"All you need is love..."

Watching "Cold Case" last week -- regarding a case where back in the 1960's, a pregnant high-school girl was put in the nunery, so to speak. "St. Mary's Home for Un-wed Mothers" was the name of the place, I believe. Of course, there were plenty of old-school nuns, down to the habits. (I thoroughly expected wooden rulers to come flying out at any moment. But I digress...) As a part of the arrangement at this "home for unwed mothers," the girl was expected to give up the child for adoption. Typically, the teen's aren't too enthused about the deal, and this victim was no exception...

As a part of convincing the young mother-to-be to sign the yet-to-be-born infant away, the chief nun hands the girl a piece of paper, and asks her to write down everything that another family could give her young baby on one side of the paper, and everything that she herself could give the child on the other. On the left were listed "mother, father, house, food, clothing, money..."

On the right side? Simply the word "love."

The first thing that crossed my mind wasn't anything sung by The Beatles (though that fell in the top 5), but instead a little bit of scripture, read at most weddings. I Corinthians 13. I'm partial to The Message paraphrase. Here's a few bits...

If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy
but don't love,I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.

If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries
and making everything plain as day,
and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps,
but I don't love, I'm nothing.

If I give everything I own to the poor
and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr,
but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere.

So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do,
I'm bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
Love doesn't strut,
Doesn't have a swelled head,
Doesn't force itself on others,
Isn't always "me first,"
Doesn't fly off the handle,
Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn't revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a
mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright!
We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him
directly just as he knows us!
But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly.

And the best of the three is love.

It was true back in the 60's, and it's still true today. Money, house, car, school, opportunities, all play a role in making our lives easier. But both rich and poor have reaped the benefits of a simple four-letter word, and both have suffered dearly by the lack of that same simple word.

So THAT'S why I hate February...

Ok, I try not to be supersticious. Really, I don't. But it seems that every year, around February, bad stuff happens. The car breaks down. Kids get really sick. AND, the Christmas bills really start to pile up.

And then there's the weather. February in Southeast Missouri is typically gray, perpetually overcast, cold and wet. No snow though, just rain. This does WONDERS on my general outlook on life.

I came across this article off of Slate, via MSN.com, about the history of February. It's angle of attack was to explain why February gets "shafted" with only 28 days when every other month gets 30 or 31. Interesting reading. Perhaps February's past explains why I tend to look on the poor lil' month with such disfavor.

But then again, I'm not supersticious. Not at all...

The Explainer: Answers to your questions about the news.
28 Days? Why February gets the shaft.
By Melonyce McAfee :: Posted Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2007, at
6:51 PM ET

The shortest month of the year seems to have gone by in a flash. Why does
February have only 28 days?

It's the Romans' fault. Our modern calendar is loosely based on their old, confusing one. Though records on the Roman calendar are sparse and sketchy, legend has it that Romulus, the first king of Rome, devised a 10-month lunar calendar that began at the spring equinox in March and ended with December. It is unclear whether there were any official months between December and March, but it's likely they were left off because the wintertime wasn't important for the harvest.

The second king of Rome, Numa Pompilius, decided to make the calendar more accurate by syncing it up with the actual lunar year—which is about 354 days long. Numa tacked on two months—January and February—after December to account for the new days.

The new months each had 28 days. But that didn't sit well with Numa because even numbers were considered bad luck at the time. So, he added a day on to January, giving the year an odd-numbered 355 days. No one knows why February was left with 28 and remained an unlucky month. It may be related to the fact that Romans honored the dead and performed rites of purification in February. (The word februare means "to purify" in the dialect of the ancient Sabine tribe.)

The 355-day calendar couldn't stay in sync with the seasons because it didn't account for the amount of time it took for the Earth to orbit the sun. So, an extra "intercalary" month of 27 days was inserted after February 23 every couple of years or so to even things out. The pontiffs who were in charge of calendar upkeep didn't always add the extra month on schedule. (Some officials took advantage of the system to extend their time in office, for example.)

In around 45 B.C., Julius Caesar commissioned an expert to put aside the lunar origins of the Roman calendar and make it sun-based, like the Egyptian one. Caesar added 10 days to the calendar year and an extra day in February every four years. (The leap-year day was inserted after the 23rd, the same time as the old intercalary month.) Now, the year averaged out to 365.25 days, very close to the actual average length of a year: 365.2425 days (and even that varies).

Some have speculated that Caesar added a day to February when he reformed the calendar—making it 29 days long. The story goes that when the Senate renamed the month of Sextilis to honor the emperor Augustus, that day was subtracted from February and added to August in order to make it equal in number to July—the month named for Caesar. But this theory is now believed to be bunk; it's likely that Julius never even added a day to February.