Stories and Other Things Holy - Easter season! I don't know if they're still doing this or not, but remember real late at night when you watch this TV programs at 11, 12, 1, 2 in the morning, and then they'd have those commercials and they were trying to sell you something like a Vegomatic or whatever, and then it would always go to, "Wait, there's more!" and for $19.95 you can get four of them, and then they vegetate everything like your plants, your dogs, you name it."Wait, there's more!" Well, that's what we should say. That should be one of the manifestos of Easter."Wait, there's more!" And the more of Easter comes from the most unlikely places. So I don't know if any of you are familiar with Madeline L'Engle, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful author, best known for Wrinkle in Time, a sort of kid's book, but most adults, they're good for them too. She wrote prolifically; was a really great theologian, actually; was married to a guy named Hugh. They had this crazy marriage, this love thing going, and they had kids and he was an actor and she would stay up till two in the morning to have breakfast with him when he came home from his show, and then the kids had to get up in the morning and make their own stuff. It was amazing. They lived in New York and then they lived in the country. It was beautiful, and she wrote a book about their love. The name of the book is a 'Two-part Invention, the Story of a Marriage.' I read it. It was just unbelievably compelling. Please read it. I gave it to everybody that I knew that was getting married. Story of marriage... 'Two-part Invention, Story of A Marriage.' I got a call not too long ago from my nephew who said, Hey, and he's crying on the phone. You could hear him crying. He's like, Hey, Uncle Ter, this is Bill and we're on our 15th wedding anniversary trip and we just read your book. It was great. Took you 15 years to read the book. I'm glad you're still together. And that the book made some impression, two stories about Madeline L'Engle. One is she writes somewhat autobiographically in a in a three-flat in New York, which she loved New York and a young couple moved in below. They've been married for a couple years and Madeline L'Engle befriends the young woman and becomes like a mentor mother figure. At some point, she's aware that the marriage is strained a little bit. Madeline is, and at some point, the old woman comes up to her apartment, can't talk, just bursts into tears and Madeline L'Engle, as you might suspect, just takes the young woman into her arms and does the like. Honey, honey, honey, honey. And then weeping comes in waves and it finally calms down and Madeline L'Engle says, what's wrong? And the woman says, it's my marriage. I think it's dying. Then she burst into tears. Oh, honey, honey, honey. And after a couple of, honey, honey, honey, she said, honey, of course your marriage is dying. It's a living organic thing. All living organic things die. My marriage died seven times. The question isn't whether your marriage is going to die. It's whether it's going to resurrect. And will you cooperate with its resurrection? Oh, honey, honey, honey. Wait, there's more. There's another marriage here. Wait, there's more. There's another marriage here. Wait, there's more. There's another vocation here. There's more. There's wait, there's more. She writes the book that I referenced, 'Two-part Invention, Story of a Marriage from the Bedside of Hugh who was dying of cancer. And it only enhances the poignance of the book as you could imagine. At one point, one of her daughters comes in and their reminiscing and the kids knew that Hugh and Madeline's sensuous life was significant for them. And they were not embarrassed about communicating that to their kids inappropriate ways. And so the daughter says to her, mom, you must miss making love with dad. Madeline L'Engle pauses. And the whole time she's been just stroking his for Harper and she says, oh, we're still making love. Wait, there's more! love making, all the ways that we can make love making. What if it's so much larger than we allow ourselves? We, oh, no, no, no. Oh, we're still making love. Pray God that we continue to make love in all the ways that the gift of our sexuality asks us to, calls us to, et cetera,

Wait, there's more! Stories and Other Things Holy.