How to Combat Froo Frooism

Things are going well, so I have less to write about... Or at least, it isn't dramatic anyway.

Which is a good thing. That melodrama I was living was tearing me apart.

Brenda doesn't appear near my home any more. she has learned that the closest I want her to come to my house is the park around the corner (to pick up Isaac) and that I'm not thrilled about that. She needed that clear a boundary.

I've been going out with a gal... a real belle inside and out.

She's got great kids. It's fun hanging with them.

Last weekend we went to a museum, The John McLoughlin house, and spent all afternoon there.

Once a month they have a gaggle of ladies in to do demonstrations on some froo froo Victorian skill. Saturday they were displaying needle books.

The ladies were all decked out in clothing and jewelry... all of it "period." Nothing outside of the 1840s & 50s. Even their language.

They were showing folks, a few ladies who had stumbled in from the 21st century, how to make needle books. Needles, dangerous tools of reconstruction, are easily lost, and these books with felt pages were a good place to store items that could take a year to replace if ordered from England.

I, and one of the boys I was with, thought the fish needle book was cool. Two pieces of "paste board" were carefully sewn into fabric, stitched together, and a ribbon is pulled out which holds the needles.

He and I sat down and bravely picked up the piece of naked "pasteboard" and cut a "fishy" fabric into pieces that might fit.

It was quite the project. We began at noon. The boy's brother and mom had to leave before 2:00, but we wanted to plug on.

They gave us all sorts of tips. Always thread the needle with the end of thread that was the lead off the spool. How a pattern of stitches that backed up over the previous stitch made for a strong and straight seam.

My favorite trick was the knot. I used to repair my clothing (and sleeping bag, and tent, and backpack) with fishing line when I was on my youthful adventures. And the way I put a knot in a thread I just wound the thread around a meaty forefinger and rolled the tangled hoop off with my thumb, pulling it into a snarl that could not possible pass through any fabric.

But not anymore. Now I delicately lay the end of the thread across the needle, wrap it three times against the glittering nearly invisible spike, and pull it smoothly down to a satisfyingly neat knot at the end of a silky thread.

I could see the victorian ladies were amused at the two of us transgressing the gender barrier.

The boy looked a little uncomfortable at one point.

"A real man does what he does and doesn't worry about what anyone else thinks," I told him.

He smiled.

"And besides, if this whole thing seems to get a little too froo frooish, just do something extra guy like."

"Arrrrr arrrrr arrrr arrr! Ooooh arrrr! Uh! UH! ARRRRRRRRRRRRR!"

We thought grunting a lot would suffice.

So, throughout the afternoon he and I would break into grunts for a moment or two, making clear to all at the table that we were guys.

The ladies seemed amused.

At 4:00 p.m. we had to stop. We hadn't quite finished. But he and I made a pact to continue our projects Sunday afternoon.

So, or rather, sew, we added an additional 45 minutes to our task and got the job done.

Here is mine:

My fish (tongue with needle inside)

Tongue Out
Notice the needle! Cool!

Easterly Thoughts

Christianity, the faith of God incarnated as a tortured sacrifice for the sins of humanity, seems a bizarre belief... eternal damnation and eternal paradise mixed in the hearts and lives of mortals, flawed people who sometimes wonder if they are buying salvation with their belief, with good deeds, perhaps with money in an offering plate.

It does seem odd... Why would a loving God, a being of glory and purity and joy and love, mix suffering and death and punishment in the mundane time and place of a criminal's death at a somewhat obscure backwater outpost of the Roman Empire?

Perhaps this is made strange because we are strange. ...Because we are looking at the whole thing from the wrong side of reality.

Consider this story of divine redemption from a different perspective.

Consider an existence not fueled by consuming food, of physical bodies functioning by a fight to make order out if disorder, driving our animated flesh from dissolving particles of plants and animals.

Consider an existence based on physics which are alien to us because they existed before the laws of physics which run this universe.

Consider what it may be like to live an existence that is not held to the standards of an outside perspective because there isn't any outside. There isn't (wasn't) sin, of doing wrong to others and having wrongs done to us, which is the result of individuals wanting what is not theirs, or doing what is not good for others.

Consider an existence which lies solely upon a perspective of what is, to us, an emotion. An "emotion" which is the foundation for existence itself. Consider the perspective of eternity, of a timeless forever which stretched beyond linear time, interrupted by the brief existence of our universe, which flows from the desire, the need to share the most intimate, ultimate part of ourselves: our "heart", our love.

From that perspective, the view of eternity longing to expand the embrace of Love, even to selfish beings of flesh... of, really, animals with minds, and souls which might sense a reality truer than one based on hydrogen, oxygen, and carbon.

From that perspective, Love became flesh to provide base beings, creatures who are more space, more nothing than matter (for there is far more to us that is empty than the solidity of the mass found within protons, neutrons, and electrons).

From that perspective Love became flesh as an example of pure selflessness so we might look past our own weaknesses, past our predilection to wanting what we want when we want it.

For Eternity to clothe itself (Himself) in base, vaporific matter, and to suffer the worst we can do, is the personification of Eternity in a fashion we might, just might, be able to understand.

Perhaps the events of Easter, of God made flesh, of that flesh suffering and dying, and God demonstrating He can overcome the simplistic nature of our universe's physical laws, isn't so strange from the perspective of Eternity.

Saturday Sushi

Dragon Roll