Our Toots Are Showing -- Excuse Me!

I was a librarian in a past life. (“Past life” here referring to my actual life in the 1990s.)

Which is why I nerded all the way out when the Library of Congress gave Galileo Church an official subject heading recently – presumably so they can catalog We Were Spiritual Refugees, which is out now, a little ahead of its February 15 release date.

Then I read the LC authority record, wherein they show their work, i.e. where they got the information on which they based the subject heading. Someone read Galileo’s website, apparently, including the section called “Our Roots Are Showing,” which is the briefest possible explanation of our denominational heritage. 

Except the LC authority says, and will forever say, “Our Toots Are Showing.” A simple typo that pushes us rudely into middle-school flatulence joke territory. 

Maybe if I contacted the Library of Congress, it would make it on to some entry-level data clerk’s list to correct the mistake. But do I want to? I’ve been sitting with it for some months now, making no move to fix it. (Subconsciously worried to bring it up, on the basis of “She who smelt it dealt it”? Worth considering.)

But sometimes accidents like this one are actually meaningful. Sometimes the slip is Freudian. Sometimes the Holy Spirit hovers right behind me, reading over my shoulder, giggling like a playful child at the mistake that reveals the truth.

Because publishing a memoir, telling the truth as best I can about what Galileo Church looked like in its earliest formation, is a lot like passing wind – somewhat stinky, but a necessary pressure release. I had a lot to say. Better out than in.

I have expressed a feeling of anxious vulnerability around the release of this book. It’s a revelation, an uncovering, of all the things I tried that didn’t work, all the things that worked in spite of me, all the ways it almost didn’t work, all the help I needed and mostly received. I’m most appreciative of gentle readers who have already offered grace for the telling.

In my family of origin, the only rule about passing gas was that you had to own it. “Say ‘Excuse me’ and carry on,” my mom insisted. It was a good rule.

Excuse me.

Carry on.