Sound vibrates and provides what may be missing

Bad Slip Day Once I worked in the governor's office as a lawyer. I was feeling my oats and so I bought myself a beautiful, expensive woolen suit. It was the loveliest outfit I'd had in years. I felt so good when I wore it, ready for anything. I could leap tall buildings at a single bound. I was young and couldn't believe that life has any limits. That particular autumn day I wore my wonderful suit to work. I worked late, until everyone else had gone. Those were pre-security days and I didn't see a soul when I exited the capitol's back door and cut across the lawn toward my car. Outside was still bright daylight. I was halfway across this large expanse of grass when I felt something peculiar at my waist. I stopped, trying to figure it out. That was when the elastic of the old half-slip I was wearing gave up its grip. My slip dropped to the grass around my feet. For an instant I was paralyzed with embarrassment. I stood still, shifting my eyes to look around, wondering if someone was watching me. I didn't see anyone. Gulp. What to do? In one hopefully fluid movement I stepped out of the poor washed-to-death slip, bent down and crammed it into my briefcase. I continued walking, head high, shoulders back, as if nothing had happened. My cheeks flamed, though, and when I got to my car I winnipeg sat inside for a few minutes, looking around for anyone watching. Eventually I drove away, my embarrassment trailing behind, feeling as conspicuous winnipeg as if tin cans had been tied to my bumper. Why was I so discomfited? Did I think somehow that the incident revealed the real me? That under the spiffy suit and shiny high heels I was actually an unworthy person in tattered underwear? Probably. During my early adolescence I was a pretty good kid, but I sometimes sassed my mother, ignored my chores and hung out around our suburban neighborhood with other kids instead of studying. What I remember most about my dad's discipline during those years is a comment he often made when he came upon my many flaws. "Well, now we see the real Joan." I know my dad loved me and didn't expect those remarks to affect me so profoundly, but they did. Eventually I started seeing myself as a "bad person" who needed to hide under plenty of nice-looking camouflage. When my slip fluttered to the capitol lawn that day, I became that young girl again. The unseen watcher I scanned for was my father. Later I came to know an unfailingly gracious Father, a God who can always be counted upon to love me exactly as I am, raggedy underwear and all. That Father embraced me as a beloved and taught me to understand and forgive both my dad's careless words and my anger that lasted for years. Now I suspect that Dad only did what was once done to him. And I'm not even touchy about half-slips. MarySue joined my husband's first church in Boulder, Colorado. She called herself a conservative evangelical Christian, and she said she was searching for something. She had heard lots of preaching that claimed to be biblical. She was so knowledgeable about the whole Bible, though, that some preachers upset her by making too many assertions winnipeg personal trainer that she couldn't find anywhere in her Bible. Thus she arrived at our church. We welcomed her warmly. She was great in meetings and classes. She http://winnipegpersonaltrainer.net always had a clear, well-articulated point of view that was enough different from mine that she challenged me to think and grow. I was a seminary student then and I wanted to drag her to school with me. She had so much to offer. We never made it, which was my and the other students' loss. MarySue was one of the most biblically literate people I've ever known. She'd memorized a good bit of the Bible, and you couldn't mention a story or verse that she didn't know. Her Bible was marked with all kinds of colors and underlinings, tabs and notes. I remember someone telling me once that it was sinful to write in a Bible. Evidently that person never got hold of MarySue. "Every year," she said, "I pick a theme and I read all the way through the Bible studying that theme. You can't imagine all that I've discovered." Simply astonishing. No one could fool her with inch-deep biblical knowledge even if it looked a mile wide. MarySue grew up poor and had to work very hard to raise her family. Yet she never neglected her beloved Bible. One time not long after she joined us, she winnipeg personal trainer told me of a remarkable dream she'd had. "I was in this huge green field," she said, "and there was a fence around me, fairly close to me. As I watched, the fence started slowly moving outward, way out toward the horizon where I could hardly see it." "What do you think it means?" I asked. "I don't know," she said. "Maybe it means my horizons are expanding." That year her annual study was on the nature of God. "Did you know," she asked excitedly one day, "that God changes? So far I've read from Genesis to Luke, and there are lots of changes. Some are because of Jesus, but I also think people became better able to understand God's nature." She often came up with such things and they were stunning. She had no truck with finding someone to tell her what the Bible says. She figured that the Bible is winnipeg personal trainer God's word, so she should experience God's word for herself. She waded in fearlessly and patiently to explore the Bible's great themes, without struggling to maintain her preconceived ideas. She let the Holy Spirit guide her winnipeg personal trainer reading, and the Holy Spirit opened fabulous vistas of faith and truth before her. I owe much of my love of the Bible to MarySue. She was, for me, God's genuine gift.