song in Rent, the musical. It goes like this:
525,600 minutes
525,000 moments so dear
525,000 minutes
How do you measure a year?
In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of
coffee
in inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife 525,600 minutes
How do you measure, measure year in your life?
How about love?
How about love?
How about love?
But it’s not 525,600 minutes in a year that I talk about. I don’t want to write about minutes—but more. Much more. I’m thinking of 1961 on a cold January night when we held hands by candlelight and said yes to one another.
Whew! It’s been quite a journey from that Louisville night until now. Looking back over the terrain of these years my heart is filled with gratitude toward Gayle. First red couch in that cold four-room parsonage. Churches on top of churches. Ups and downs. Ups and downs. But children. Leslie first and then Matthew. Two red-heads and all the delight they still bring. And broken-down old used cars. And sitting there trying to make the check book work. And the friends we met—and all those along the way that kept asking : “How’s Gayle?”And her fan club in every church I served. And her seven-foot pianowhich she loves probably more than me. And on the dark days saying to me over and over: “It’s gonna be all right.” And she was right. Still is. The trips all over. The Interims after 6 churches. Not ever, ever wanting to pray in public but there, singing, laughing, wanting be there for me most days. The best, I started to say: the best Christian I know. So much more. The best person I know.
So I close with that wonderful cartoon that appeared in The New Yorker. A couple sits at the breakfast table and she says: “Do you know what 30 years of marriage adds up to? 22,000 scrambled eggs, 4,680 loads of laundry, 10,950 beds made, 300,000 cups of coffee, 60 trips to the dentist…”
Oh my. So much more.
(Of all the photographs I have of Gayle this is one of my favorites. It was the Sabbatical summer we spent in England. This was taken on the Isle of Wight, off the southern coast of England.)
Roger Lovette / rogerlovette.blogspot.com
