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Prayer bead chain

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main
This is a prayer bead chain that I made. It isn’t a rosary, but it kind of is. It is a reminder to pray but there are no set prayers for it. I’m open to adding more beads to it in the future, but it is still good the way it is. It would be too heavy to make into a necklace. It is meant to be carried in a pocket so that it is ready to be used as a prayer aid whenever needed.

cross
The cross is a replica of the cross that Pope Francis wears. It is not a crucifix – rather than depicting Christ crucified, it celebrates his life and teaching by depicting him as the good shepherd, one who seeks out the lost and protects them, even willing to lay down his life for them.

heart
The next bead is a heart, as a reminder of God’s love for us, that God loved us enough to come down to earth to experience life among us.

recycled
This bead is made from broken pieces of glass that have been put together and remade into a new bead. It is a reminder that God can make something new out of our brokenness.

This bead is a chevron bead.
chevron1

It doesn’t look special until you see the sides.
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The only way you can see it is if you cut the bead and then grind away at the edges. This is a reminder that our true beauty isn’t on the surface, but is what is revealed after we are tested.

copal
This bead is made of copal. It is a reminder of the incense used in churches as “an aroma pleasing to the Lord”. Instead of making animal sacrifices, our prayers and work are what God desires.

millefiori
This millefiori bead has six pointed stars, as a reminder of the faith of Israel that told the world about the One God.

egg
This is a glass bead that I made myself many years ago. Unintentionally, it looks like an egg. It is a reminder that what I did many years ago can still be of value and needed today. It is also a reminder to use whatever talents I have to glorify God.

people
This bead is also a millefiori bead, but it has faces. Because it is made of many different canes of glass fused together, it is a reminder that the Body of Christ is made up of many people, all working together in unison to do God’s will on earth.

The Hunt (an Easter musing)

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It is kind of hard to ignore that Easter is soon upon us. I’ve always been mindful of how strange it is to be the minority faith in America, even though I’m part of the majority. My closest friends were Hindu or Jewish while I was in school, and I still remember how awkward it was that the principal would say a Jesus-centric prayer at every football game at our public (meaning not private, thus not religious) high school football games.

It seems so strange that non-religious organizations such as grocery stores and pharmacies and craft supply shops will have displays for every Christian holiday but totally ignore the fact that there are people who have other festivals and observances who live in the same community. I think it is best to have all, or none.

But I digress.

I saw a sign at the local grocery store saying “The Hunt is On” over a huge display of Easter candy. The hunt? Oh right. Easter eggs. Hidden. And you go find them.

Plenty of people say that Easter is a pagan holiday, that the Christians simply adopted the celebration of Ostara as their own. They say that to celebrate Easter is to worship a false god (or goddess). Maybe this is true. It bears further research.

But, it seems backwards, this entire idea of us hunting for eggs.

We aren’t the ones who do the seeking. God is.

God is the one who seeks us.
God is the father to the prodigal son.
God is the one who goes to find the lost sheep.
God is the one who seeks the lost coin.
God puts everything aside to find us, to gather us up like a hen shelters her chicks.
God is the one who heals us.

We are the eggs, hidden, lost, confused, ashamed.
God finds us, brings us out into the light.

Notice how beautiful hand painted Easter eggs are. Each one is different and special. That is how God sees us.

Traditional-Easter-eggs-008

Melissa’s story

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Melissa knew it was time to leave her job when her boss sent her that email. Nearly 20 years with the same firm and it all came down to one thing – trust. She simply didn’t trust him to be honest. Or fair. Or rational. He was her third boss, but they were all the same. All toed the party line, all had degrees in “CYA”. Normally, she would have put her head down, not drawn any attention, and soon things would blow over or the manager would retire or get transferred.

It took her six years to realize that her job, while saying that it cared for its employees, didn’t back that up with real action. The bullies and incompetents got the management positions. They wrote the performance reviews too, and they were all one-way. All the reviews were top-down, so the subordinates never had a say in how they were being managed. This was the norm all over, so it never occurred to her that it was wrong, never occurred to her that it was possible to change it.

Her friend Bobby had died because of it. He’d drunk himself to death over anxiety and fear, too much stress and a job he had to have to pay his mortgage and his alimony. He managed to work up the momentum to leave the sinking ship of his marriage, but his job was another matter. He was dead three days before he was found. In many ways it was three years.

Melissa wasn’t going to go out like that. She wasn’t going to give her boss the pleasure of knowing he’d won with his squirrely ways. She ran over Paul Simon’s song in her head for options. Hop on the bus? Make a new plan? Drop off the keys? Well, she wasn’t leaving a lover, but it still sounded like a good exit strategy. And, after all, she had been screwed.

The email that morning said it all without saying anything. She’d asked for some time off. Her only joy now was looking forward to vacations, yet she was told, in writing, that her request did not meet his guidelines. There was also a mention that this was her second attempt to violate this policy. The only problem was that it wasn’t written policy. It certainly wasn’t corporate policy. And he did not say at the time that it was his policy, but just a guideline. She had no way of knowing that she’d stepped over some line into dangerous territory.

He told her more with that email than simply “no”. By putting it in writing, his not-so-veiled threat was made clear. Two violations, without the first one even being intentional, meant that three and you’re out. What nonsense. How could she have known she broke a rule the first time she did it when he hadn’t told her the guidelines? Heck, he hadn’t even given her a list of her job duties. Suddenly she was one step away from trouble. It was like driving on a road that had dangerous curves and no guard rails and no warning signs.

He was a squirrel.  That was certain. Everybody knew that he was a manager in title only. The problem was that nobody bothered to tell him. So he sent passive aggressive emails rather than confronting people directly. He didn’t manage. There was no plan or direction. He didn’t lead. Well, he led by negatives. Don’t do what he does. He didn’t even know what people did for their jobs, so how could he manage them?

Melissa took a breath in and reminded herself that Jesus said only God is above us. Don’t follow people. If you do, you are saying that they are more important than God is. To follow a person, no matter who they are – brother, father, aunt, boss, teacher, minister, spouse, governor, president, – anybody – was to make them into an idol.

She often wondered why she had so many bad bosses, so many who let the power go to their heads and quit working. It wasn’t fair that they got paid four times what so she did yet did a fourth of the work. It’s like they forgot what it was like to be a subordinate.

Perhaps that was the problem. Where could she work with there were no was no hierarchy? She left the social group she was in because of that kind of bullying. She left the church too for the very same reason, among many others. Over and over again she kept hitting that wall. The lesson wasn’t learned yet, apparently.

She’d waited out bad bosses before. How long until he retired? But deep down, she knew that if she didn’t learn the lesson with this one, it would resurface with another one.

Back to Jesus. What does he say? First, give thanks for the situation because it reminded her to pray and seek his help. Sometimes that was as far she got in her prayer, but now she knew there was more.

Jesus said that before you take your offerings to the Temple that if you have issue with anyone, you must leave your offering and go make things right. But how was she to do that? She was starting out in the negative. And she wasn’t even the one who had caused the problem.  Her boss was in the wrong.  This was backwards.

She remembered that story in the Bible when David was small and had no armor. With God’s power he killed Goliath with just one stone. Not even a sword. Anything was possible with God on your side.

Would talking with him make him feel threatened and thus worsen her standing? She knew she’d get no backup from higher up in the corporation. She’s gone that route before with an even worse manager. She still had unresolved trauma from that time. There’d be no help from her husband, either. He was even more bullied in his past. He couldn’t be objective.

So she was alone, again. Sure she had Jesus, and God, and the Holy Spirit. That had to count for something, right? But they weren’t physically here. They couldn’t go talk to him for her, or find her another job, or kill him off, or magically change everything. Perhaps that was the point too.

Perhaps Jesus came and said all that he did to tell her to not even have him above her, but within her, to give her the strength to do it herself. She wasn’t alone, then. She was doubled. Enhanced. There was a synergy, more than the sum of the parts.

But she still didn’t know what to do. Wait, and seem passive? Or wait until there is a clear path, a plan, and instruction from God? In the past, she always found herself doing the right thing, like a puppet, motivated by God. This current problem was a jigsaw puzzle and she didn’t have all the pieces yet, but God always does.

Was this event shifting her away from this job? Was it right to stay in a place, work 40 hours, and not feel like she fit? Had she outgrown it? It isn’t like she married this job. It wasn’t “till death do you part”. It certainly wasn’t for richer.

She prayed some more, and then she knew what to do. She was grateful that even though God doesn’t provide a map for life, God most certainly provided a compass.  With her heart focused on God, she knew she could walk through any situation, knowing that it would come out the way it was supposed to be.

Little Jake and the chicken

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chicken

Little Jake Royce hated his chicken. He wanted a dog, the same as Billy had. His Ma said “If Billy jumped off a bridge, would you do that too?” Little Jake was only four but he already knew not to answer that question. There were some questions that had no answers. There were some, however, that if you didn’t answer you got a spanking.

But not at Little Jake’s house. They never spanked him, never would. Ma and Pa would talk to him if he broke some house rule. They’d use reason and explain how he was violating the social contract. They’d express how sad they were about his poor choices. This was of course when they actually noticed what he was doing. Most of the time they let him do whatever he wanted.

His parents had both been raised by missionaries. While they liked the wildness of not having a fixed address, they couldn’t stand the rules. Do this. Don’t do that. Whether it was about God or chores made no difference. They both craved unending vistas of freedom as children, so when they finally had a child of their own, they gave it to him. Except when it came to that chicken.

In general, he could do whatever he pleased.  He could stay up as late as he wanted, learn or not learn his numbers and letters whenever the mood struck him, or eat hot dogs and popcorn for three weeks in a row. They wanted him to be free to live his life. He still wasn’t potty trained and they were delighted, saying it was oppressive to insist a child do anything he wasn’t ready for. Of course, how could he be ready? He didn’t even know it was an option. He thought it was normal to poop wherever and whenever you wanted. He thought that his parents didn’t need to go as often as he did because they were so big. They had more room to store it. He never understood what they were doing when they said they were going to “step down the hall”. The bathroom was where you had a bath, and that was it.  Not like he had one of those very often, either.

But the chicken was not a debatable issue. If he had to have a pet, it had to be a chicken. Both his parents were allergic to anything with fur, so dogs and cats were out. Even hamsters weren’t okay. Ferrets weren’t even considered.  Even if they didn’t have fur, the smell was a real turn-off.

Hattie the hen and Reggie the rooster lived next-door at the co-op. Little Jake liked Hattie better (when forced to choose between a rock and a hard place), but his parents thought it was like supporting an indentured servant to have a hen – all that egg laying. She wasn’t free like a rooster to their minds. So that Monday, Reggie the rooster came home, seemingly pleased as punch to have a whole yard to himself. It didn’t take long for him to make a roost for himself in Little Jake’s favorite climbing tree. His parents took it as a sign that they were going to get along famously. Little Jake took it as a sign that the rooster liked pooping on his head. This made Little Jake think that maybe it was time to learn how to use the potty. He couldn’t be upstaged by a rooster.

The day came for the annual family portraits, so of course Reggie was brought along to the studio. Pets were family in the Royce house. The photographer, Abe Johnson, was an old family friend and had learned years ago not to question the unusual behavior of the Royces. He set up a chair for Little Jake, who promptly fished into his pocket and pulled out a rollup cigarette and put it in his mouth before sitting down, saying  “Don’t want to crush it, you know, Abe? Got a light?”

Abe was unsure what to wonder about first – the fact that this toddler had a cigarette, it looked like he rolled it himself, or that he was being called by his first name by a four-year-old.

Was the problem simply that he acted like he was an adult, or was it something more? It was all too much. Maybe was time to retire. Or maybe it was time to talk to the matriarch of the Royce clan. “Being free” was a great concept until it got weird. Maybe she didn’t know how “free” her great-grandchild was being raised. Could be that his parent’s trust fund needed to be tightened up. Maybe they’d stop living in La-la land if they had to pay their own bills for change.

Abe always said that it did no good to children to give them a free ride in life. He was all for sparing the rod but not for spoiling child. A child with no direction and no boundaries wasn’t any good to himself or anybody else.

Just as Abe released the shutter, the startled chicken released a loud squawk and an even larger splat of poop on the studio floor.  Little Jake looked at the chicken, then at the horrified look on his parent’s faces, and decided that this chicken thing might just work out after all.

Time to make art?

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People sometimes ask how long a piece I made took. This usually is in reference to beaded jewelry, but I soon expect it to happen for my collages. I’ve not been creating in that manner as long, and I’ve not started to try to seriously sell them, so I’ve not had this happen yet.
Why does it matter how long something took to make? Does that devalue it if it didn’t take the artist very long? Does it mean that it should cost more if it took more time?
How long does it really take? When do you start the clock? When you first had the idea? When you bought the materials? When you started putting paint or ephemera onto the canvas? Or does it start before that – with classes and study, learning how to use the materials?
There have been plenty of times when I’ve realized that the only way I could have learned how to make the piece I just did was to have made the twenty other ones that the potential customer does not see. Sure, this one took two days to make. But in reality, it took two years of trial and error to learn how to do this in two days.
If a necklace took twenty minutes to make, does that mean that it shouldn’t cost $45, because you only make $15 an hour? What if the same customer would spend $30 on a meal that took ten minutes to cook?
Food is a good analogy – the raw ingredients have to be raised or grown or processed (chicken, asparagus, pasta). All of these things take time and skill – before you even get to cook them into a meal. Learning how to cook takes time and a lot of practice.
Making art is the same. The materials used have to be created and / or purchased. The expense (time and money) involved in just the materials alone must be considered, as well as the time it took to learn how to prepare it.
Perhaps artists should start saying the real time it took, starting with when they first had the idea for that piece or bought the first supply that was used. or when they first learned a technique they used in that piece. In some cases, that would be 20 years for me.

Hot chocolate with a twist

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Try these tasty twists on hot chocolate –

Put ½ packet of hot cocoa mix into a mug. Add a small amount of coffee and stir. Fill up the rest of the mug with coffee, stirring again.

Or – put the ½ packet of cocoa in a mug, mix with a little bit of hot water, put in a chai tea bag, fill the rest of the way with hot water, let steep.

For both – Add sugar and or milk (regular or soy) to taste if desired.

If you are feeling really wild, use the whole packet of hot cocoa.

It is up to you if the coffee or the tea are caffeinated or not.

Rabid (what really scares me about Trump)

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Trump doesn’t frighten me. His followers do. He is only one person. There are many thousands of them. The fact that he is popular means that they agree with his message.

Remove him from the election and these people will still feel what they feel.

They will still be afraid of anyone who isn’t them, and they all appear to be straight, white, and Christian.

Somehow they feel that the civil rights advances of others are threatening to them. For some reason they feel that allowing other people to live their lives differently means that their own choices are under attack.

They don’t get that allowing gay people to get married does not mean that straight people have to become homosexual. It does not take away straight people’s rights.

They don’t get that allowing people of other faith traditions to practice their religion does not mean that Christians cannot practice their own. It is important to remember that Jesus never said to attack another person’s way of life – in fact, he said the opposite. Judging other people (and making laws against them or discrimination against them is not what Jesus would do)

They don’t get that allowing immigrants into America does not mean that those who are here will lose their jobs or homes. And, lest we forget American history, the vast majority of Americans are immigrants or descended from them. Trump’s own father was an immigrant from Germany.

Trump frightens me because he is a center point to the rage and frustration that so many of them are feeling.

Saddam Hussein didn’t kill anyone. He just talked, and his followers did the deeds.

Hitler didn’t kill anyone. His followers did.

The leaders in the Rwandan genocide didn’t kill anyone. Their followers did.

Nobody has been killed by the people who follow Trump. Not yet. They’ve rioted. They’ve assaulted. It is a start.

I’m surprised that his hate speech hasn’t been called out for what it is. Is it because he is a presidential candidate that he is allowed to incite violence against people? Other citizens are called out for that. There are watchdog agencies that check for such activity. Why aren’t they speaking up? Or are they stunned into silence by his pomposity?

I’m concerned that all of the advances that have been made in the effort of unity and inclusion will be swept away in a tidal wave of fear and ignorance.

The leaders of hate are simply the voice to long unspoken feelings that have been bottled up, suppressed, whispered. The leaders of hate don’t do anything to get their hands dirty. Their followers are the ones who do the evil.

Is this what we want America to become? A nation where it isn’t safe to be gay, or black or an immigrant? Where it isn’t safe to challenge the status quo? Where it isn’t safe to be an intellectual? Where it isn’t safe, period?

Trump is a figurehead to a slow boiling pot filled with people who feel threatened. In making room for people who are “other” they feel pushed out, excluded, ignored. In a way, I understand this. America is a land where it is considered laudable to have gay pride, black pride, Latino pride. But “white pride”? It is seen as racist. They have been told that they cannot be proud of their roots.

You can’t fix discrimination by discriminating. This is true for everyone.

Half mast

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Let’s stop lowering the flag for mass murders.

We lower it so often now that it doesn’t mean anything.
We lower it for –
Former presidents, Senators, current Supreme Court Justices or First Ladies who die. In honor of Pearl Harbor Day or September 11th. National (and some international) disasters.

When we lower it after people have been killed in a mass murder, we don’t show mourning anymore.
We say the murderer has won.
He’s gotten attention.
We’ve all noticed him for a change.
We say that our nation is diminished, when this is the time we need to be stronger.

By lowering the flag, we are lowering ourselves. We are showing weakness. This has to stop, because that is the last thing we should be doing at such a time.

Kid only

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Many children want to grow up fast. They don’t like being told that they can’t do some activity because they aren’t old enough. Yet there are things that adults are discouraged from doing –

Going trick-or-treating. This stops when you are about in your teens. The only way to keep going trick-or-treating is to have children and go with them. Some adults have parties, but it isn’t the same. Dressing up in costume is half the fun – getting a huge assortment of candy from all your neighbors is the other part.

Having a big birthday party. After about 10, you are expected to have a more sedate gathering. Presents are discouraged. Only when you get to be 50 can you have a big celebration. What if you don’t live that long?

Fingerpainting. (Actually, creating art in general.) It is seen as “play” – and not something that adults do.

Reading picture books. They are still good, even if you are an adult.

Having stuffed animals. I’m of the opinion that a bear is better than a beer.

Taking naps. Mid-day, we all need a little down time to recharge.

This is all unfair. Adults should continue doing these things. Perhaps then we will have healthier and happier people.