Collecting my thoughts for Thursday

1.  Advice for the new year:  The best way to find something that is lost among your stuff ("It's gotta be here somewhere") is to buy another one.  When you get the new one, I can almost guarantee that you'll find the old one that same day.  Maybe within minutes.

2.  Fall Creek Falls in Tennessee:  My friend Debra took this photo of my favorite falls on January 1, 2022.  Fall Creek Falls is the highest free-fall waterfall east of the Mississippi River, according to Wikipedia.  The height is 256 feet (78 m).  Thanks for the memories, Debra!

3.  Sticker shock:  To help you understand why seniors have a hard time dealing with prices these days, here's what I used to earn.  As a teenager, I made 75-cents an hour as a file clerk working in an office in downtown Chattanooga in the afternoon, after school was out.  In my first full-time job in 1959, I made $1 an hour.  That's $40 a week, which equals $2,080 a year before taxes were taken out.

4.  Now let's look at rent:  Compare that $2,080 annual salary in #3 with this statistic I found using Google:  "The average asking rent is now $1,900 — with single-family houses averaging $2,018 a month."  It blows my mind!

5.  Does this make cents?  Yes, I spelled it correctly.  When I typed #3 above, I needed the "cent" sign.  Typewriters used to have that cent-symbol "back in my day."  My laptop doesn't have any such thing!  Is that because a cent is almost worthless these days?

6.  On the other hand:  I learned to type on a typewriter like this clunky Underwood.  Although I can't focus in on it here, I'm sure this big typewriter has the symbol for cent over the 6, as in the slightly more modern keyboard in this photo below.

7.  More on the cent symbol:  I tried several ways different people said I could use to make the cent sign, but none worked.  Here's my solution:  I simply found one that somebody else had made and copied it.  ¢  ¢  ¢  ¢  ¢  ¢  ¢  ¢  ¢  ¢  ¢  ¢  That was easy!

8.  Nickels aren't worth much, either:  On Sunday, I considered a new occupation, until I realized that nickels aren't worth what they were back in my day, either.  So apparently, paper money is worth more than "hard" currency (unless it's collectible, like a buffalo nickel, also called an Indian Head nickel).

9.  Word of the Day:  clunk·y /ˈkləNGkē / adjective INFORMAL = awkwardly solid, heavy, and outdated.  Example:  "Even last year's laptops look clunky."  (See #6 above.)

10.  Do you have a system?  Before I leave my apartment, I count what's in my pockets (jeans with pockets are my retirement uniform):

• pen and paper
• pills and phone
• keys and comb
• clippers and Kleenex
• mask and money
• plus calendar and Kindle, if I take my cart  (too big for my pockets)

11.  The last thing I did in 2022:  I changed the calendar on the bulletin board beside the elevator on my floor.  Oh, wait!  No, I came home from changing the calendar and fed Clawdia.  She was eating as fireworks hailed a (hopefully less pandemic-y) New Year.

12.  I'm still wearing masks because of my age and being immunocompromised.  Is anyone else still masking up?

13.  I have decided I won't stop at an arbitrary number just because Colleen has done a Thursday Thirteen for years.  So I'll keep sharing until it's time to post my thoughts.

14.  Library books checked out:  I've blogged about how many books I had checked out of the library at any one time:  one, four, seven, fourteen, etc.  One (very unusual) time, I had ZERO books checked out.  The shocker, even to me, is that I now have 26 books checked out.  Yes, that number is 26.  That's proof I'm a "bookie," isn't it?

15.  I have a conundrum:  Why don't the words tough, cough, and dough rhyme?  On the other hand, these words DO rhyme:  dew, do, and due.  Why?  Can you explain it?

16.  Word of the Day (see # 15)

co·nun·drum / kəˈnəndrəm / noun = a confusing and difficult problem or question.

17.  We can now officially end sentences with prepositions if we want to.  (So I just did!)

18.  Do you "follow" any authors?  I see that I follow eight Amazon authors:

• Richard Bach
• Roberta C. Bondi — my former professor
• Lisa Genova — whose book Remember I just downloaded onto my Kindle
• Beth Kephart
• Stephen J. Patterson
• John Pavlovitz
• Jodi Picoult — whom I've meet in person
• Joan Uda, who's my best friend — so I picked up my phone and called her.  (The photo shows Joan and me when I visited her in 2019.)

19.  On New Year's Day, I read a children's book while waiting for someone:  Henry and Mudge and Annie's Perfect Pet ~ by Cynthia Rylant, illustrated by Suçie Stevenson, 2000, 40 pages.  I rate it 10/10.  Annie needs a pet that's soft and dry and doesn't fly — one that's quiet and careful, just like Annie.  (Spoiler:  it's a soft white rabbit, but you won't find a rabbit among the animals shown on the cover.)

20.  Study the cover carefully (as a child might do), and tell me what pets you find.

Nonfiction November ~ Week 3: Be the Expert

Week 3 of Nonfiction November (Nov. 15-19) – Be/Ask/Become the Expert with Veronica at The Thousand Book Project:  Three ways to join in this week:

1. BE the expert = Share three or more books on a single topic that you have read and can recommend.
2. ASK the expert = Put the call out for good nonfiction on a specific topic that you have been dying to read.
3. BECOME the expert = Create your own list of books on a topic that you’d like to read.

I've decided to BE the expert on the subject of prayer, using three books from my bookshelves:

The Greatest Prayer: Rediscovering the Revolutionary Message of the Lord's Prayer ~ by John Dominic Crossan, 2010, religion, 10/10

Crossan explores the prayer line by line that every Christian knows by heart, so we can rediscover why this seemingly simple prayer sparked a revolution.  Addressing issues of God’s will for us and our response, our responsibilities to one another and to the earth, and the theology of our daily bread, he reveals the universal significance of the only prayer Jesus ever taught.

A Place to Pray: Reflections on the Lord's Prayer ~ by Roberta C. Bondi, 1998, religion, 9/10

Bondi put this study together in a unique way, with each chapter written as a letter to her friend.  "As for us, ours is a God who loves, and if we love this God who is love, we long to express that love by imitating God, that is, by loving those whom God loves in the way God loves, in an appropriately human manner" (p. 128).  This prayer helps us to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

Lord, Teach Us: The Lord's Prayer and the Christian Life ~ by William H. Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas, 1996, religion, 7/10

After a short introduction, the authors work through each phrase of the Lord's Prayer, using it as a framework for the Christian life.  Providing basic faith understanding, this book will help the user experience Christianity as attractive and inviting, not distant, difficult, or foreboding.  They apply this prayer to the whole Christian experience as life reflects these words.

At my Thanksgiving table

Wouldn't it be great to have, say, a dozen of my favorite authors around my Thanksgiving table?  Even better, I'd love to have them visit one at a time, so I could have a real conversation with each one.  On this Thanksgiving Day, these are the twelve I'm thankful for — in alphabetical order.

Barbara Brown Taylor

Barbara Cooney
(August 6, 1917 – March 10, 2000)

Beth Kephart

Fannie Flagg

Janisse Ray

Jodi Picoult

Laurie Halse Anderson

Madeleine L'Engle

(November 29, 1918 – September 6, 2007)

Masha Hamilton

Roberta C. Bondi

Sue Monk Kidd

Susan Beth Pfeffer

As you can tell by the dates under their names, I won't get to sit down with Barbara Cooney and Madeleine L'Engle.

How to meet authors ~ Roberta C. Bondi

I'm writing a series of posts to answer a question posed by Helen of Helen's Book Blog:

"How the heck do you meet all these authors? That's awesome!"

Roberta C. Bondi

Roberta Bondi was one of my seminary professors when I was at Candler School of Theology at Emory University in Atlanta.  She and Bill Mallard co-taught a class on the history of the church that gave me a good grounding for the whole process of doing theology by knowing the basis of previous theological ideas.

So one way to "meet an author" is by attending a university or seminary.  Most professors are expected to "publish or perish," so — ta-da! — they are authors.

A Place to Pray: Reflections on the Lord's Prayer ~ by Roberta C. Bondi, 1998, religion, 9/10

The other day, I mentioned to my friend Donna that I may do a series on the Lord's Prayer for the Seekers Class at St. Luke, a church that occasionally invites me to teach or preach.  Her pastor is in the middle of such a class, she told me, showing me the most recent study sheet.  It started with their Lenten Luncheon series, and the group wanted to keep studying.  The upshot of that conversation was that I decided to attend the luncheon discussions with her.

The book they are using (see below) is only 112 pages long, so I read Donna's copy in a couple of days.  Although Willimon and Hauerwas have each written some pretty good books, this is not one of their better ones.  So Donna and I got out our copies of Roberta Bondi's book, A Place to Pray, which I first read in 1999 and have taught a few times over the years.  It is much better than the one the class is using.  Since I also bought the companion video series, Donna and I set it up on my porch to view during lulls in our recent Neighborhood Yard Sale.  I would pause the video whenever neighbors stopped by to look over my books.

Bondi put this study together in a unique way, with each chapter written as a letter to her friend.  From what she writes, we can infer what her friend has said (or written) in the meantime.  Here is a deep friendship.

"Dear friend, how grateful I am for the gift of your own existence in my life, for such a friendship in which we can talk openly about our lives with God and the hard and happy things for which we pray.  May God always keep in our hearts the knowledge that these words spoken between us are, after all, as much a part of prayer as anything we do" (p. 49).

One more quote from this book:

"As for us, ours is a God who loves, and if we love this God who is love, we long to express that love by imitating God, that is, by loving those whom God loves in the way God loves, in an appropriately human manner" (p. 128).

I rate this book 9 of 10, a very good book.

Whenever it works into the conversation, I try to share insights from Roberta Bondi's book in the study I'm attending with Donna.  Yes, I also use the notes I took while reading Donna's copy of their study book:

Lord, Teach Us: The Lord's Prayer and the Christian Life ~ by William H. Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas, 1996, religion, 7/10

One good thing about this book is that it raises questions for a class to discuss.  Throughout the book, however, I got the distinct impression that they tossed the book together, and no one edited it to smooth the edges.  One minor slip — the index shows scripture in the order it's printed in the Bible, except Colossians and Philippians are out of order.  Another is that, in making Jesus "perfect," they overstep:

"There is nothing that we go through here on earth that Jesus has not also endured" (p. 36).

I know what they meant to impart, but this is just silly and likely to make thoughtful people pause.  It's too broad.  Jesus did NOT birth a child, I can imagine some new mother thinking.  Jesus did NOT have cancer, I imagine from a suffering patient.  Jesus did not even get old, like many of us in that class.  C'mon, guys!  You can do better.

Rated:  7/10, good because it encourages discussion.  By the way, I also met Will Willimon and talked to him after he preached.  That's why I expected more from this book.   (Check — another author I've met.)

I don't want to end on a low note, so I'll leave you with one especially good quote from this book:

"Too often, we are conditioned to think of prayer as asking God for what we want — dear God, give me this, give me that.  But now, in praying that God's will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we are attempting to school ourselves to want what God wants" (p. 66).

Those words by Willimon and/or Hauerwas remind me of my favorite title:


To Love As God Loves ~ by Roberta Bondi, 1987, religion, 9/10.

Ha!  We now come full circle, right back to my seminary professor.  Thanks, Roberta!