nadamore is a made-up word created by the two of us and like many other invented words, it cannot be found in the dictionary. This word, actually a blending of two words, nada and more, emerged from and reflects the unfolding of our lives especially over the past few years.
nada, the first part of the word, is the Spanish word for nothing. It was the word St. John of the Cross used for God because he knew God is a no-thing and could not be grasped by the senses or understood by the mind.
more, the second part of the word, is a common English word that means the opposite of nothing. more is infinite in the sense that there is always more. And more. And more.
nada and more, two unlike poles, opposites.
nadamore: a word embedded with the tension of paradox.
When nadamore showed up one day seemingly out of nowhere, we were drawn to it immediately. We recognized the deep paradox within the word. It felt familiar and we knew nadamore had been forming in our hearts for an already very long time.
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Christmas 2021
Christmas 2021 This world and everything in it is on loan, entrusted to our care for our time. ~John McQuiston II, Always We Begin Again~ “What do you do all day?” This question comes our way more often since Lloyd’s 2019 retirement from ChildServe and our subsequent relocation from Des Moines to northern Michigan. These two events, along with the 2020 arrival of a global pandemic have shaped what we currently do all day. Sometimes we joke that we just sit on the beach all day (which may or may not be true). And sometimes we try to...
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Christmas 2020
Christmas 2020 Dear Family and Friends, We hope this finds you healthy and well in your heart of hearts despite the challenging external circumstances we are all facing this year. We wish you HOPE this Holiday Season and always: HOPE that transcends understandable wishes and desires for life to be different than it actually is; HOPE that understands joy & sorrow, good & bad, easy & difficult, birth & death are part of every single human life; HOPE that trusts no matter what happens, God’s goodness and love will come through even though we don’t know when, where or...
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Moving From Nada To More
“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love. It will not lead you astray.” (Rumi) While we absolutely LOVE the more of what we’re discovering here in northern Michigan, we’re also acutely aware of all the nada it took to get here. Without letting go of life in Des Moines, we couldn’t have stepped into the more of what we are experiencing now: the more of a spectacular landscape of dunes, orchards, beaches and vineyards surrounded by beautiful Lake Michigan; the more of countless area trails to explore; the more of living closer to most of...
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Playing With Words
It was spring of 2018 and we were playing with words. Lloyd and I had already been introduced to nada, the Spanish word for nothing and todo, the Spanish word for everything or all, and now, in his Chevy Colorado on the way to Texas Roadhouse in Des Moines, we were having fun. Why not create one word that held the meaning of both? We tried the obvious first: nadatodo. It sounded odd though, and todo sounded more like a puppy’s name! Besides, everything or all, were finite words with boundaries. What if there was something beyond all? Or something beyond everything?...
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