I'd better stop writing about Jesus and my mother, although when I told her about E2, she said,"well, that sounds just WONDERFUL." I even went so far as to read her my Jesus/Einstein/Shakespeare write-up, which made her laugh, though she said, "the only thing I'd leave out is the line about Einstein expecting a miracle". I didn't ask her why until later when she replied, "well, EVERYONE in the bar would be expecting Jesus to turn the water into wine, not just Einstein."
I pretty much know where she stands on Jesus and his teachings. She lives and breathes them.
And she's been an avid Shakespeare fan most of her adult life, which my father used to his advantage, in his nervous marriage proposal, by quoting King Henry's speech to Catherine in Henry V.
I know this only because one rainy night my sons and I took my mother to a local professional Shakespeare performance. During Act 5, scene 2, she silently mouthed the words, as if praying, then turned and whispered to me that my dad had proposed using that same speech. This was a year or less after his death, and I was surprised to say the least. My dad, the grouchy mathematician, who blared his classical music so he didn't have to hear children laughing and playing. If you've never read Henry V, or seen it performed, I'd highly recommend it, as the following excerpt doesn't do justice to the whole play as written. But with your kind indulgence, I include age old words that made my mother say yes, which led to my very existence:
Marry, if you would put me to verses or to dance for
your sake, Kate, why you undid me: for the one, I
have neither words nor measure, and for the other, I
have no strength in measure, yet a reasonable
measure in strength. If I could win a lady at
leap-frog, or by vaulting into my saddle with my
armour on my back, under the correction of bragging
be it spoken. I should quickly leap into a wife.
Or if I might buffet for my love, or bound my horse
for her favours, I could lay on like a butcher and
sit like a jack-an-apes, never off. But, before God,
Kate, I cannot look greenly nor gasp out my
eloquence, nor I have no cunning in protestation;
only downright oaths, which I never use till urged,
nor never break for urging. If thou canst love a
fellow of this temper, Kate, whose face is not worth
sun-burning, that never looks in his glass for love
of any thing he sees there, let thine eye be thy
cook. I speak to thee plain soldier: If thou canst
love me for this, take me: if not, to say to thee
that I shall die, is true; but for thy love, by the
Lord, no; yet I love thee too. And while thou
livest, dear Kate, take a fellow of plain and
uncoined constancy; for he perforce must do thee
right, because he hath not the gift to woo in other
places: for these fellows of infinite tongue, that
can rhyme themselves into ladies' favours, they do
always reason themselves out again. What! a
speaker is but a prater; a rhyme is but a ballad. A
good leg will fall; a straight back will stoop; a
black beard will turn white; a curled pate will grow
bald; a fair face will wither; a full eye will wax
hollow: but a good heart, Kate, is the sun and the
moon; or, rather, the sun, and not the moon; for it
shines bright and never changes, but keeps his
course truly. If thou would have such a one, take
me; and take me, take a soldier; take a soldier,
take a king. And what sayest thou then to my love?
speak, my fair, and fairly, I pray thee.