Buster

Memommy was the name I gave my Grandmother Frink, the way all little children name their grandparents. My First Cousin Betsy Frink Adams and I always called her Memommy and she wore the name like a crown, for she knew it was the gift of love.

From Memommy, with Betsy on one side of her lap and me on the other, I learned my first Bible verses.

They were all King James version, as carefully revised by Memommy.

She did not speak or read Hebrew, Latin or Greek and was nonetheless gently undeterred from revision. She was, after all, a Jackson by birth and her family is not known for being easily intimidated by anything.

In I Corinthians 13, she said the right word was "Love," not the King James Version's "Charity."

"Charity," she said, was the English king looking down his nose, not the word of God, and the passage as I learned it in Memommy's lap is:

1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not Love, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.

2 And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could move mountains, and have not Love, I am nothing.

3 And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not Love, it profiteth me nothing.

4 Love suffereth long, and is kind; Love envieth not; Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

5 Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

6 Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

7 Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

8 Love never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.

9 For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.

10 But when that which is perfect is come, then that which is in part shall be done away.

11 When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

12 For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

13 And now abideth faith, hope, Love, these three; but the greatest of these is Love.

Correction: Memommy tried to teach me to say "remove mountains" not "move mountains."

I can still hear my little cousin Betsy saying "Say re-move, Buster, not move!"

She was right.

I was wrong and knew it.

I still say "move." ... <tndr>thunder</tndr> ... <ltng>lightning</ltng> ...