Sups in the scriptures

Old Testament

Joseph and Asenath

New Testament

Zechariah and Elizabeth

Joseph and Mary

Prisca and Aquila

Just a bit of rhetoric

I was thinking back to when I was four or five, learning to read and looking in the library for books. I hated kids books pretty early, I would head for the chapter books. There was one I remember always going back to look at. It had perfect pink satin ballet shoes on the spine, and on the front a beautiful ballerina. I was certain that the illegible text revealed untold mysteries, as beautiful and entrancing as the cover illustration. Mom wouldn't let me get it for a while, but eventually, whether it was years later or what I don't remember, I got that book home. I remember starting to read it, and learning the painful lesson, Never judge a book by its cover. It was a trite tale of a teenager who was trying to balance school, boys and ballet. I soon closed the book on my deep disappointments.
There were other books that I loved though, authors that I craved for their stories, Korman, Lewis and later Rowling. But it was not until long after that that early awakened fascination for beauty in literary form found satisfaction. The first taste was when a friend lent me Dorian Gray and I discovered a book that was not made to tell a story, nor was it allegorical, but was basically a treatise on the purpose of art, beauty and the soul. And thus began my addiction to dead authors, which I scarcely stray from. I think the book that most expressed the beauty I'd been looking for was Anna Karenina. I've described it as a solid, many coursed meal of a book. And my love of Tolkien's Middle Earth can be tied to this as well. He was motivated by  "the desire of the tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them." (Tolkien, Foreword to the Second Edition) Certainly in my case he has achieved all those goals. But the real thing I love about him and others, the thing that typifies this longing for beauty, is found in the author's ability to use words in a way that is so complete and deft that it leaves me thinking differently. And that is the purpose of art - is it not? - to impact a person on an emotional level.
I don't know, I'll ask Oscar Wilde.
"All art is quite useless." Oscar Wilde, Foreword to Dorian Gray

Anatomy of a Flying Bed Story

Characters: the children that the story is being presented to are the key characters. you may bring fictional or real world people into the story for comedic and dramatic effect.
Take-off: The bed must first shake, then quiver, than rise a few inches off the ground and shoot through the window (without breaking the glass). Interesting details of the travel should be inserted while they fly (this gives you time to come up with a destination and a conflict).
Conflict: This must be dire and exciting, possibly stolen from a movie or book. The Conflict will result in heroic gestures and input from all key characters, and be concluded by an epic escape/defeat/reunion.
Denouement: The key characters return to the flying bed and go home. Each of them gets a souvenir to put into their flying-bed-adventure chest.

I finally have material for a post...

I started my new job today, and now I can call myself a seamstress in more than just an informal, cutsie-little-girl sense. It's actually my job title. I'm in shock that I'm getting paid to do this.
Not that it's all amazingly fun jobs, but the time flies by and everything is engaging and challenging and satisfying. I mostly did hems today and got familiar with the machines. The Wellington store is inhumanly hot, as it has all the dry-cleaning equipment, all the irons, all the employees... I burned my arm by leaning on superheated iron. Later I burned my ankle on a boiling-water-pipe. I'm glad that won't be my permanent location.

It's better 'cause it's real

            There was once a boy. He made some mistakes in his youth and thereafter was haunted by them; always measuring his accomplishments by his guilt and falling short. His mistakes were, to be honest, quite bad, but the forgiveness he had received was total. What he had done had put a stain on his conscience, and all the scrubbing in the world could not purge it.

            There was then, a lady. She was especially lovely. Her youthful mistakes consisted of some improprieties with boys. She succumbed to the herd instincts of high school-ers and made decisions she quickly regretted. Her mistakes were of a more common breed than the boy's, but she judged herself just as harshly.

            Both these youths had a time of repentance. His, a summer of unemployment, her's a year of boarding school. What he learned from this time was that his large intelligence and gregarious nature was a façade for a broken and filthy human being. His analytical mind became consumed with seeking out and eradicating his pride. Pride was the enemy, because the evidence showed his guilt, and anything denying that was folly. He was a better man for this, but he was also more cautious and more self-deprecating than was wholly necessary.

            Now the lady. Her boarding school time taught her that she could be the leader of herds and not just the follower. She had the skills and personality to teach and to lead, and (had she only known it sooner) the logic to see a better way. Unfortunately her dalliances had cost her. She knew she had caused many men pain because of her disinterest. She resolved to be more distant in the future. It was still years before she would be reunited with her heart. (You see, as a young girl her heart had been broken by pain that she could not comprehend. She dealt with it the only way she knew, which was suppression. Thus as a high school graduate she was so successful in her task that she didn't even know there was, or had ever been, this thing called "pain". She didn't know, and yet, she was constantly aware of it.)

            This is why, when they met, and the younger, handsome, outwardly-innocent boy fell for the unattainable beauty, she sat him down and said, "No."

            She felt he would be tainted by her impurity, that he would not have liked her had he known. Perhaps he knew he would be shot down and it was an exercise in humility. It was the first in a string of rejections for him, not the first for her (him being rejected and her doing the rejecting). He had what will one day be known as the "Destroyer Complex", that is, a methodology wherein the individual constantly sets themselves up to be ripped to shreds by the one on whom they have bestowed love.

            And so, after many years, while he was barking up many wrong trees, she began to feel again. She finally cried for the brother she had lost so many years before. Grief bubbled up from places she hadn't known existed. She came into her own then, she realized the potential she had to help others. But when does a great leader or helper stop leading and helping and let themselves be led and helped? Her consciousness of all the hearts she had broken humbled her. She tried to ask herself if she would have answered them differently if she had a do-over, and she tried to answer herself with "no." But I think she regretted one or two. Certainly at least one.

            This questioning and regret led to one important action. when our not-so-young, still quite handsome boy let loose his destroyer complex on her for a second time, she hesitated with her "no." She came up with lots of reasons why it was unreal, and it mightn't work and the logic was unsound. And yet she hesitated.

            In reality the great guy and girl rarely get together. Sometimes the good guy and girl do, often the bad guy and girl unite their inadequacies, But the Greats tend not to. People are like gems. The purest have been through fire, they have had all their ore chipped away quite painfully. If a jewel were animate, would it be grateful for the cleansing, or only embarrassed of it's previous state? Would it realize it's current beauty or only remember how it began? And would the hardest diamond believe that a pairing with malleable gold could be anything more than a dream?

          Apparently, yes.