Refreshing, Restoring

This is about language, and memories, and subtleties.

In 2006 there was a big conference in Albuquerque, maybe the largest of the Live and Learn Conferences that Kelly Lovejoy organized for several years in a row, in those days.

The week before, something happened that caused me to add to one of my talks, "Big Noisy Peace." I went to a funeral. There are some more notes here: one week to the conference, and an unexpected day

Following that, I added this to the notes for one of my talks. Usually I work from outlines, but this poured out and I've kept the punctuation, line breaks and emphasis I had added in the word file from which I gave that presentation:

Lillian Jones visited. Lillian was Wrensong on AOL, best homeschooling.org, involved with the HSC conference for years, and she was asking me why the King James Bible was such a big deal to some people. We talked about several aspects, but I said it was written poetically, and in simple, short native English words. That was Friday, a week and a half ago. The Monday after that I went to a Catholic funeral. I took notes. I write, even in church. Always did.

"In verdant pastures he gives me repose. Beside restful waters he leads me. He refreshes my soul."

As someone who was once a good Baptist kid, that disturbed me a little.

I know that of all things ever written this was the LEAST intended to DISTURB anyone, but here's the thing:

I wanted to hear

"He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
  He leadeth me beside the still waters.
  He restoreth my soul."
I could go into a word by word comparison about what's from English and what's from French or Latin, and
God knows the Roman Catholic church leans more toward Latin than Anglo Saxon.

"RESTORE" is a very cool word. He restoreth my soul.

Refreshing is more bubbly and surprising.
Sprite is refreshing.
"Refreshing" is what a melon smoothie is.
And I don't want a fresh new soul.
I want my OWN soul, restored. Whole again.



You can listen to the sound file of that talk here, or download it free:
2006-Thu-LiveAndLearn-SandraDodd-BigNoisyPeace.mp3 or here (depending on your browser and that):


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