Ten Things I Don’t Know About Laney

My small-but-mighty creative writing class at Sunbury Christian Academy is using Nanowrimo’s Young Writers Program, and today we attempted to fill out questionnaires about our protagonists. 

Forty-six questions! I realized I couldn’t respond to all of them even after writing and publishing two books about Laney Odell. So here are the top ten things I’m wondering about my favorite Arkansian refugee:

10. What color are her eyes?  I looked at Laney on the Surviving Meemaw cover, but she’s looking down at her cell phone, so I can’t tell.

Laney, look up
so I can see your eyes.

9. What is her fondest memory? We all know her worst memory, but what’s her best?

8. Who is her favorite band? I decided she likes country music, because she’s from Arkansas, so she almost has to. But band? I have no idea.

7. What are her superstitions?

6. What three words would describe Laney? Only three?

5. What is the best thing that ever happened to her? We all know the worst thing that happened to her. I think she’s still waiting for the best. 

Laney, would you like to go skiing?
Or cuddle with Calvin in front of the fire?
Or cuddle with Josh? Or someone else?

4. Where is her dream vacation? She went to Jamaica, and we all know how that turned out. But where does she want to go?

3. What is her favorite television show? Not the ones she tolerates because Meemaw is watching them on the Fox News Channel, but what would Laney watch if she could wrest the control from Meem?

2. What are her political views? Do high school seniors have political views? I know I did back in 1971, but I’m not sure about Laney.

And the #1 question I can’t answer about Laney is…

1. If a song played every time Laney walked into the room, what would it be? Now I’m considering what song should play when I walk into the room.

If you’ve read Surviving Meemaw and Surviving Jamaica and you know the answers, tell me! If you haven’t read them, you owe it to yourself!! (Did I go too far?)

Many thanks to www.nanowrimo.org and the free curriculum at http://ywp.nanowrimo.org/. I encourage other teachers to check out these resources. There are free curricula for all ages of young writers, from kindergarten on. It’s not too late to get started.

Where's that found?

At a Hi-B.A. gathering in the late 1960s—Hi-B.A. is the Christian youth group I attended in northern New Jersey—the speaker quoted a scripture verse, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.”

“Where’s that found?” he asked the large room packed with teens.

“In the Bible!” a voice yelled, earning the audience’s laughter and applause and perhaps a bit of irritation from the speaker.

Okay. I confess. C’est moi. I’ve been like this my entire life.

Do you wonder, like I did, what kind of scholar the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews was when he wrote,

For somewhere he has spoken about the seventh day in these words: “On the seventh day God rested from all his works.”

Somewhere? Shouldn’t it be in Genesis, like the first or second chapter? Why didn’t he know this when he wrote? I learned later in my Bible student career that the Bible didn’t have chapters and verses until many centuries after the anonymous Hebrew author wrote. To be specific,

The chapter divisions commonly used today were developed by Stephen Langton, an Archbishop of Canterbury. Langton put the modern chapter divisions into place in around A.D. 1227. The Wycliffe English Bible of 1382 was the first Bible to use this chapter pattern. Since the Wycliffe Bible, nearly all Bible translations have followed Langton's chapter divisions.

The Hebrew Old Testament was divided into verses by a Jewish rabbi by the name of Nathan in A.D. 1448. Robert Estienne, who was also known as Stephanus, was the first to divide the New Testament into standard numbered verses, in 1555. Stephanus essentially used Nathan's verse divisions for the Old Testament. Since that time, beginning with the Geneva Bible, the chapter and verse divisions employed by Stephanus have been accepted into nearly all the Bible versions.

[Read more: http://www.gotquestions.org/divided-Bible-chapters-verses.html#ixzz3J9UzIjGo]

So basically all the Hebrew scripture quoted in Hebrews was rattling around in the author’s head. He was a great scholar.

The other day my fellow Bible teacher at Sunbury Christian Academy instructed her young teen students in the use of Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance. As the students groaned under the weight of the volume, she quipped, “It will make your stronger.”

Strong’s and similar concordances were what we used in the pre-internet era when dinosaurs roamed the earth. Its use is pretty simple:  You look up a word in alphabetical order and the concordance lists every place in the Bible that word appears, and a short segment of the verse. Every place. That’s why it weighs twenty pounds. That’s why you need a page magnifier to read the microscopic type.

How on earth did James Strong compile this book without the internet to search the document? I’m glad you asked.

Dr. James Strong was professor of exegetical theology at Drew Theology Seminary when he supervised a team of 100 scholars in creating this index to the King James Bible. (I imagine he chained them to desks like the monks who copied the New Testament.) The concordance was published in 1890, and the old professor graduated to Glory in 1894. You can read more about his amazing accomplishment and other concordances here:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strong%27s_Concordance

Now I use www.biblegateway.com, though I suppose there are many Bible search engines online. But when I need to know the Greek or Hebrew word behind the English word, I’m back to Strong’s or Young’s Analytical Concordance. There are what-pass-for-concordances at the back of many Bibles, but don’t bother. They’ll break your heart every time.

Reimagine the scene from my youth:  The Hi-B.A. leader quotes the verse and asks, “Where’s that found?” 

Every teen there whips out a smart phone and within seconds multiple voices call out, “Mark 16:15!”

Except that one girl who exclaims, “OMG! There’s a BOGO sale at Payless Shoes!”

Let me offer a better answer, the best answer, when you quote a Bible verse and someone asks, “Where’s that found?” 

In my heart.

Scroll down for obscure Bible college humor.

Here’s how we characterized concordances in Bible college:

Strong’s for the strong

Young’s for the young

Cruden’s for the crude

"The greatest adventure is what lies ahead..."

            I’m beginning a new adventure. 

            I should know better, having been warned decades ago by Bilbo Baggins that adventures are “nasty disturbing uncomfortable things” that “make you late for dinner.” Still, I find God’s call even more compelling than Gandalf’s, which Bilbo couldn’t ignore.

            So I will pack up all my teaching tricks (after I figure which boxes I packed them in less than a month ago and unpack them) and take them and me to Sunbury Christian Academy, where I will be a smaller fish in a bigger pond. 

            I’m pleased to announce I can now find SCA on Route 11, although I’m not confident I can locate my classroom after entering the building. Hopefully one of the kind bigger fishes will point a fin in the right direction. 

            What will the first day of school be like? I suspect it may be like the first chapel of my fifth year of school at WCA, in August 2003.

            My first ever homeroom, my kids from freshmen through senior year, had graduated in May. I had a new homeroom to get to know. I thought I was okay with that until we had our first high school chapel. 

            The music started, and as I stood up to sing, I looked at the worship team, and it was all wrong. D.J. wasn’t playing piano. Cammie and Sherrill weren’t singing together at a microphone. Other musicians from the Class of ’03 were conspicuously absent. 

            I couldn’t sing. I bawled.

            So it’s entirely possible that I may tear up when I survey my new class of juniors and the Maccabees (my WCA homeroom boys) are missing. I may sniffle when the seniors come in lacking the familiar faces and voices of McKayla, Tessa, Caitlyn, and Tyler.

            But I know I’ll be okay:  In 2003 I learned my love could expand to include new students while praying for the older ones embarking on their next adventures.