick a decade, any decade and things are like quicksand. don't think so? consider how radically different the '60s were compared to the '50s.

he says, "Even though worldviews may change across the decades, there is a single constant that does not change. The simple fact is that one's worldview can be determined by one's response to the first four words of the Bible: "in the beginning God..." If we believe these four words, then we will view our world through the lens of Scripture that does not change. If we do not, then we will continue to view our world through the lens of culture that continually changes." 

(continually changes according to your brain, not God's, i might add. your fickle, fickle, fickle, finite, not-as-educated-as-you-might-think-even-if-you-did-go-to-yale brain.)

speaking of brains, mr. hawkins blows mine. and he oughta blow yours, too. he takes the first four words of the Bible and boom, asks you the most important question of your life:

are you in? or are you out?



seeing as how the first four words of the Bible are not "in the beginning science....." or "in the beginning (an) explosion..."  or "in the beginning atheists..." and definitely not "in the beginning stephen hawkings..."

but.. most of all not... "in the beginning i..."



seeing as how all that?




in.


definitely in.

what happens when valentines grow up

when you were little there were

lots

of them,

crammed into pink

boxes. you always wondered if

you'd get

enough.


you wondered if the boy with the

funny hair or the girl

with the

bad teeth

would get

any. so you made sure

they did.


you worried which ones

to buy,

how many,

did you count right?


should you get funny

or cute or

the comic book

ones? what do boys

want? why is it so hard

to

know?


you find a special

heart. all big and red

and

pink

and

white

and

BIG.


you say, someday,

maybe,

i will get one

like

this. someone will see it

and me

and fall in

REAL LOVE.




and then,

suddenly,

someday




comes.

God turned off the heat in my office

God turned off the heat

in my off-

ice.



He went like flip flip flip

with the switch.

off/on/off/on/off/on.

(i didn't get

on.)



i thought it was

random.



i thought i got what i deserved,

seeing as how i'm forever talkin' bout

lovin' the

cold.



i thought maaaaaaaaaay-be

it was the stars.

all lined up against me. 1-2-3-4-5.



i thought maybe it was pay back

for something i don't remember 

doing.

(but no doubt did.)



i dragged out the quadratic equation

to try to figure out,

why me?
 


i diagrammed sentences.

woulda consulted a guru.

(if i believed in

gurus).



shivered my day through.



came close to (i admit it)

cursing.



remembered  God isn't

random.



remembered He does all things

for my (your)

good.



remembered georgia is

hot. (in more ways than

one. ha

ha.)



remembered He makes crooked places


straight.



makes rugged places,


plain.



and though the Bible doesn't specifically

say so,



He uses unexpected waves of His hand to make 

the girl who always loved snow

into the



woman who will always love

rudy.





whatever the freaking temperature


is.