POTPOURRI FOR OCTOBER [M, 10-23-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—POTPOURRI FOR OCTOBER [M, 10-23-23]

 

A bit of marital advice: When your wife asks you, “Do you know what anniversary this is?” do not say, “Yes, it’s the anniversary of the introduction of the transistor,” even if you HAVE just read it in The Writer’s Almanack, and so are proud you know the answer, if it is also the anniversary of when you got engaged.

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A recent obit in our newspaper online said that the deceased “enjoyed golf and Harry Potter.” What a delightful pairing.

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I had a new dentist last time. He is retired but was filling in for my regular dentist while she was away for a family illness. He checked me over and said, “I am at peace about your mouth.” That’s the ONLY  time someone has said that they are at peace about my mouth!

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Dr. Atul Gawande, in his book Being Mortal, says that when we are older, we need to tip our chins down to swallow. That sounds backward. But he says that as we age, the insides of our mouth change shape. We don’t know it, because we can’t see that change.

 

I think that everything inside changes as we age, not just our bodies, but our hearts and minds. To swallow those changes, we need to change the positions we use.

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Going through old artifacts again… When I was in the high school band, music teacher, Ralph Chandler, would send post cards reminding us of summer band practice. He would say, “you can probably find an excuse” to miss summer band practice. It was the opposite for me. Summer band practice was an excuse to miss farm work. I wasn’t much of a musician, but I had the best attendance record of anybody!

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Something recently reminded me of who much vocabulary I have learned from hymns… Just a quick survey reveals so many. I have underlined the words I didn’t know, at least in that particular context, until I sang about them in church…

He lives, salvation to impart.

Beneath the cross of Jesus, I feign would take my stand.

He will my shield and portion be.

See on the portals he’s waiting and watching.

Ode to joy.

Naught be all else to me.

Robed in the blooming garb of spring…

I’m sure there are many others, but these remind me of how much my literary capacities were enhanced by the language of the church. Maybe yours were, too.

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85% of all humans have neanderthal DNA. [Christine Keneally, The Invisible History of the Human Race] Neanderthals and humans are not the same. Neanderthals were not simply early humans, even though they are portrayed in cartoons and comic strips as big, dumb cave dwellers. Neanderthals and humans are distinct species. It’s like tigers and lions—two distinct species, but able to breed together. At some “bottleneck” of history, Neanderthals and humans were in enough contact to do that breeding. Then, from that bottleneck, they spread out through the world.

So if you are inclined to look down on some ethnic group of which you are not a part—white, black, brown, red, yellow, etc—remember that there is an 85% chance that you are descended from Alley Oop.

John Robert McFarland