George Gardner was an amazing man, and in many ways was the most real person I’ve ever known. He said a lot of things that really changed the way I look at the world.
I remember him giving me a hug at a protest a couple years ago, saying if he could be up at the front chanting and yelling with all us kids, he would have.
He’ll be missed.
I was raised Methodist, but quit believing a lot of it about a week after I was confirmed in sixth grade. I went on to be the resident agnostic and president of my youth group. We had a very liberal, secular group and I liked both the power and the people there.
Now, as I have explained to my mother, I prefer to think that God created Sunday mornings for sleeping in, rather than complex made-up rituals. While I’ve been in Lawrence, I have not been going to church at all, but instead I have been catching up on sleep.
God is totally okay with this, by the way. He knows a weekly sermon doesn’t do anything for my spirituality compared to, for example, a nice sunset.
Plus, when I see other girls here leaving for church, I’ve taken to asking them to say hello to Jesus for me, and they’re usually more than happy to pass that along to him.
Today is Twig Sunday.
Twig Sunday? What is that?
Well, it’s a tradition that my church borrowed from…somewhere old. I don’t remember who George attributed it to — I should have paid more attention give how much I like the idea.
Okay, so you get a small bundle of twigs. Only a few. And you think of all the worries and stresses and frustrations and other bad things that happened this year and you put all of those bad things onto the twigs. I like to come up with something for each twig to represent.
Okay, got all your problems of 2001 transferred to these twigs? Good.
Now burn them.
Yeah, light them on fire and watch them burn. Everything that sucked about last year is gone.
It’s not unlike a lot of other New Year’s traditions. But I like it because (a) it involves fire and (b) I, um, like twigs? I dunno. I just like it.
So back to my point: It’s twig Sunday, so go find some twigs of your own.
I’ve been thinking that
it would be way awesome if
Al Gore was my dad
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