I Love It When You Talk Nerdy

Dear John,

 

Yesterday Kathy said the she enjoyed being with the two of us because we saw things in such different ways - different to her, I mean. It's a nice way of saying we're weird, but it's more than that. Part of it is that our education was in math-science, then later we both got seminary degrees. We had unusual overlapping subsets in our education and parlance.

 

We laughed at ourselves for years about our song, "Blame Augustine." For us, it was inevitable. We'd seen and loved the South Park movie, so we knew the song "Blame Canada." If ever a song called for parodying, that was it. What could be more obvious than to interject a 3rd Century theological conflict into the song? So we ended up with "Blame Augustine - for the free-will hullabaloo and the filioque too. Blame Augustine - he's not even a real saint anyway."

 

We used to speculate on how many people would get the song. There's the set of people who know every word to "Blame Canada," and the set of people to have studied both the theological controversy between Augustine and Pelagius, and the addition of the filioque to the creed in the Western church, and also have a general understanding of the relationship of the Eastern church to Blessed Augustine. The overlapping subset is very small indeed. Since your death, it may be just me. That's okay - it's still just as funny.

 

And that's the kind of thing we did. We'd go off into these surreal flights of fancy, have a lovely time, and confuse anyone in earshot. It was play to us - playing with words and concepts. I miss that now. But when I do come up with something new, I laugh about how much you would laugh at it. So it's still fun.

 

So please, keep talking nerdy to me! I love your mind. And yes, to answer the question I know is coming: I was quite fond of your body, too. But what I fell in love with is your soul. I look forward to being reunited to all of you, and I'm open to the very near future. Until then, rest well!

Love you unspeakable amounts,

Joan.