Grandmother's Bible

Funny, the experiences you find so personal that you label them unique, but they are hardly unique at all. Recently, I discovered a friend's old blog about reading his grandmother's Bible and the way her memory and the "feel" of her seeped into him when he read it.

I, too, have a legacy Bible. It is from a great-grandmother--my namesake--who died when I was three. All that I know about her is that my mother revered her; that she made a delicately quilted baby blanket for me and a lace and blue satin garter for my "someday" wedding; that I wear her plain gold wedding band along with a cross on a chain around my neck, and that I have this Bible that was hers. (As I re-read this list, I get a chill. She foresaw and therefore left to me treasures a lot more symbolic than I have ever realized before.)

I took the Bible to teach a high school Sunday school class one time. I took it out of its box: a book-sized blue box covered in bright yellow daisies--not exactly the expected home for the Word of the Lord, but I know why she needed a happy cheerful place for this treasure. I had the kids look at some of the things she chose to highlight.

One thing is starkly obvious about this Bible: its user sent a husband to WW I and sons to WW II. I told my students that if a Bible is used as intended, it speaks not only about the God being sought, but also about the one doing the seeking. Then I asked them, who would your Bible say you are?

Todd, one of my co-workers, has a Bible that is held together with grey duct tape. There's no telling the original material or color of the cover. Mine is almost to that point. Why not just buy a new one? That question evinces the mystery of the Book. Though the binding is broken, I "know" where everything is in this particular copy. I can review my relationship with certain passages, continue to understand them as I learn to know them better through the processor of every-day life. I can discover new things to highlight that were dark even as recently as yesterday...indeed, the words are alive, and more alive...and they are uniquely Todd's this way even as they are mine...even as they are everyone's who chooses to claim them.