Dear , 

 

No, I'm not referring to the kind of "still" I spoke of last week as I featured Pico Iyers' "The Art of Stillness" and "In Praise of the Humble Comma," though the word of the week is inspired by one Word-zine reader's response to last week's issue.

 

"Still" is one of the most versatile words you'll ever run across. It serves as an adjective, a noun, an adverb, and an adverb, and even, it turns out, a surname of an influential person! Still is so versatile, that it has more than one definition listed under most of these parts of speech. (Yes, you're right, I may be the biggest "word nerd" you've ever met, if that's what you're thinking.) The operative definition this week is, courtesy of Merriam-Webster, is "used as a function word to indicate the continuance of an action or condition."

 

Okay, I'm done! Here's a picture of the Word-zine reader I'm speaking of, Jon Heaslet, in a shirt, sporting a large comma, that he wore to last week's Under Construction class just for me. 

It turns out that Jon's denomination, the United Church of Christ, has employed the comma as a theological and marketing expression, as this shirt exemplifies.

Jon told me that his colleague and friend the Rev. Ron Buford once saw,  when he was in the Hollywood area, a post card with the caption: "Never place a period where God has placed a comma,” Gracie Allen.

Apparently she included this sentence in a letter she wrote to George Burns as she was dying. George was in deep grief after Gracie's death, and he credits his discovery of this letter holding these inspiring words for his return to life and show business.

"Ron," Jon said, "was a marketing executive for a major communications company in the East.  He worked with folks at our denominational headquarters and in 2004, the United Church of Christ rolled out Still Speaking television commercials and marketing materials featuring the comma, introducing folks to the "God is still speaking” church, and the catch phrase: 'No matter who you are or where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.' I opened worship every Sunday with those words."

Jon went on to say, "This identity worked so well for our denomination [the UCC is the merger of four denominations, the oldest being the Congregationalists—the Pilgrims], because the Rev. John Robinson, pastor to the Mayflower Pilgrims in 1620 spoke and wrote these words: 'I am persuaded that the Lord has more truth to break forth from His Holy Word.' In other words, God is still speaking."

Jon's shirt, and the story of Gracie and George, made me smile for so many reasons, not the least because I often feel the presence of my mother and father, who passed away in 2002 and 2009 respectively. 

I hope Jon's shirt and story make you smile, too, regardless of your faith and/or religious beliefs (as for me, I've never found anything truer than "God is love") and get you thinking about what, and/or who, is still speaking to you. 

I experience love speaking to me every single day—at least, on the days that I am paying attention. When I saw a TED Talk by the Finnish flute soloist Ulla Suokko called "Do You See the Signs of the Universe?" I thought to myself, Voila! Another illustration of the way Love is still speaking!

John's comma also got me thinking about the way that even the everyday things in our lives—like, say, a basket of peaches—can speak to us of love.

These particular peaches come from a produce stand in Saluda, North Carolina, in the nearby mountains where I spent a day last week with my longtime friend, WordPlayer, and fellow peach lover Caroline Castle Hicks in celebration of her birthday and the 25th anniversary of the first writing class she took with me. As is often the case, I didn't think to get a picture, so this one from five? ten? years ago will have to suffice.

Caroline and I have both heard Love still speaking to us through peaches, and as I shared my peaches with my son and his  fiancée Allison last night, as well as with Allison's dad and stepmom, who brought homemade peach pound cake AND peach ice cream to share, I thought again, yep, Love is still speaking!

I featured an excerpt from Caroline's book, Such Stuff As Stars Are Made of: Thoughts on Savoring the Wonders in Everyday Life, back in January, so you may recognize her name and/or photo. Today though, I'm sharing her essay "Granddaughter Peaches." Because although she writes of "the way that beauty always rights itself," she is also writing of Love still speaking.

In this week's prompt, you'll have your turn to write about who or what is still speaking to you. 

Wishing you joy,

Maureen

 

WordPlay Success Story

 

 

"[Maureen's] nurturing spirit and uncanny teaching skill
make WordPlay a powerful wellspring for all of us
who long to bring our creativity to life."

 

 

A former high school English and Humanities teacher, Caroline Castle Hicks, author of Such Stuff As Stars Are Made of: Thoughts on Savoring the Wonders in Everyday Life, is an award-winning freelance writer and poet. Her essays and poems have appeared in numerous publications, including two editions of the popular Chicken Soup for the Soul series as well as Open My Eyes, Open My Soul, an anthology published in commemoration of Martin Luther King Jr.’s 75th birthday. She has also been a regular public radio commentator on Charlotte, North Carolina’s NPR affiliate, WFAE 90.7 FM.

 

What Caroline says about WordPlay 

 

In the dedication of my first book, from which my essay “A Taste for Lemon Sorbet” is taken, I wrote that Maureen’s “remarkable writing and creativity classes have transformed me from somebody who ‘always wanted to be a writer’ into somebody who is one.” Maureen often refers to herself as a “creative midwife,” and over the course of our 25-year friendship, she has indeed labored with me, nudging, encouraging and breathing my writing dreams into being. As I’m sure many of her other students could attest, she is often an incubator as well, keeping our dreams warm until we come to believe in them as much as she does. Her nurturing spirit and uncanny teaching skill make WordPlay a powerful wellspring for all of us who long to bring our creativity to life.

 

Featured Writing

 

"Granddaughter Peaches"

 

 from

 

Such Stuff As Stars Are Made Of
 
by

 

Caroline Castle Hicks

 

 

 

All summer long, my next-door neighbor has the rather unsettling habit of showing up at my back door unannounced. A retired Army officer in his seventies, he still carries himself with the precise steps and erect posture of the soldier he once was, knocking at the door with brisk, resounding taps as if for roll call. Since he and his wife moved in several years ago, I have learned never to come downstairs in my nightgown after eight a.m. for fear of finding this spry elderly gentleman peering through the glass door with one hand over his eyes and the other holding a bulging bag of homegrown produce.

Having grown up on a farm in South Carolina, he has made a valiant attempt to return to his roots by transforming his sloping suburban backyard into a miniature and somewhat haphazard facsimile of a peach orchard. His lawn is dotted with a vast variety of peach trees in various stages of growth, but there is not much evidence of a master plan. I must confess that it has become a guilty, voyeuristic pleasure to observe from my kitchen window the almost comical exasperation of his weekly lawn service as they attempt to weave their riding mowers among the trees. I have no doubt they charge him extra for the aggravation. Nevertheless, my neighbor remains undeterred, continuing to insert saplings into the ground at a steady pace, despite the fact that a number of his more mature trees are now producing a truly frightening amount of fruit.

Now don’t get me wrong; I adore peaches. A fresh-picked peach, heavy with juice and warmed by the sun, is one of the sublime pleasures of life and I am humbly grateful for this dear man’s generosity. But there are only so many peaches that one can peel, eat, freeze, or re-gift to friends, and only so much peach crisp, peach pie, and peach cobbler that one can prepare and consume over the course of a single summer. So it was with growing trepidation that I continued to answer the familiar rap at my door as the sultry days of last August moved languidly toward September, and this would-be farmer’s beloved trees grew ever more laden with their swan song of abundance.

By Labor Day weekend, my family and I had reached such a level of peach surfeit that I knew I would have to employ a method of refusal far more assertive than the polite, euphemistic—yet so often ineffective—subtlety that we Southerners are known for. It was not long after coming to this resolution that I answered my door with what was probably a thinly veiled look of horror to find him holding not one, but two, overflowing plastic grocery bags full of small white peaches the size of apricots. At that point, I am sad to say, all feelings of gratitude had been sublimated by one overriding thought along the lines of “Oh, dear God, no.”

It was then, too, though, that I knew I would take them yet again. There was something in his face this time, a mixture of pride, love—wistfulness?—that told me there was something different about these peaches. Not that it mattered. I realized in a moment of surrender that I was never going to refuse this old warrior’s offerings. It just wasn’t in me.

“I hope you can use these,” he said, handing me the bags which were accompanied by twin swarms of fruit flies. “They’re a little different, not quite as sweet—might take some getting used to, but I think you’ll like them. They have kind of a perfume. Can you smell it?”

I could. It was heady, musky, almost exotic.

“Oh, and watch out for the worms. These tend to have more worms than usual. But just cut them out and you’ll be fine.”

“As long as I don’t find half a worm,” I replied with Meryl Streep-worthy cheer, feeling the bile rise at the back of my throat and contemplating the hour or two I would spend peeling small, crawling peaches that would “take some getting used to.”

“Well, enjoy;” he said, turning to go down the back steps, “these are probably the last.”

Then, before I could formulate some suitably regretful reply to this parting remark, he paused and turned back, looking more wistful than ever. “You know, I meant to tell you that these are kind of special. I’ve always loved peaches—I guess you can tell that—and whenever I got a day of leave in Vietnam, I’d try to get to the village market to see if they had any. I found these there and I liked them so much that I saved a few of the pits and brought them home to plant on the family farm in South Carolina. They did real well and I’ve kept trees growing from those pits ever since.” Smiling, he pointed at the bags I still held in my hands. “So I guess you could say you’ve got some granddaughter peaches there.”

I looked down at the bags and back up at him. “Wow,” I said, and it came out on a sigh. “Thank you.”

Already walking away, he waved with a sort of salute. “You let me know how you like those. I eat them for breakfast with milk and sugar.”

I thought about a lot of things that night as, swathed in juice and fruit flies and a smell like hothouse flowers, I washed and peeled all those peaches, creating the space in my busy life for a chore that had somehow become a sacred act. But mostly, I thought of the way that beauty always rights itself. Always. It might be in the delicate, yet tenacious way that wild raspberries were said to have tangled themselves in the barbed wire of Auschwitz. It might be in the bold, defiant way the sunset must have seared the Pacific sky on the evening after Pearl Harbor. Or it might be in the unexpected, slow-in-coming way of a few dried peach pits carried home in the pocket of a war-weary soldier and planted on a boyhood farm. In the generations of trees, fragrant with springs of white blossoms and heavy with summer upon summer of fruit to be given away.

 

From Such Stuff As Start Are Made Of,
available for purchase on Amazon here.

 

WordPlay
Maureen Ryan Griffin
Email: info@wordplaynow.com
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