Oh, my God, You know I have a talent for getting lost in airports, parking lots, hotels, and breakfast areas. (Where did they hide the coffee? Oh. The same place as yesterday.) OMG, I’m so thankful You always know where I am, even if I don’t.
(The following includes the remainder of a fictional interview by first-century writer Caleb. Based on historical Gospel accounts, it takes place soon after Jesus of Nazareth’s execution. As Caleb conducts the interview, using a small tape recorder, Mary Magdalene’s sister, Huldah, stirs a huge pot of stew and occasionally yells at her children.)
Huldah: As I said, Daniel and I weren’t crazy about Mary’s being a groupie, trailing after this rock-star rabbi, Jesus. It’s not like she wasn’t already nutty as a fruitcake. But the more Mary hung with Jesus, the better she got.
We were grateful, though I worried about her reputation when she traveled with Jesus.
Mary thought that was funny. “Huldah, I don’t have a reputation to lose!”
Caleb: How did you feel about Jesus’ enemies?
Huldah: What do you think? I worried. Worried our rabbi would kick Mary out of the synagogue. That she’d get us kicked out, and our business would go bankrupt.
Caleb: What about the Romans’ reaction to Jesus and his followers?
Huldah: Duh! You know they also crucify women, if they’re in the mood.
But when Mary visited weekends, I’d never seen her so … peaceful.
Still, she worried about Jesus. He didn’t do anything wrong. He did everything right! But that didn’t earn him any brownie points. We came here to Jerusalem for Passover, but instead of celebrating, the whole town waited, as if expecting fire to fall. When we heard they’d crucified Jesus, we were scared Mary would hang on a cross next to him.
Caleb: What happened to her?
Huldah: Thank God, the Romans hadn’t harmed her. When Jesus died, we begged Mary to hide outside Jerusalem. But she wanted to help bury him.
Caleb: She’s still okay?
Huldah: I—I don’t know. Mary swears up and down she not only saw but talked to Jesus.
Caleb: She thinks a man survived crucifixion?
Huldah: Yes, she’s crazy happy. Others who claim they saw him are crazy happy. Maybe they’re all loonier than she was in the first place!
Caleb: Maybe?
Huldah: I know, I know. Roman soldiers are good at their job. I saw Jesus die. Mary saw his followers put the body into a tomb. Yet she won’t back down. She can’t wait to see Jesus again.
Caleb: Um, Huldah, I want to put a positive spin on this. But you need to get Mary some help.
Huldah: If only she’ll come home with us — there she is! Talk to her. Wait. Who is that Man walking behind her?
Caleb: It can’t be —
Huldah: (screaming) Mary’s right! Jesus is alive!
(Caleb’s recorder plopped into the stewpot, and normally, an interview would have been lost forever. But this one, Caleb noted later, he would never forget.)
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: If you could talk to someone who saw Jesus after His Resurrection, who would it be?
(The following fictional interview by first-century writer Caleb is based on historical Gospel accounts, taking place soon after Jesus of Nazareth’s execution. As Caleb adjusts a small tape recorder, Mary Magdalene’s sister, Huldah, stirs a huge pot of stew.)
Caleb: Huldah, thanks for agreeing to talk with me about Mary.
Huldah: Yeah, yeah. People are saying crazy stuff, so maybe I can clear up a few rumors.
Caleb: To keep things straight for readers, we’re discussing Mary Magdalene.
Huldah: There are a million Marys running around. Mom and Dad gave her the popular name, of course. Leave that alone! (She waves a big spoon at the curious kid sneaking behind Caleb, then apologizes.) Sorry. I didn’t mean you.
Caleb: Um … no problem. You’re her older sister?
Huldah: Yeah, been looking out for Mary since forever. She was always different … then she started hearing voices. Saw stuff that wasn’t there. Got really mean. Our parents passed her around to relatives like she was a bad cold. Before they died, they made me promise to take care of her.
Caleb: Mary met Jesus, called the Christ, didn’t she?
Huldah: Yeah. She’d wandered off, out of her head. I said, “Good riddance!” Maybe Daniel and I could enjoy some peace. But we had to look for her. She’d joined those groupies following Jesus, the rock-star rabbi.
I said to Daniel, “Just great. Sounds like he runs a medicine show.”
Caleb: Upon seeing you, how did Mary react?
Huldah: Mary doesn’t hug anybody — she slugs ’em. But this time, she hugged me. Then she laughed! I couldn’t remember the last time I heard her laugh.
Caleb: I saw Jesus, maybe twice. Did you?
Huldah: Yeah. For a rock star, he wasn’t real good-lookin’. There was nothing special about Jesus, until he talked — and healed a leper who used to live next door.
I told Daniel, “I’ll take his brand of crazy, anytime.” Turns out, the more Mary was around Jesus, the better she got.
Caleb: Has she regressed since then?
Huldah: Well … you be the judge of that, after you hear the whole story.
To be continued tomorrow, April 25.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Have you ever considered what happened the week after Easter? And don’t you just hate “to be continued” stories?
Seeing these not-so-shy visitors arrive in my yard again, I had to look back on a blog I wrote in tribute to my uninvited but secretly welcome guests.
I first noticed these flowers as a preschooler. While dandelions flaunted fuzzy beauty like Hollywood starlets, violet faces peered at me shyly through leafy green hands. Mom said I could pick them! — unless they grew in other people’s yards.
One day my sister and I gathered a legal but meager violet bouquet in our grandparents’ backyard — until we wandered toward the neighbors’ weathered house. It resembled a log cabin. Did Abraham Lincoln live there? Even that possibility paled beside the ocean of violets before us. God liked purple, too!
The serious business of picking them all consumed us. I knew we should ask permission, but loudly legitimized our actions by announcing we were gathering special flowers for Mommy and Grandma. When we brought them wilted, wadded bouquets, Mom confirmed my niggling conscience’s pointing finger. We had crossed moral boundaries. The good news: too late to do anything about it. I loved it when sin worked out that way.
Not long afterward, Grandma died, and I never visited the magic Sea of Violets again. But as I graduated from picking flowers to picking guys, I never forgot them.
The spring break before high school graduation, I took an all-day walk around my hometown. Like any respectable teen, I’d hated it for years. Now, deep inside, I knew I was leaving Columbus, Indiana, forever. One shabby bungalow’s yard stopped me in my tracks. Thousands and thousands of purple violets. Now 18 and an official grown-up, I didn’t dive in. But I stood, mesmerized, for sometime.
I hung that violet picture on my mind’s walls. When my then-boyfriend, now-husband asked about a prom corsage for my lavender dress, I answered, “Violets.” I loved them — and didn’t want him to feel obliged to give me an orchid, the obvious, expensive answer.
Unbeknownst to me, his mother would worry because she could not find a violet corsage.
“Haven’t used violets in 40 years!” one florist said. “What kind of nut is your son dating, anyway?”
Finally, she told Steve his girlfriend’s purple passion would have to take a different direction. How about white carnations? Pink roses?
Oh. I hadn’t thought of that.
My date, who had remained silent during this woman debate, decided on a white orchid.
The violet vision must have remained with my future mother-in-law, though. After a church banquet, she instructed Steve to give me its centerpiece, a huge bunch of violets. Did she like me? I hoped so. Whether she knew it or not, she had become part of my violet history.
Which continues to this day. My purple passion still guides my walks. If I find violets in your yard, I just might pick them without asking permission.
No TGIF for Him
O my God, we all would like to vote some weeks off the calendar. On Monday morning, we’re already thinking weekend and TGIF. More than 2,000 years ago, though, there was no TGIF for Jesus. But OMG, thank You for TGIS!
No green interrupts my “spring” day except the envious color I turn when the Taylor University track teams — women and men — run through my neighborhood.
They wear long tights, hoodies and woolly hats. Snow confetti may greet them. Still, their effortless, long-legged strides defy winter, as do their fresh young faces.
They talk as they run. They laugh.
Running and laughter? An oxymoron. Even decades ago, when I ran routinely, I don’t recall laughing once.
My new husband had talked me into running with him. It’ll be fun, he said. Relaxing, he said.
His legs measure six inches longer than mine.
Newly married couples, do not try this at home. Or anywhere else.
Watching these track teams run now, I find their togetherness friendlier. Definitely more fun.
Even as a solo runner, I lacked the fun factor.
Fellow joggers encouraged, “You’ll grow accustomed to exercise and hit a zone when you’re comfortable, even serene.”
Pony-sized canines nipping at my heels increased my pace. Even with their help, I never achieved that blissful nirvana.
Instead, my knees hurt, ankles ached, and I developed giant stitches in my side that reappeared when I played ring-around-the-rosy with my toddlers.
I told Hubby, “I’ll soon be so healthy that I’ll need a wheelchair.”
Even he finally switched to bicycling when a blown-out knee dissolved his dreams of running the Chicago Marathon.
Instead, we cycled and watched our children run. At our son’s junior high coed cross-country meets, the order of returning runners never varied. First, a pigtailed girl appeared ten minutes before anyone else. Next, the boys manfully pounded to the finish line, embarrassed at being beaten by a girl. Then the other girls finished.
Those guy runners needn’t have felt shame. That girl, Morgan Uceny, ran the fastest 1500-meter race in the world during 2011. Morgan often smiled while running.
Still, she hasn’t inspired me to run.
I’ll let others enjoy that privilege. Some find unique ways to do so.
J.D. Arney reported on enthusiasts who ran the five-mile Raleigh, North Carolina, Krispy Kreme Challenge. Each ran halfway, consumed a dozen glazed doughnuts, then ran back. At least, they smiled during the last part.
Arney also described the Filthy 5K Run in Fargo, North Dakota, where joggers slogged through acres of gunk. Participators in the Green Bay, Wisconsin, Beer Belly Run, with beer stops every half mile, might have ran the happiest race — if they remember it.
Some psychos even pay $17,900 to run the annual Antarctic Ice Marathon.
Me? I’ll cheer track teams from my window each spring. It doesn’t get more serene than that.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: Do you run — and smile?
O my God, You made crocuses so brave and bright — though some say they’re not too bright, thumbing little purple and yellow noses at frozen spring. But OMG, while You’re also into smarts, Your crocuses demonstrate that faith can’t be overrated!
I forget many things. And I had forgotten about this tablecloth.
Years ago, I almost added it to the giveaway pile because we rarely used it. One day, though, the tablecloth floated to the surface like bread cast upon the waters.
Strangely, the scenario involved a TV stand my brother-in-law gave us as a wedding present in 1975. When eventually retired from TV duties, it functioned as a “temporary” end table.
After more than four decades, I could not stand the old stand one more second.
Rummaging through a closet, I found the gold and white tablecloth, woven more than 40 years ago by a friend in Ecuador, where Hubby and I did a six-week medical mission.
I cannot remember the weaver’s name, but his portrait is etched in my mind: chamois skin, a black braid down his back, topped with a jaunty black fedora. He wore the local uniform: white shirt with a poncho, black pants, and rubber boots. His tiny wife wore a full, black skirt and shawl clasped with a monster-sized stickpin that could have fended off Godzilla. Their children were miniatures of their parents.
They all thought gringos were certifiably insane.
The missionaries liked their vegetables and chickens small, whereas any person with a brain would grow them big to feed a large, hungry family. Gringos, who owned kitchens the Quechuas only dreamed about, ate picnics outside. Norteamericanos ignored ancient wisdom that the night air caused every malady from sniffles to liver disease.
Mentally unbalanced and possibly deficient, they lacked basic life skills. They couldn’t finagle decent prices at the market. Despite their height — the gringos also were known as la familia de gigantes, the family of giants — their volleyball team consistently lost because they didn’t cheat.
Such people obviously needed help. The weaver and his family, among others, offered it. They even joined us on picnics.
The weaver’s wife gave me a monster stickpin. “It’s not real silver.”
That, and the lovely tablecloth I bought from her husband at a reduced price, communicated friendship woven into its warp and woof.
Back in the States, we purchased an oval dining room table instead of a rectangular one, so the tablecloth lived a largely undisturbed existence for decades. Now, however, it graces the TV stand, redeeming it with a beauty I never expected.
One more show-and-tell reminder that the forgotten sometimes can reproduce the unforgettable.
Your Extraordinary Ordinary: What forgotten memento brings back memories for you?
O my God, believe it or not, some accuse You of having no sense of humor.