Friday, December 31
An Unexpected Gift…

I had a best friend from the time I was seven until my second year of high school. We lived a few houses from each other and used to traipse around the neighborhood like we owned it. We thought we did own it. We made forts in the woods out of branches and boards stolen from where they were building new houses. We made Christmas tree caves after Christmas, and snow forts which we would play in until our toes were so cold we could barely feel them.

Halloween night we went far and wide collecting pillowcases full of candy and fruit, and when we got tired we would sit on the curb and eat apples. People gave you apples in those days and no one worried about such things.

Our play was imaginative. We designed and cut out clothes for paper dolls. We both had original Barbies, that I guess, would now be worth a fortune if they were in good condition. But even if we had saved ours, they wouldn't have been in good condition. We played hard with them; combing their hair, giving them new styles, dressing them, and writing the stories of their lives with our play.

No magazine was safe from us. One of our favorite things was to take our parent’s magazines, and on the pages with faces, we’d draw captions in conversational balloons above their mouths. We gave them moustaches, black teeth and had them say all sorts of strange things to each other.

We made up our own language and filled scribblers with it, perfecting it and the words. ‘Love’ was ‘vole’. My name was ‘Adnil.’ We wrote stories in that language, and private letters to each other.

And when we turned twelve and thirteen, we became totally and completely boy crazy. We would walk her little dog five times around the block just to get a glimpse of the boy across the street and his friend. We went to church young people’s together, as much for the boys, as anything else.

My friend Donna was beautiful, and had the kind of blonde hair that all girls wanted back then. She also had a wonderful bedroom, the top room of her house which had dormers and windows. Sleepovers were excuses to talk all night. She was my best friend and we were closer than sisters.

But then half-way through my second year of high school my family moved away from that neighborhood. Donna and I vowed to remain friends, but we were young, and letters aren’t enough when you’re young. We had no way of knowing that what we had was so special, that what we had should have been carefully guarded and handled with gloves.

We weren’t careful. We lost track of each other. I made new friends in my new high school. And then I got married and had a son and a daughter and began my adult life, and she got married and had a son and a daughter and began her adult life. But I would think about her. When I would see little girls, their blonde heads together, one of them cupping her hand and whispering into her friend’s ear, I would think about Donna. When I would see pre-adolescent girls, leaning into each other and giggling, I would think about Donna.

I asked people, mutual acquaintances, and once even got her married name, but then lost it. When the internet was born, I would Google her name, but since I didn’t know, or couldn't remember her married name, my searches yielded me nothing.
When I became a novelist, Donna began appearing in my novels. In Chat Room, Kim and Glynnis are backyard friends. Childhood characters in my books made up their own language and wrote it down. Maybe, I thought, maybe, maybe Donna will read this, somewhere, some how, and realize that my last name is now Hall. And maybe she’ll know it’s me.

And that is what happened. The day after Christmas while visiting my parents I received a totally unexpected email. From Donna! She had found my last name, found my website, and emailed me.

A flurry of emails back and forth, we learned that she was about three hours away from my parent’s house where we were enjoying the Christmas holidays. We decided to each drive an hour and half and meet at a Friday’s restaurant in a big shopping mall. After an initial tearful hug, we ate our Cobb salads and drank our tea (hers iced, mine hot) and then talked non-stop for three hours.

She is beautiful and still has that kind of blonde hair all women want. (Although, by her own admission, the color is helped along a little bit. But we are, after all, women in our fifties now!)

She brought with her an old photo album. Oddly, I have the same one at home with practically the same pictures and even the same captions. We browsed through photos of summer camp, and young people’s winter retreats and of course many, many pictures of cute boys.

I am grateful for the unexpected gift of meeting Donna again. We have vowed not to lose each other again. Driving home I got to thinking, it’s these childhood friendships that shape us and make us who we are. It is these childhood friendships and memories that are embedded into our thinking. I forget my own cell phone number quite regularly, but I have remembered Donna’s telephone number from when we were kids. In fact, I often use the last four digits when I need a pin number, knowing that I never, ever will forget that number. When people contract Alzheimers, sadly, they can forget their own children faces, but they remember their best friend when they were eleven.

Seeing Donna again has given me a sense of wholeness and home-ness and a connection. I am grateful for this.

Tuesday, December 21
Bubble wrap...

For a nice, little stress relieving activity for four days before Christmas. Click on: Bubble wrap

Sunday, December 19
Fear not!

It’s Sunday afternoon and I'm sitting on my couch, my lap top on my lap (where else?). This morning was our choir musical (Do we still call these things ‘cantatas’?). I’m a member of the choir and one of those people who LOVE to sing. I’m always humming something, even in stores, even walking around in shopping malls.

I’ve been in choirs all my life, and have sung pieces as difficult as Handel’s Messiah (the whole thing), and as simple as ‘Jesus Loves Me.’ When I was young, I couldn't wait until I turned sixteen and was old enough to be a part of the adult choir. That was the rule then. You had to be sixteen before they let you in the choir.

This morning as I stood in my normal place among the altos, it struck me that here I was again, singing yet another Christmas cantata. I tried to calculate. Have I sung twenty cantatas in my life? Maybe it’s been more. And how many Christmas productions have I been a part of?

Back when I was in my twenties and early thirties, I wrote a Christmas song each year and sang it with my guitar as a church solo on Christmas Eve. I also wrote a few Christmas plays which were produced by the various churches we’ve been a part of down through the years. There’s not a whole lot of variation, not really, from year to year. There’s the manger; that little wooden structure built years ago by some church handyman and kept year after year in the storage room. Every December it gets dragged out and filled with hay.

And, of course, there are the little boy shepherds with bathrobes and towels on their heads, the baby doll in the manger of straw, and the little girl angels dressed up in haloes and wings, with that gold sparkly stuff in their hair. There is also the mad practicing by the choir, going over that rather difficult ending again, and again, and again, until they finally 'get it." All of this is as much a part of our church culture as tuna fish casseroles at potluck suppers.

This morning, as we sang through a fairly new Christmas musical entitled Fear Not!, I realized that somehow and inexplicably this music doesn't get old. The story doesn't get out dated and boring. And the reason it doesn't get old is because this is a living story about a living person. God Incarnate. I came to a new understanding this morning as I sang that what we do each year in our cantatas and musicals and plays and children’s programs and living Christmas trees, is really and truly a form of worship. By acting out the stories each year we are remembering. By this act of worship we are ‘remembering’ the Incarnation. We are putting feet and hands and voices to the mystery. It is a sacred act. It is like taking Communion.

Our morning musical incorporated a number of very meaningful worship hymns. We sang, ‘I’m coming back to the heart of Worship’ in which we, as a choir chose to substitute the word Christmas for worship. (Our apologies to the original songwriter!)

I’m coming back to the heart of Christmas... I’m sorry Lord for the thing I’ve made it... It’s all about You... It’s all about you, Jesus.

Guide us to remember.

Thursday, December 16
The Open Hand...

I’ve been slowly, very slowly, reading through the book of Proverbs, one a day, in my quest to become wise. Three days ago my ‘proverb’ was: ‘It is possible to give freely and become more wealthy, but those who are stingy will lose everything’ (11:24).

Yesterday my proverb was, ‘The generous prosper and are satisfied. Those who refresh others will themselves be refreshed’ (11:25).

And today my proverb was, ‘People curse those who hold their grain for higher prices, but they bless the one who sells to them in their time of need’ (11:26).

It’s not hard to see a pattern here. The truly wise person is a generous person. God is pleased with the non-stingy person, the person who gives with an open hand. Money naturally comes to mind, and I look at my finances and see if there is a place I could give more. The local Food Bank at this time of year? The turkey drive? A mission group? World Vision? The Red Cross for relief work? There are always needs, so many needs.

These are acts of generosity. These are generous things to do. But I think true wisdom, God-wisdom, is gained not by doing generous things, but by being a generous person. It’s something in the character. The non-generous person can do acts of charity. The stingy person can give to the food bank, and think himself generous.

I think that the truly generous person gives without a thought as to what she will gain.

I’m still trying to understand the difference. But I know that I want to be a generous person, not merely do generous things.

Tuesday, December 14
A Moment…

If you look to the left, you’ll see that one of the books I’m reading now is Yancey’s Rumors of Another World. A few days ago I read something that has been with me ever since: ‘If you can live a moment, you can live through a day, and how you live a day is eventually how you live your life.’

How I live one brief moment in time is how I will live my life. If I have an angry moment and angry moments add to angry moments, I will end up with an angry life.

An aunt of mine said once that when you get old, you are like you were in your life, only worse. In other words, if you were a little snippy when you were an adult, you’ll be impossible when you’re elderly. If you were a bit of a worrier when you were raising kids, when you get older, worry will probably consume you.

So, if I try for moments of kindness, I could end up with a kind life. If I work at being wise, even for a minute, I could end up with a wise life. After all, a life is made up of minutes of living.

Changing the subject: I made pizza for supper tonight using a great recipe for pizza dough found at Pizzaware.com. Here's something cool to try: Write down all of the ingredients you want to use into Google and do a search. You'll probably come up with half a dozen usable and interesting recipes.

December 9, 2004
God's Artwork…

I was emailed this website on the Best pictures of the Hubble spacecraft. Amazing. Beautiful. Click on:
Hubble space craft pictures

December 5, 2004
Mathematics…

This afternoon my husband and I are studying for our Fundamentals of Weather final exam tomorrow evening. We are going over humidity, dewpoint, coalescence, sublimation, lapse rate and more. At the end of this course, I have one more short course to take this winter before I get what is known as a ‘Full Certificate’ from CPS (Canadian Power Squadron – similar to USPS).

Nine years ago when we moved to this maritime province and bought our first sailboat we joined the boating safety organization known as CPS. We began taking their courses – one per winter. We have studied piloting, charting, reading navigational charts, plotting, celestial navigation. We have learned how to use a sextant, and had do a major project which required taking many sights using this amazing piece of technology.

I’ve always been an arts/English/history type of person, so the math in these courses has been quite challenging to me. Early on I had to relearn basic algebra before I could even begin the course work. (Fortunately I have a very patient husband, and former teacher, who was able to help me along this road.)

Now, the purpose of these courses was to make us better navigators, but what they have done for me is to show me – GOD. I have seen that this universe, this planet is mathematically flawless and perfect.

I used to think GOD mainly resided in the creative arts – music, poetry, watercolors, sculpture and literature. But I know now – I have learned now - that God resides in mathematics. Everything we see, everything we touch, from the desk I am sitting at to the refrigerator that keeps my food cold, to the hand knit sweater I am wearing, to the music I’m listening to on this iBook of mine, to the word processor I am using to write this, is all - all of it - based on math; numbers, figures, angles, intervals, stitches and counting and binary and scales and harmony and logarithms. All of it. Math.

When I get to heaven I plan to study math until I know everything there is to know about it. That probably will take me quite a while, but I also figure that I’ll have a whole lot of time to devote to that subject!

Now, back to my studying.

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