The Chosen Lady

Do you know the difference between poisonous and venomous? I was mulling those words and wasn’t quite sure, so let me share what I found.   “According to biologists, the term venomous is applied to organisms that bite (or sting) to inject their toxins, whereas the term poisonous applies to organisms that unload toxins when you eat them.”    (John Rafferty, Britannica) The word venom was a shiny toy for my inner word nerd.  I believed that the word venom came from the same root word as vein, as the word ‘venous’ has to do with veins, and venom starts with v-e-n, just like venous.  I was wrong.   Vein comes from the Latin word vena…

American authors William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway had a memorable spat over their writing techniques. Faulkner commented, “Ernest Hemingway: he has no courage, has never crawled out on a limb. He has never been known to use a word that might cause the reader to check with a dictionary to see if it is properly used.” Hemingway replied with, “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.” The book of Mark in the bible is more like…

When you think of a convicted drug dealer serving time in prison, what words, phrases, thoughts come to mind? Go ahead, you’re allowed to think it. I asked.   Scumbag, junkie, loser, murderer, deserved it, rot in jail, lost cause. How about these instead?  Beloved, redeemable, contrite, friend, daughter, born again Christian, Child of the One True King. Readers, I have a daughter of the heart. I didn’t give birth to her, but God placed her in my heart when she was a teenager and there she will remain. She was raised by her grandparents because her birth mother struggled with addiction. My heart- daughter struggled greatly with feelings of…

Growing up, I participated in two weekly extracurricular activities. The first one was known as ‘C.C.D.’ C.C.D. was a complete mystery to me as kid. I had no clue what the initials “C.C.D.” stood for. Other children who attended obnoxiously referred to this activity as ‘Central City Dump.’  This set the tone accordingly. I knew I must be in for something awful.  C.C.D. was like the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Catholicism.  Scriptures and prayers taught by well-meaning nuns with some games and snacks thrown in. The classes were supposed to get children ready to be a card-carrying member of the Catholic Church, where you could participate in the sacraments, like…

I openly admit to not liking the guttural sound of the German language. My best friend spent a number of years living in Germany while her husband was serving in the U.S. Army there, so we playfully disagree on the ‘beauty’ of the language. She loves the German language while I agree with Irish comedian Dylan Moran. “You couldn’t speak German because it’s a horrible sound. It sounds like typewriters eating tin foil being kicked down the stairs.” I have succeeded in finding one magical word in the German language that I have come to treasure and identify with deeply. As an American, this word doesn’t exist in my country,…

I recently traveled to beautiful Bucks County, Pennsylvania for a much-needed respite. The houses there are deliberately spaced apart leaving room for large fields. Verdant in summer, they lay fallow during my November visit, inhabited only by large flocks of Canadian geese. Bucks County is the setting to the 1940 play, “George Washington Slept Here,” by George Kaufman and Moss Hart.  The playwrights had both purchased fixer upper homes in Bucks County and created a main character to have similar struggles. Newton Fuller moves into a deteriorating Colonial home with good intentions, and he believes that his wife will be impressed by the home’s history. You guessed it; George Washington…

In 1892, a baby boy was born in South Africa. His parents named him John. When John was three years old, his mother and baby brother returned to their native England. John’s father was expected to join them a little later, but he died before he could be reunited with his family.  His father’s death would change the course of John’s life, as death always does. Death is God’s invisible rudder that steers decisions into destinations. John’s mother would raise her sons with their grandparents and their aunt. John’s childhood was filled with exploring local hills, valleys and his aunt’s farm, Bag End. At twelve, the invisible rudder of death…