The best conversations don’t end. That’s a joy of long-term relationships. 

            “Fosdick,” I blurt out one morning, apropos of nothing. But my wife Joan recognizes that “Fosdick” is the name that we couldn’t remember during a conversation the previous evening.

            Sometimes the connections take longer. Joan wonders how the traffic light at a busy intersection knows that we’re coming and gives us a green arrow so that we can safely turn left onto the highway. 

            “They have sensors buried in the pavement,” I explain. 

            “Where?” Joan asks. 

            “Underneath us,” I say. 

            Several weeks later we stop at a different intersection. “There,” I say, pointing out the window. “See those tar circles? The tar covers the sensors.”

            And she knows what I’m talking about. 

            Over a leisurely dinner, four friends discuss our fears of aging. We see other friends moving to live nearer their children and grandchildren. We see them moving into seniors’ institutions, as they become feeble and forgetful. We’re not enamoured of the prospect. We talk about being bored to death. Literally. 

            The conversation runs through my mind for several days. I have some second thoughts. At church, I mentioned, in passing, “It’s not about being bored. It’s about feeling useless.”

            She took only a second to pick up the pieces. “Yes,” she said. “Me too.”

Long-term relationships

            That doesn’t happen with short term relationships. You can’t rely on the “op cit” references we used in university essays. You have to include everything, from the beginning. Maybe the other party wasn’t there for the beginning. Or they saw no reason to remember the details of an unfinished conversation. 

            But in long-term relationships, the past always remains relevant. 

            A group of men were talking about death. (At our age, every conversation gets around to death, sooner or later.) Ralph Milton glanced at me, and said, “Bob Hatfield.” And I knew what he meant. 

            More than ten years ago, Ralph and I drove to Cochrane, Alberta, for a last visit to our friend Bob Hatfield, dying of leukemia. Bob lay in a hospital bed set up in his living room, where he had a view out the big front windows to his beloved Rocky Mountains. 

            His family sat at the dining table, ten feet away, playing a card game. They too had gathered to be with him for his final hours. It’s how I would like to die, when my time comes, surrounded by friends, surrounded by love. 

            Bob was emaciated, skin and bones. But he was not afraid. We spoke. We held hands. We shared a prayer, for him and for each other. 

            Bob quoted Vera Lynn: “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when...” His voice trailed off.

            I don’t know what Bob believed about life after death. I don’t know if he had any special insights. As a medical doctor, he had seen death often enough to have no romantic delusions about winged cherubs hovering above an abandoned  body. 

            But he believed that conversations did not have to end. He believed that our conversation would carry on, even without him,. 

            Ralph and I drove back to the Okanagan that night. Bob died the next day. 

            And Bob was right. Our conversation with him still continues. 

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Copyright © 2018 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.

                  To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca

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YOUR TURN

Last week’s column was – sort of -- about the ancient Mesopotamian writing called cuneiform, little scratches baked into clay tablets.

            Bob Rollwagen commented, “Now I know where the phrase ‘baked in’ originated. Accountants talk about something that is baked into the final total.  As you know, computers use two [equally] simple symbols to record everything -- I and O. History is fun… It has always been needed to capture a particular tribe’s view of the truth. Some do it better than others.”

I ended with the notion that many of the early biblical stories had precedents in Mesopotamian legends.

            Isabel Gibson liked that idea: “Cool! It's as if there's no beginning point we can, umm, point to. Turtles all the way down . . . I wonder what storyteller around what fire first pulled together the various cultural memes to ‘start’ the stories we have in our hands today.”

Granted, some people don’t like the idea that there might be predecessors to the biblical stories. Cliff Boldt wrote, “It must be hard for people who think they have the original, only to find out that others thought the same thing years before.

            “Isn’t this like those of us who figure we have a new idea, a new view, a new opinion.  And then we find that someone may years ago thought the same thing.”

Steve Roney suggested that the need to have unique stories “is based on an odd and unwarranted assumption: that God would not want to speak to Sumerians. 

            “Otherwise, the fact that stories in the Bible resemble stories that pre-date the Bible and that appear in other cultures is a proof that the Bible is divinely inspired, not a disproof.”

Ken Nichols knows Greek better than I do. He wrote, “I have no quibble with what you say but I do not think that the word ‘phonetics’ derives from Phoenicia. I believe it comes from the Greek ‘phonetikos’ relating to sound. (Since the Greek word for distant/far was ‘tele,’ telephone means distant sound.)

            “The word Phoenicia has a different origin – in Greek ‘ Phoinix’.”

            That made me wonder if “Phoinix” had anything to do with the legendary bird that perishes in flames and is reborn. 

            Ken responded, with thanks to Wikipedia: “There are many legends of bird-regenerating in various languages -- Tibetan, Persian, Hindu, Slavic, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Arabian. Generally associated with a reappearance every 500 years and was therefore a symbol of renewal and therefore linked in Christianity with Christ. Linked in Roman and Greek minds with the similar sounding Phoenicia perhaps because the bird was associated with the colour purple and the purple dye which was manufactured in Phoenicia from conch shells and was a rich person’s colour c.f. Christ’s purple robe, and the story of Lydia, a dealer in purple dyed cloth.

            “In English the word appears to derive from Old English fēnix (around 750) which in turn was borrowed from Medieval Latin phenix, from Classical Latin phoenix, from Greek phoinīx.”

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PSALM PARAPHRASE

This Sunday’s psalm is Psalm 111. I use this particular paraphrase quite often, for obvious reasons. 

1              The bright blue planet spins in the vast darkness of space;

let all who live on earth rejoice.

2              Only on this one tiny orb do we know life exists; 

let all who live on earth give thanks. 

3              The vision takes our breath away; 

let all who live on earth open their eyes. 

4              This fragile ball bursting with life is a work of art;

let all who live on earth recognize God's goodness.

5              Foxes and field mice, humans and whales, eagles and ants --

all are woven together in an intricate tapestry of relationships; 

let all who live on earth recognize this reality. 

6              And God has delegated responsibility to us; 

let all who live on earth be mindful.

7              We must exercise care not to upset the delicate equilibrium of shared life; 

let all who live on earth understand their responsibility. 

8              A tapestry cannot be reduced to a single thread; 

let all who live on earth accept their responsibility. 

9              This egg floating in the dark womb of the universe 

is like God's own embryo; 

let all who live on earth treat it as holy. 

10           We share an awesome and terrible responsibility; 

may God be experienced forever.

For paraphrases of mostof the psalms used by the Revised Common Lectionary, you can order my book Everyday Psalmsfrom Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.

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TECHNICAL STUFF

If you want to comment on something, send a message directly to me, jimt@quixotic.ca.

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                  I write a second column each Sunday called Sharp Edges, which tends to be somewhat more cutting about social and justice issues. To sign up for Sharp Edges, write to me directly, jimt@quixotic.ca, or send a note to sharpedges-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca

                  And for those of you who like poetry, I’ve started a webpage http://quixotic.ca/My-Poetrywhere I post (occasionally, when I feel inspired) poems that I have written. If you’d like to receive notifications about new poems, write me at jimt@quixotic.ca,  or subscribe yourself to the list by sending a blankemail(no message) to poetry-subscribe@lists.quixotic.ca(If it doesn’t work, please let me know.)

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PROMOTION STUFF

To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. Some spam filters have been blocking my posts because they’re suspicious of too many links.

                  Ralph Milton’s latest project is a kind of Festival of Faith, a retelling of key biblical stories by skilled storytellers like Linnea Good and Donald Schmidt, designed to get people talking about their own faith experience. It’s a series of videos available on Youtube. I suggest you start with his introductory section: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u6qRclYAa8

                  Ralph’s “Sing Hallelujah” -- the world’s first video hymnal – is still available. It consists of 100 popular hymns, both new and old, on five DVDs that can be played using a standard DVD player and TV screen, for use in congregations who lack skilled musicians to play piano or organ. More details at wwwDOTsinghallelujahDOTca

                  Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,”an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. <http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca>

                  I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom

                  Alva Wood’s satiric stories about incompetent bureaucrats and prejudiced attitudes in a small town -- not particularly religious, but fun; alvawoodATgmailDOTcom to get onto her mailing list.

                  Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony”-- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’sreaders. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom or twatsonATsentexDOTnet