When I was in eighth grade, I got sick and missed a lot of school.
As I recall it, my interests in running fast and playing music fell away as I was mostly stuck in bed at home. Boring. My mind wasn’t sick (at least, no more than usual) and I wasn’t sleeping all the time, but I didn’t know how long my recovery would be, plus the problem kept coming back. It wasn’t just a one-shot deal.
What to do? The teachers sent home assignments, but those didn’t take long. I listened to the radio. I read. But mostly I remember a little calligraphy kit and creating my own alphabets with it. The kit had a fountain pen, writing paper and instructions explaining the thick and thin, ebb and flow of the ink onto the writing paper. I copied the chart of letters to make the sample alphabet.
Once I mastered that, I was off into the creation of my own styles of letters, a little eighth-grade font foundry, except that I didn’t know what a font was. I practiced my name in different styles, trying to make my own version of the fancy signatures on the poster of the Declaration of Independence I had purchased on a trip to visit family members in New England. I would take a blank page of paper and fill it with letters to show feelings: joy, fear, funny, serious, sad. Every letter of the alphabet became interesting and challenging—how to make a “t” that conveyed more than just a “t.”
Hot black tea with sugar and a piece of buttered cinnamon toast helped fortify the experiment in exploring the alphabet, sustaining me to concentrate between meals.
Every letter became a friend as I concentrated on making each one just right.
Years later when I learned about the Cyrillic alphabet I thought back on this time. How much I would have enjoyed some of the beautiful and exotic letters that only exist in Cyrillic and not the Roman alphabet—their equivalents of "D" and "F," their yuh and yah and zheh letters, just describing them in such succinct ways seem, well, if not criminal, just base. I wished the eighth-grade me could have known about them and tried my hand at those letters as well.
Back then, in my unadorned efforts to fill my sick days, I started to experiment with the Roman letters I did know to help them take on different personalities or feelings. I found that each letter had its own challenges. And then putting letters together into words seemed a most magical exercise.
Don’t get me wrong. I was no Timothy Botts. I was just a sick kid trying to fill his day. Slowly becoming more confident, I found ways to put letters together, to connect them in a single flow of ink.
The combination of letters lined up next to one another meant that I began to discover words in a new way. Suddenly every word seemed magical and alive. It became interesting to me how individual letters lined up next to each other made new words. It’s obvious, words that start with the same letter change depending on what letters follow and in what order.
The letter “L” brings the words love, lonely, lion, Lorraine.
The letter “P” begins peace, power, patience, Paul, Pauline.
Pear is different from pair. Consider sparing, soaring, staring, string, sting, sing, sin.
People are like letters. Our association with one another can change things dramatically. Wil is not the same as Wil and Lorraine. Our small group is different when it’s Mary, Kathy, Mark, Julia in contrast to Ann, Vera, Rebecca, Paul, Liita, Mark, Julia, John. We were a different church with the four Ukrainian pastors on February 20 than the week that followed. And it wasn’t just the four pastors from Ukraine—it was all who were present on those distinct days. Every worship gathering is like that—distinctly blessed and unique—a different eternal word from any other gathering. It is perhaps most obvious with people as opposed to letters when we consider death and birth. Imagine if the letter “b” died—never to be used again. When we lose people, it’s like we’ve lost a letter. But we also get new people, too. Newborns and visitors and guests—new letters to add to our alphabet. Absence and presence of people determine the full meaning of each service just as the presence or absence of letters change the meaning of words.
We need each other to be the church. Your presence and mine changes everything. So, come. I want to see you. It won’t be the same if you stay in bed or go to the festival or game or store. Sometimes it can't be helped, but church is different when we’re physically part of it.
Of course, no discussion like this in relation to church can just stop there. We need to consider and remember and probably even start with the one word that is the cornerstone that makes us church as opposed to a cult or social club or fraternal order of nice people getting together to help each other.
J-E-S-U-S. Those five letters will go up on our pillars as the Easter banner (picking up the new “S” this week). But every week we lift them up. All five letters put together in that order spell out his name. The Word. Our gathering says, “He is here, alive and above and below and at work, standing alongside us.” How can we not gather and sing? Our association with him, coming to him, recognizing his presence right now in this moment, falling down before him, letting him engage and control and change and create in us and through us something new and better that somehow lasts forever.
“… I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end.” Blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates. Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and the sexually immoral and murderers and idolaters, and everyone who loves and practices falsehood. “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.” The Spirit and the Bride say, “Come.” And let the one who hears say, “Come.” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who desires take the water of life without price. (Revelation 22:12b-17)