September 26, 2005
In a Galaxy Far, Far Away
Yesterday’s service was the second part in a series by Lou Giglio called “Indescribable.” Lou, an astronomy buff if there ever was one, had photos from the Hubble Telescope that he showed to us one by one. Now, I’ve never been much of a science girl and once you start talking about “light years” and things being trillion upon trillions of miles away, and 1,000 times more powerful than the sun, my brain stops computing all of that and starts thinking in terms like “oooh, pretty” and “wow, big.”
Still, it was a powerful message and it makes the lyrics to old hymns like “How Great Thou Art,” even more poignant:
“O Lord my God, When I in awesome wonder, Consider all the worlds Thy Hands have made; I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder, Thy power throughout the universe displayed…Then sings my soul, my savior God to thee, How great Thou art!”
When Carl Boberg, a young Swedish pastor, wrote those stanzas in 1886 there was no giant telescope that could peer beyond the Milky Way. We didn’t yet know about things like the Whirlpool Galaxy (a “grand design” galaxy), or that our solar system was just a fraction of a fraction of the vastness that is the Universe. But God was God then, as He is God today, and He, like the speed of light, is constant.
Seeing those images popped it all into perspective for me. My life is small. I am small. I am teeny, tiny. Just a girl who’s been here for a nanosecond and who will be gone in another, but a girl who God has called by name – a girl He has loved, and will love, for eternity. It's humbling and it helps me frame my faith - to realize that in the same heartbeat it has nothing, and everything, to do with me.
I don’t know what is beyond our atmosphere, what lies in the infinite distance of the universe. I don’t know why it was created, or why He has since given us the means to look up and out. Maybe those stars and planets were just for fun. Maybe they are out there, in their indescribable vastness and power, so that we may know that He is God.
Posted by hannah at 05:10 PM | Comments (1)
September 19, 2005
Goodbye Jo
Today is the memorial service for my Aunt Jo, who died on Aug. 24. She was cremated and her ashes will be buried next to her husband, who died in August 1977, when I was barely a year old. I am at work, 500 miles away, because the passing of an extended family member doesn’t qualify for a grievance absence and I don’t have any vacation days left.
She was sick for too long, so her death, while not welcome, was expected. Still, as my mom said, it’s weird to think that she is no longer on Earth with us – breathing the same air, seeing the same sky. My grandmother, as one could imagine, is having a terrible time. This is the third child she will bury and that is three times too many for any mother to bear.
Jo was my mom’s older sister, nine years her senior (the gap between numbers five and six large enough for my mom and her younger sister to be raised almost as a second family), and the stories around Jo have always been slightly mythical in their proportion. She was a great beauty, well traveled and a successful, shrewd businesswoman. Her not-yet-husband went off to Korea knowing she would be his bride when he returned, though she didn’t even know it herself. Since his early death, my entire life, I have heard about how much my uncle loved Jo – worshipped her, idolized her, adored her – and a small part of me has always searched for that kind of love. But I never told Jo that. I never told her how incredible I thought she was, or how brave. The way she attacked her cancer – quietly, knowingly, with silent strength – was inspiring. She was diagnosed when she was only 59 and was given a mere six months to live. She beat that diagnosis by more than 12 years.
With so many nieces and nephews I know that I wasn’t any more special or unique to her than they were, but I like to think that maybe I was. My aunt Wanda would often stroke my blonde ponytail and comment on how I had hair like Jo’s, how often she would catch a glimpse of me and forget that she hadn’t gone back in time. When I want to get off the phone with my mom, because I hate unnecessary phone chatter, she will sigh and say that I am “just like Jo” in that regard. When I went to Savannah for the first time this summer, my mom told me that Jo had said that I had to see the city through her eyes, as it was her favorite place in the world. I tried to remember that when I was there – as I walked the many squares and dodged the rain running down Bull St., as I sampled pralines at River Street Sweets – that I was there for more than just myself. And now, I’ll always try to remember that.
Goodbye Jo – you will be greatly missed.
Posted by hannah at 03:19 PM | Comments (1)
September 14, 2005
Look What I Bought
My 1996 Honda Accord EX, lovingly referred to as Old Crappy, finally died on me by way of a choking, sputtering transmission. They say, with proper care, that Hondas will last forever. Well, mine made it 130k miles, and got me through seven years, two states and seven moves. While that's not really Forever in Hondaland, it was long enough.
On Saturday, J0shua and I spent the day zipping around in my rental looking for a replacement Accord EX to no avail. Most of the dealers said they could put me in a base model brand new '05 Accord for less than a used EX, so hot are Accords right now in our high gas price world. But I'm a snob, and a girl, and have to have leather. (When you're making 60 payments, it's important to love and be excited about what you're making those payments on. Though I've never had a brand spankin' new car, and it would've been thrilling to drive a car off the lot with 0 miles, I would've felt resentful that Old Crappy's untimely demise put me in a car that I wasn't excited about, tied to it with a 5-year loan.)
We popped into an Acura dealer for kicks (really), and many hours, converstaions and negotiations later I drove home in the most AMAZING car ever. On my 16th birthday in June 1992 I became the proud driver of an '86 Acura Integra and I've been looking for that car ever since, in a way, and here it is - 16 years newer and 16,000 times cleaner.
J0shua said he's a little scared of me in a car with so much power (though he did say that I'm a good "girl driver," in front of a salesperson no less), but it's thrilling to know that I can make a left-hand turn on Cobb Parkway and not worry about my car stalling on its way across 3 lanes.
Halfway through the 00s, I finally have a car made in the same decade we're living in. How thrilling. All that's left to find out now is where this car will take me, and who I'll be when we get there.
Posted by hannah at 10:41 AM | Comments (1)
