Enveloped in a persistent miasma of funereal gladioli and wishing very much to feel whole again, I started high school a scant week after my mother died.

On the first day of school, vulnerable in a thousand ways, it was perhaps inevitable that I should see the girl I was certain then and there would love me forever. Such was my state of mind and heart. By chance, we converged at the classroom door on our way into the first session of Latin I.

By sheer dumb luck I took to be a foreordainment, she sat down in the seat directly in front of mine. The fragrance about her was lilac, pure lilac as if it had been May. To protect the innocent, let's say her name was Rhonda. Her hair was long, dark, bountiful and rich. I longed to reach out and touch it.

Instead, I took a fresh sheet from my new notebook that was to be saved for class notes and homework. Upon it, with my new Esterbrook fountain pen, I wrote in my best Palmer Penmanship script the following note: I would be honored if you would have a Coke with me after school. Signed: Harry Cook. Clueless was my middle name.

As stealthily as I could, I slipped it under her elbow where it sat unmoved and unread until Muriel McFarland Neeland -- the Argus-eyed teacher of Latin -- strolled down the aisle to inform the recipient of my invitation that she had a message waiting for her. Mrs. Neeland took the missive and gave it to Rhonda, who was made to read it aloud to the great hilarity of her classmates and mine. Our faces were on fire with embarrassment.

My first and great love affair seemed then to evaporate in the moment. On we went then, directly to Italia est peninsula. Italia non est insula and from there to hic haec hoc, huius, huius, huius et alii -- all from the famous Scott-Foresman text of the time. Virgil would have to wait.

It was weeks before Rhonda would look me in the eye, and that with what I took to be inveterate hatred. I was loveless and lovelorn. Autumn was fading fast into what would be a winter howling with wind and snow that would not cease entirely until April of the next year. The gladioli odor was gone, and I was glad of it. But the lilacs still bloomed in the dooryard just two feet from me in Latin I.

In class one day, Mrs. Neeland was calling on us one by one to conjugate verbs she had printed on the blackboard. Then, calling them out one at a time, she would point a chalk-dusted finger at one victim or another, bidding him or her to recite. I was so preoccupied with what final petition I would lay before the much-desired Rhonda that I failed to catch the verb Mrs. Neeland had spoken, indicating digitally that it was now my turn to conjugate.

In confusion, I turned to a friend and whispered, "What'd she say?" His reply was muffled, sounding to me like Damnifino. I didn't recognize the vocabulary word, but I did know the proper forms of conjugation, so out of my mouth in a rush came: Damnifino, damnifinari, damnifanawi, damnifinatus.

The class laughed, it seemed not at but with me even as an annoyed Mrs. Neeland made a point of etching a zero in her grade book next to my name. At which point, Rhonda, the Transcendent Light of the Universe, turned around, looked me in the eye and bestowed a warmish smile. Immediately I was filled with giddy optimism that, while previously deterred by faint heart, I now had won fair lady.

As we were filing out of Latin I on our way to algebra, the Lilac Princess followed me into the corridor and said, "We can have that Coke today if you still want to." Had I known of it then, I would have heard pounding in my head the final chorus of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony: Freude, sch�ner G�tterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium, Wir betreten feuertrunken, the latter two phrases being translated approximately as daughter of Elysium and marching drunk with fire. Which would pretty much have accounted for my delirium.

Rhonda and I were an item for one Coke, and never thereafter. But let the aroma of leaves burning in the autumn or of lilacs blooming in the spring waft my way, and I think, not so much of her, but of the balm my crush on her poured into the wounds of this too-soon half-orphaned boy. You can bet I have discussed that with more than one psychiatrist over the years.

I learned some time ago that Rhonda went on to distinguish herself in her profession and married well, having survived the attentions of a much earlier suitor.

What reviewers said:

"Important and heart-warming ... Cook's keen insights into the most familiar of old-time gospel hymns ... help you do theology like a grownup."
--Robin Meyers, author of Saving Jesus from the Church

"A compelling look at centuries of Christian theology and practice, at how particular hymns have shaped American faith and religious thought."
--Richard Webster, Director of Music and Organist at Trinity Church, Boston

"A call to integrity in worship ... This exciting, penetrating and provocative study explores the theology we sing, which re-enforces the dated and pre-modern theology from which the Christian faith seeks to escape."
--John Shelby Spong, author of Re-Claiming the Bible for a Non-Religious World