Here’s something I’ve been working on recently.
Front view. Acrylic paint, oil pastel, decoupage glue, metal foil.
Top left side. Chinese fortunes, Czech glass stars, glue
Another view of the same.
Top right view.
I’ll need to paint matte medium over the top sides again so that it all has the same sheen. But it is mostly done. It hangs like a diamond – it isn’t horizontal. One nail in the wall and then pop it on.
A patron was making small talk recently, and then it became large talk. He doesn’t know anything about me other than what he can see. Some of what he sees is the mask that I have to put on as part of working customer service. I like helping people, but I’m not their friends. They get confused sometimes.
He asked me how I was doing, and then after that, asked me how my husband was doing. He’s never met my husband. He knows I am married because I wear a wedding ring. He doesn’t know I’m married to a man, even though I am. Just because I am a woman wearing a wedding ring doesn’t mean I have a husband. Nuns wear wedding rings. Lesbians wear them too if they are in committed relationships.
I replied with the vague and noncommittal, “He’s fine”.
Then he asked if we had children, to which I replied “No”. He pressed. “Why not?”
Stupid question.
One – it is none of his business.
Two – what if we did and were heartbroken that we were infertile?
Three – what if we did have a child and s/he died?
I said no, that they are too expensive. Usually that is enough to stop this line of questioning. Sadly I get it a lot. I don’t get why strangers feel it is OK to ask these questions. Perhaps they think they are being friendly, but they don’t realize the potential minefield they are entering. They just don’t think. It could open up a lot of heartache for someone.
He pushed further, and I was done. He said “When you got married, didn’t you want to have children?”
He only knows my name because he’s read it on my nametag. He’s crossed my boundary already and hasn’t read my lack of engagement as a “go away” sign. I’ve not asked him how his wife was doing (I know he has one because he uses her library card as his own) and I’ve not asked him if he has children. A lack of reciprocal questions should indicate stop asking questions.
I was done. I didn’t want any more of this. I didn’t want it to start off with. I pulled out my biggest card.
I said the truth.
“Both of us were abused as children, and so we don’t want any.”
End of conversation.
There is nothing more to be said. No more pleading to get us to have children. No more trying to change our minds. No more prying.
In the past I would have felt bad for even saying that. I would have felt bad that I had to cross over the line of polite conversation into this. I would have felt bad for having to establish my boundaries.
Now I don’t. Now I know I must, and if I don’t draw a line, essentially people will invade my mental space. It is just like if a person shows up at the door to my home. I have the right, the duty, the obligation to establish how far he can get in.
Normally, I have the ability to decide if I even open the door, but a customer service job blurs that line.
Here is some advice – don’t ask strangers if they have children. If you ignore that advice, then don’t push if they say no. Don’t ask why. Don’t try to talk them into having children. There are plenty of kids on the planet as is. And there are plenty of bad parents who should have thought twice about having children. Maybe if they weren’t pressured by family, friends, and strangers into having them, they would have saved everybody the trouble.
Several new friends that I have are practicing what is essentially faith healing. But it is New Age faith healing. And they are charging money for it. Something feels decidedly wrong about this. Not just the practice, but charging money.
Now, we have these words from Jesus in Luke 10:7
7 And remain in the same house, eating and drinking what they provide, for the laborer deserves his wages; do not go from house to house. (RSV)
But he also says in Matthew 10:8
8 Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons. You received without paying, give without pay. (RSV)
So are we or are we not supposed to get paid for faith work? In the first part, we are, but it seems like the “wages” are food and drink, not money. In the second, it looks like we aren’t supposed to get paid at all because we didn’t pay anything to learn what we do. Being able to heal is a gift from God, not something that has to be learned.
But then are they talking about God? Do they think their gifts are from God? Do these above statements even apply to them?
I say new age because they do not use the name Jesus or God, or even Father. They use the ambiguous term Source or Spirit. Are they being politically correct, to not offend those who have been turned off, turned away from, or turned out of the Christian church? Is Spirit or Source a more inclusive name for God, in that it isn’t owned by any one faith tradition? Or is it something else entirely?
They all say that they are into the feminine side of divinity, and while I feel it is appropriate to balance out the representation of God that our society uses, I think it is important to make sure we are still talking about the same thing.
At a certain point a definition can stop being a definition, stop defining, stop having a limit. At a certain point the walls of meaning fall down and a word stops being a word and starts being a random collection of letters. They stop being a container for meaning.
Jesus says that anything we ask for in his name we will get. Jesus gave his followers the ability to heal the sick. Not some ambiguous Source, or Spirit, or Goddess.
And where are they, really? Did any of them come down to earth in human form to live and die as one of us? Or are they just stories? If there is no proof, it isn’t real. A disappearance isn’t a murder until the body is found. So a story of a god isn’t real unless there is some evidence.
They will play their drums over you or sing through their drums at you. Why drums? I don’t know. They are using frame drums, and because they are unusual, perhaps that adds to an air of mystery. A little of something unusual helps in the suspension of disbelief.
Suspension of disbelief helps in telling a story. It helps in getting a person to believe that a made up story is a true story. In other words, it helps people think that what they are being told is the truth, even if it isn’t.
But it also works in the placebo effect, and maybe that is what is going on here. Belief in a cure sometimes is the cure itself. Sometimes you have to give people a sugar pill in order to get them to get over their belief that they are sick. You have to “sell” it to them, make them believe that what they are getting is the real deal, or it won’t work. When I say “sell”, I don’t mean money, but money is part of it.
Carny men know about “selling”. They have to convince people of the value of what they are buying. With a normal purchase, you exchange money for a product. You can see what you get. There is no ambiguity. A real, physical object is in your hands. With healing, there is nothing there. Healing takes time. But that is part of it.
People are starting to realize that a lot of healing doesn’t come from the doctor, but from the patient. The doctor does what is necessary to get the patient to heal herself. Some of that involves a little sleight of hand, a little head game. A little suspension of disbelief.
Terry Pratchett used the term “headology” in his Discworld books. His character Granny Weatherwax used it to explain her work as a witch. “Witch” in this sense doesn’t mean that she casts spells or put hexes on people. “Witch” in this sense means wise woman or elder. She had authority by virtue of her knowledge and ability to stay calm in a bad situation. She kept her head about her when others were losing theirs. She said she used “headology”, rather than magic.
Perhaps this is “headology”. But perhaps this is deceit. If people are being healed, isn’t that all that matters?
Maybe. Or maybe not. Maybe they are deceiving people as to the source of the healing. Maybe they are leading people astray. Maybe they are leading themselves astray.
Two cups of pasta shells
Half a cup of havarti-dill cheese, grated
Quarter of a cup of parmesan cheese – grated or shredded
Knob of butter
Splash of milk
seasoned salt to taste
Boil the pasta per the package directions. Make it “al dente.” Take the pot off the heat. Pour the pasta into a colander. Put the butter (slice it up to make it melt faster) into the pot. Put the pasta back into the pot. Put the cheese into the pot. Stir. Add milk to get the consistency you want –but add it slowly. You can always add more but you can’t undo it if you have too much. Do this all quickly – you are working with the heat of the pasta, not the stovetop.
Serve immediately. Makes four servings.
I once had a problem with ladies who were looking at my beaded jewelry. They asked how long it took to make. Because it didn’t take long, they didn’t appreciate the cost.
I’ve made jewelry for over 20 years. I know what I am doing by now. It doesn’t take long, once I have the idea in mind. But artistry and the cost of the beads (!!!) has to be factored in.
They don’t get it. They are thinking they get paid $15 an hour, and if this takes me 20 minutes to make, it shouldn’t cost $40.
I could lower my prices, but then I feel like I’m being used. I’ve heard that in Arabic countries you can buy gold jewelry for just the price of the gold. The artist gets nothing. The price is based on the type of gold and how much it weighs. Perhaps that is what people expect me to do with my beads. Just charge them the price of the beads, and nothing for the skill or the creativity.
Perhaps I should start telling people that each necklace takes three days. That would factor in the time involved in getting to the bead store, thinking up a design, trying it, and then finding out it doesn’t work the way I thought it would. Then wait a day fuming about it and rethinking it, and try again and discover what comes out.
Some pieces do take forever. Some go fast. Some never sell. Some sell very quickly. I don’t make anywhere near enough money to make a living at this, but I still don’t want to be insulted. I’d rather rip apart a design and reuse the beads than sell it at just the cost of the beads.
This is a “postcard” of me and my grandmother. She is the only grandmother that I knew. She was my father’s mother, and her name was Mary Frances. I called her Mama. My mother’s mother died before I was born.
My aunt sent me this picture recently. I’d never seen it, but I knew when it was taken. There is another picture of me from that same day, wearing those same clothes. It, however, has all of me and not just half. I’m not sure where that picture is anymore. Probably in a box in a closet. I’d had this picture sitting out for a while. It needed to be put in a frame of some sort. It needed something.
Here’s a closer picture of the photo that started it all.
The back of the picture says “Betsy and me at the Holiday Inn, Chattanooga”. It is written in blue ballpoint pen in my grandmother’s handwriting. The printing on the side of the picture says “Jun 71”, so I was two years old. I’d been swimming – my hair is wet. I was cold, and my grandmother has put her ever-present white sweater on me to keep me warm. Yes, my hair is wet, and I’m not wearing a swimsuit. So that means I was changed into normal clothes and nobody dried my hair. My grandmother has her handbag nearby. This is big and stiff and white, like all of her purses. The one I remember the most was a white wicker contraption. It was fascinating.
I spent most of yesterday sorting my stamp collection and my collection of fortunes from fortune cookies. I have a slightly disturbing amount of both. Fortunately they are tiny paper things, so having a lot of them doesn’t take up a lot of space. I pulled out ones I liked as I was sorting, with no particular idea what I was going to do with them. At night I knew – put some of them together with this picture. It is like a postcard of memories.
The fortunes all have meanings for me. They are like pithy snapshots all to themselves.
Here’s a closer picture of the first three.
“Travelling to the south will bring you unexpected happiness.”
There were two of these fortunes in the collection, and I’m amused by how specific they are. The south – not the north, not just traveling, but the south. I found it interesting, so I pulled them aside. Now I know why. I went south to visit my grandparents every summer for two weeks while I was growing up. We’d drive down as a family to meet up with my grandparents in Gadsden, Alabama and go to Noccalula Falls. It was halfway. Then my parents would drive back home, and my grandparents would drive the rest of the way to Birmingham with me in the car. Two weeks later they would reverse the procedure to return me.
Was it unexpected happiness? It was certainly different from the norm. My grandparents slept in separate rooms. My grandmother had two single beds in her room. I’d sleep in the one closest to the wall. The blankets were white with pom poms on them. The “Birmingham fairy” would visit and there would be a present under my pillow. Was it every night? Or just the first night? I don’t remember. No teeth had to fall out to get a present. It was just for being there. I remember being stunned how it happened. I’d see something I liked at a store we would visit and it would show up under my pillow the next morning. It was magic. I never saw my grandmother buy anything that I later got under my pillow. She was part elf, I think. She taught me how to palm money, but that is another story.
At night she would give me chocolate milk to drink, and in the morning she would put sugar in my orange juice. She’d also put a packet of sugar in my applesauce when we went out to eat. We went out to eat every meal. Really. Every meal. “Grandmother’s cooking” means nothing to me. When I think of food associated with my grandmother, I think of the Piccadilly café. Buffet lines were the norm. She didn’t cook. The only time I saw her use the stove was to dry of my shoes if I’d played outside in the rain, or to heat up mud pies that I made in little cast iron skillets.
Real mud. In the stove. Why she didn’t insist that I put them outside in the sun to dry is beyond me. That was my grandmother.
We slept with the windows open. There was no central air in that house. That wasn’t a problem for me because I grew up that way. I’d go to sleep listening to the sound of the train whistles nearby. It is part of why I got a house close to trains. I love that sound. It reminds me of those summers, sleeping in her room, getting presents under my pillow.
“You have at your command the wisdom of the ages”
I bought my first real computer, a Gateway, with the money from my grandparent’s estate. I’d gotten this Chinese fortune around the same time. It seemed an appropriate thing to tape to the monitor. I also taped my grandmother’s name to it, as a reminder of who to be thankful to. I wrote it out in a fancy old script.
“You will discover the truth in time.”
I feel there are a lot of things I don’t know about my family. Something about this speaks to me. I’m uncovering and recovering a lot about my history through writing, art, and prayer. Things are coming back to me, things I never knew were lost. It is beautiful and difficult at the same time. There is a lot that is hidden, that I intentionally forgot. I ask Jesus into it, and it helps.
Here’s a closer picture of the last ones.
“You find beauty in ordinary things. Do not lose this ability.”
My grandmother was very child-like. Not childish. She knew how to play. She was clever and creative and fun and whimsical. She wasn’t an adult, really, but I don’t know whether that was intentional or was the result of my grandfather’s overbearing nature. Or, was that simply the side of her that I saw?
I like this fortune because it speaks to how I make jewelry, seeing beauty in the everyday. I make treasures out of things that other people see as trash or overlook. Alchemy is part of it – turning lead into gold.
“Choosing what you want to do, and when to do it, is an act of creation.”
I feel this is a message to me from my grandmother. It and the stamp speak to me about the same thing.
Here’s a closer picture of the stamp.
The stamp is a French stamp, and it reminds me that my grandmother was fluent in French and German, and taught both of them before she got married. When she got married, her husband insisted that she not work. He felt it was shameful to him for his wife to have to work- that it said that he was not a good provider.
Problem is, she liked teaching. She liked translating. She wanted to. But he didn’t want her to, and he won.
This reminds me of the fact that her mother wasn’t allowed to be who she wanted to be either. She wasn’t allowed to work or even to cook. It too was seen as shameful for the woman of the house to work, outside or inside the house. Her husband owned several pipe foundries and made lots of money. He hired cooks and maids. She was allowed to do needlepoint. It wasn’t pretty. It was brittle, and stiff. I feel like she was that way too. A person’s art tells you a lot about the person.
They both were stunted. It was a bonsai kind of a life. But not beautiful, like a bonsai.
This is interesting to me to realize. Both women were “free” of the traditional roles of women, and they suffered because of it. One wanted to work outside of the home. One wanted to cook and take care of the house. Neither woman was allowed to, because it would hurt the pride of their husbands.
This is what I mean about how I’m uncovering the truth through my artwork. I’ve learned quite a bit and put together quite a number of pieces this way. Things make more sense.
So then I look up how to spell Noccalula, and I find out more about the story. This is from Wikipedia. She was a “Cherokee maiden who, according to local legends, plunged to her death after being ordered by her father to marry a man she didn’t love.” Fascinating. It ties into these other women -my grandmother, and her mother. They didn’t kill themselves, but they let a part of themselves die when they got married.
I’m not anti-marriage at all. And I’m not saying that women need to work or cook to feel fulfilled. But what I am saying is that people should feel free to be who they are, and do what they want. Other people should not make decisions for them as to what they think is best for them. This applies to parents and spouses, regardless of gender. To suppress yourself in order to appease a family member is the most damaging thing you can do. It is the heart of codependency.
(I have this collage framed in a simple pop-together frame. I’ve taken it out of the frame for the pictures.)
There has been a recent discussion on a creative page I’m a member of. It is about trying to get the public to understand why art costs what it does. People aren’t willing to pay the asking price for art. They want it for free.
People think they can make whatever you have made themselves for cheaper. They don’t understand the time and training necessary to create that piece of art. Or, they try to talk you down on the price. They want Tiffany quality work for Wal-Mart prices.
Now, it doesn’t help that there are a lot of people who say they are artists who put out terrible work and charge high prices. Millions of dollars for a Jackson Pollack piece? Really? It is paint, thrown at a canvas. A child could do better.
I once read a story about a jewelry designer who was dealing with a difficult customer. The customer balked at the price of a wire and stone necklace – pointing out that the price of the items was a lot less than the price on the necklace. The artist sent her a box with a spool of wire and the stones. The necklace was reduced to its parts. The customer called and complained. The artist pointed out that if she wanted it to be put together, she could do it herself, since all she was willing to pay for was the materials.
There is a lot more to art than materials. There are the years of learning and polishing the craft. There are all the mistakes and wasted supplies, learning how to perfect a new technique. There’s a lot of time and energy put into being an artist. It isn’t something that just happens. A good artist makes it look easy. It isn’t.
There are also incidental costs to art. Shipping supplies aren’t free. Marketing isn’t free. Display racks aren’t free. The same is true for pop up tents for art shows. Entry fees are rather steep. Then you have to schlep your stuff to the show and back, in containers, that again, aren’t free. There is wear and tear on your vehicle and yourself. It all adds up and has to get factored into the cost of the art.
I have found that I enjoy the transaction more if I’m selling to another creative person. S/he understands value and doesn’t haggle. So maybe that is it. We need to actively teach other people to engage with their artistic side. They will understand how much work is involved, what quality is and isn’t, and they will become artists to boot.
Perhaps some artists won’t like that idea. Perhaps they think there will be competition. Perhaps they think that if everybody can do it, then they won’t have a monopoly on art. But then I think they might make art for the wrong reason. Everybody should make art. It is healing to do.
I honestly think that if more artists taught other people to be artists, then the public would be happier to start off with, and more understanding of what goes into making quality art. Then they’d be willing to pay real prices for real art.
Some of you may know that I have (had?) a mirror site to BetsyBeadhead. It is (was?) called Empty Cross Community. It has (had?) only my religious writings. It is (was?) a place where I could sort out what I want to put in my first book, and also is (was?) a place where I could direct people who might be interested in just that topic.
I’m not sure what verb tense to use, though. It is a bit like Schrodinger’s cat right now. Is it alive, or not? Does it exist, or not? I hadn’t put anything new in it in a while because I was working on the book. Mostly it is sorted out, and I didn’t have anything new to put in it. For that, I’m grateful. In a way, it has served its purpose.
Yesterday I went to put a new post into it and discovered I couldn’t. I discovered that my page had been shut down for a violation of the Terms of Service. There has been no warning and no explanation. I’ve written WordPress and not heard back so far. I’ve reread the Terms of Service and I don’t know what I’ve done wrong. I also think it is a bit severe for them to shut it down without a warning or a notification. There was no chance to correct whatever error they have found.
It is kind of like trying to go home and discovering that the bank has repossessed your house because they think you are doing something illegal in it.
Fortunately, it isn’t my house, but my “vacation home”, and I have copies of everything I’ve written. So nothing is lost but time. And some links. I have a website using the same name and it has a link to the blog which is broken now. I was using the blog to give more information than I could put on the website.
Possibly there is an issue with the name itself. There is a sculpture called the “Empty Cross”. The creator has trademarked the name. The idea of the cross is in harmony with the idea of my page. I’m not saying I’m part of them, but maybe they think I am – and because I’m not, they protested.
Maybe someone thought that the second page was stealing from the first page. Because there is nothing on the Empty Cross Community page that isn’t on the Betsy Beadhead page, perhaps they thought that someone on that page was stealing and reposting my blog.
Again, I don’t know. There was no warning, and no explanation.
Perhaps I need a new name for the second page. Perhaps I need to let it go and just focus on the book. But, I do like the idea of a focused blog page just for my religious writings. I don’t want to direct someone to my vision of a new church or a Bible study, only for them to get stuck in my rants about patriarchy, or wonder about my reading list for zombie fiction.
Or maybe that is the point. I am all those things.
I am a Jesus follower who reads zombie fiction, who has tattoos, who thinks that women are getting the short end of the stick, who works in a customer service job and gets annoyed at being treated like a servant, who tutors ESL and LD kindergartners… I am a lot of things, and some of them may seem to conflict with the idea of what defines a person who follows Jesus. Perhaps that is the issue. I want people to know that they can love Jesus and they don’t have to fit the mold of “Jesus freak”. That loving Jesus isn’t about wearing long dresses and homeschooling your kids and listening to “Christian” music and reading “Christian” books.
Well, it is about those things. But it isn’t JUST about those things. You can love Jesus and do none of those. Or all of them, and other things as well. Jesus’ arms are big enough to embrace us all. He was about turning the conventional way of thinking upside down back then too. He still is.
I certainly was having a problem with posting to both pages, using one browser. It is impossible to log into one WordPress site and then post on another one. It simply will only let me log into one at a time. So I can’t check the second one to see if I’ve already posted something from the first one in an easy way. I’d thought about installing another browser, in addition to Chrome, but now I’m thinking I need to use another blog platform.
And find another name. Anybody know a good name for what I’ve been writing about? I looked at ReVision – and that name is taken. I need something about how church isn’t what we think it is – it is less, and more at the same time. I need something that is easy to remember. I need something that embraces Orthodox and Pentecostal at the same time. I need something that goes back to the roots of what Jesus said and strips it all down. I need something that takes away all the pomp and puffery of two thousand years of humans getting in the way of God. We’ve put so much onto and into Jesus that we can’t see him anymore.
I need a name for that. I’m open to suggestions.
In part, this is a test. My other blog got blocked, and it is a spin-off of this one. It is just the religious stuff. Nothing new, just condensed, more focused. It links to a website address (that I paid $100 for), so I’m a little unhappy that it is down.
I didn’t get notified, and I don’t know why it is blocked. So I’m testing this one to see if this one is still up. Hopefully it still works, and they will let me know soon what is wrong with the other one so I can fix it.
Meanwhile, I’m working on putting together posts for my first book. I’m at 45K words right now.
I don’t tithe. Not anymore.
I don’t like that the plate is passed around during the service, right before Communion. It says “if you pay, you can play”. It says that God’s love can be bought. It isn’t at the beginning of the service, or at the end. It is right in the middle, before Communion.
God’s love, as demonstrated through the sacrifice of Jesus, was, is, and shall always be free. There are no strings attached. You can’t earn it, and you can’t buy it.
But I also don’t tithe because I feel like I’m supporting an addict friend. You know the one. The one who never quite seems to have enough money to pay his bills, but she has enough for soda and cigarettes. The one who always forgets to have his wallet on him when you all go out to eat. The one who never quite seems to have it together.
Now, certainly this isn’t the way with all churches. Some pool their money together and do really good things with it. If a hundred people donate a dollar each, that provides enough for four families to have a healthy meal. That kind of tithing I like.
But so often it isn’t that kind of tithing that happens. So often the money goes to buy more vestments, or pay the mortgage on the minister’s home, or to re-carpet the sanctuary.
The money goes to the church building, not the Church Body.
Perhaps I should look at it like when I get approached by a homeless person. I have no way of knowing if he is going to use it to buy a sandwich or a shot of tequila.
betsybeadhead 
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