Falling in Love with Everything: A Memoir, but Mostly Made Up

By Pat Jobe

Falling In Love With Everything, chronicles a conversation between Jobe, a lay speaker in the Unitarian Universalist Church, and a fictional second-degree black belt in Karate and Unitarian Minister, who challenges the need or good sense that might be found in falling in love with everything.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Dec 1, 2008
• ISBN: 9781440103032

Pat Jobe

For as long as he can remember, Pat Jobe, has thought he was something special. While he acknowledges such thinking is dangerous and can lead to narcissism, he is so grateful to all the folks who have been nice to him. This is his fifth published book, although two of the others were co-authored. He has worked for churches, newspapers, pizza places, historical outdoor dramas and one place that recycled oil absorbent mats. In his 2008 book, “Falling In Love With Everything,” he made the radical claim that he is even in love with the numbers on the sides of mailboxes. He still makes that claim. He is the minister of The Greenville Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Greenville, S.C. and loves his job.

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Falling In Love With Everything

A memoir, but mostly made up

Pat Jobe

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Bloomington

Falling In Love With Everything

A memoir, but mostly made up

Copyright © 2008 by Pat Jobe

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-4401-0302-5 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-4401-0303-2 (ebk)

iUniverse Rev. date 11/24/08

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Acknowledgements

To my very shy friend who inspired this book,

And to any of my other friends and family who see themselves inspiring this book.

You all know who you are.

And to my dear friends, Byron Katie, at the thework.com and Meg Barnhouse at MegBarnhouse.com

For you the world is weird because if you’re not bored with it, you are at odds with it. For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I wanted to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.

Carlos Castaneda quoting don Juan

"There are two ways to live your life.

One is as though nothing is a miracle.

The other is as though everything is a miracle."

Albert Einstein

Think of yourself as incandescent power, illuminated perhaps and forever talked to by God and God’s messengers. Remember how wonderful you are, what a miracle! Think if Tiffany’s made a mosquito, how wonderful we would think it was! Brenda Ueland in If You Want To Write.

When you are convinced that all exits are blocked, either you take to believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird. The miracle is that the honey is always there, right under your nose, only you were too busy searching elsewhere to realize it. The worst is not death but being blind, blind to the fact that everything about life is in the nature of the miraculous.

Henry Miller

Chapter 1

Visiting with my mother in White Oak Manor, a nursing home, in Rutherfordton, NC, she said to me, I feel like I never see you.

Mama, you don’t remember very well these days. I was just here last week. Do you remember my being here last week?

She made a face. She has always been so expressive about making faces, twisting her mouth, rolling her eyes, wrinkling her nose. She said, Well, you can’t hold onto everything.

I once spoke in her church, and asked the congregation, What would you do if you woke up one morning and had everything?

Most speakers don’t expect anybody in church to actually answer questions like that.

My mother answered the question, What would you do if you woke up one morning and had everything?

She said, Start giving it away.

If I don’t kill myself, if I don’t kill somebody else, if I don’t end up in prison or a mental hospital or sitting atop a water tower threatening people below with a high-powered rifle, it will be because I have a wonderful mother.

Chapter 2

This book is about a lot of things, including the word, everything, but basically it is a book I am writing to save my life, save my sanity, and maybe offer some help to you as you save your life and save your sanity. Maybe not. This is a how-to book about staying alive, staying alive in the literal sense of keeping my heart beating and my breath easing in and out, and eating and sleeping and getting along in life, but also staying alive in the sense of truly living, not grunting through life as though it were some terrible burden, but dancing, singing, playing wide, smiling, laughing, kissing, hugging, embracing the full glory, seeing the miraculous in everything, treating life like a chocolate sundae with a cherry on top. I hope it works for me, and if you need it, I hope it works for you, but I am not writing it primarily for you. I’ve tried writing books for other people, and it hasn’t worked so well. I like what Seymour told Buddy Glass in Seymour, An Introduction, by J.D. Salinger. He said we, as readers, are to fix in our minds the one piece of writing we would most want to read, and then sit down shamelessly and write the thing ourselves.

That is my intention with this book.

As I’ve already mentioned, I owe my mother. She is almost the sanest, funniest person I know. Sanity and laughter are very close kin. They are like siblings, or even really hot lovers, lovers who can’t keep their hands off each other. You show me sane people, and I’ll show you people who can laugh at themselves.

Jack Benny comes to mind.

Tinkerbell Starbelly comes to mind. This book is a thinly veiled love letter to my shy friend who inspired it, the woman I once hoped would fall so madly in love with me that she couldn’t keep her hands off me. But this book is also about Tinkerbell Starbelly, a woman I adore who has successfully kept her hands off me for 15 years.

To say that Tinkerbell Starbelly is a woman I adore, does her such a disservice. That sounds like I am mooshy, gooshy in love with her, and although I am, that barely scratches the surface of how much I love her.

She is the author or co-author of five wonderful books, has been anthologized in at least four more, has two cds of her original songs, one spoken-word cd on the market, has traveled widely reading, singing, and preaching in Unitarian churches and other places.

Bill Sinkford, who is the president of the Unitarian Universalist Association, once called her, Our Molly Ivins.

She’s better than that. She’s more like our Bob Dylan. You think I’m kidding? I’m not. She is the sanest, funniest person I know. My mother would be second.

Chapter 3

Yes, this book is like Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. It has short chapters. It is not like that book in any other way.

Chapter 4

On July 12, 2007, I walked into the Mountains Branch Library near

Reviews for Falling in Love with Everything

[mecoreybrown · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Definitely a gift-worthy book! Very enjoyable! I love all of Pat Jobe's stuff!