Thanks to readers for adding to the list of four-letter words worth keeping:
food tree frog yarn mint beer wine taco rest soon done.
Since I just celebrated my birthday, I can't forget:
cake.
Speaking of birthdays, this year I spent mine in Portland, Oregon. My sister-in-law is a guide for Urban Tours, so she led my husband (her brother) and me to noteworthy sites in downtown Portland. A stop at The Heathman Hotel was a highlight; I showed my writer geekiness with a slow stroll through the hotel's collection of first edition books by authors who have stayed there.
The next day, we went to Eugene where I collected my prize for first place (student category) in the Oregon Quarterly Northwest Perspectives Essay Contest: a writing workshop with contest judge Ellen Waterston and a public reading by the contest winners (you can read the winning essays
here; mine is "Boris's Bluff).
As you'll discover when you read this fine magazine, it's published by the University of Oregon.
Better add one more four-letter word to my list:
duck.*
*University of Oregon mascot
Friday, May 31, 2013
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Four-Letter Words
Growing up in the Midwest, four-letter words were forbidden
in my household, at least by kids.
My mom warned that if I said them, she’d wash my mouth out with
soap. I believed her, because she
did it one time, not for uttering a four-letter word, but as punishment for
“talking back.”
Four-letter words get a bad rap. Here’s how the American Heritage Dictionary defines
them:
four-let·ter
word (fôr ˈletər wərd)
n. Any of several short
English
words
generally
regarded
as
vulgar or obscene.
Sure, there are some nasty ones that I wouldn’t mind having washed away:
hate
rape pain rude liar feud
fake jail hurt sick fear kill.
And some are even more obscene with just three letters:
war.
There’s a simplicity and honesty about short words, though, that I value. Here are a few that I plan to keep in my vocabulary:
read book sing song noun verb cook fork food bake cake feed note
card foot toes moon rain
(well, maybe not after weeks of it in the
winter) sail
pail hike
bike toot vote coat look like love seed dirt wool silk dock
sock
work soon tune bowl hair care fair pear milk kilt cove need help
fire bird sari pair tool word work grin talk
walk duck bead plum chum
soap hope boot hoot goat boat deer dear head play pray.
What four-letter words are you happy to use?
Friday, May 10, 2013
Questions
|
I remember a few things about a Bible study I attended thirty-five
years ago. I sat on a hard, wooden
pew in the sanctuary of an inner-city Lutheran church. The minister, a lanky,
shaggy-aired, pipe-smoking man who I respected deeply, paced up and down the
aisles; his blue eyes rested on each of us as he taught. I can’t recall what
verse or chapter we were studying; I don’t remember the points the minister
made. What I do remember is raising
my hand and asking a question about the text’s meaning, then feeling a churn in
my stomach when the reverend’s eyes flashed disapproval. My suggestion that the
Bible’s prescriptions might be open to interpretation, might need examination
in current times, hung in the silent air.
Definitive answers had long been a comfort to me. I listened, without questioning, for
years to the wisdom of my parents, teachers, and ministers. I welcomed the
certainty that there was an explanation, a logic, a right answer, for the many
parts of life I didn’t understand. Eventually, though, somewhere around the
time my Lutheran pastor frowned at my questions, such conviction began to feel
stifling rather than reassuring.
This memory returned to me at last month’s spring gathering
of Friends as we considered “Ways of Belonging Among Quakers.” At the opening plenary session, four
people shared stories of how they came to find a spiritual home among
Quakers. Later, in small
worship-sharing groups, we considered queries about how we each came to
Quakerism and what has kept us here.
Queries. Questions.
That’s what has kept me among Friends for over thirty years. Not only is it acceptable to ask questions, it’s expected. We use open-ended questions that invite
us to speak from our own experiences and that guide us to explore how God is
leading us now, individually and collectively.
So now, I sit in the silence—sometimes on a hard, wooden
bench, but usually on a couch in a friend’s living room or on a folding chair
at a Quaker gathering, at other times on a rocky beach or deep in a pine
forest—and ask questions. And now, it’s the questions that sustain me through
life’s mysteries.
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