Rather, not the blog I was going to write. I have Things to talk about, Big Important Things to say words about. Not to be confused with having Big and Important Things to Say myself. I prefer to let others act, and to be the critic, the observer, the person who doesn't have to synthesize the information or provide the ridiculous sound bite. In other words, I am not yet ready to be the person whose words I want to ridicule.
It will come. I am not worried. I'm writing again. The more words there are, the more likely they are to become fuel for someone else's fire.
So it was snowing. the kittens watched it for a good hour this morning, Miss Ethel's head jerking about trying to find one flake, one movement, one thing to follow to the ground, one thing to watch but everything else prevented it, she couldn't stop from looking at every flake as it fell past the window, the large breezy window in the front room, at the end of the runway of wood.
Boris is much too laid back to be distracted that way. He is a sucker, though, for getting right in my way every time I read or write on my writing desk. He will stand on it, butt heads with me (literally) and prance about to get love, until I stop what I am doing and pet him and he's had enough and walks away. Since he also hasn't figured out that if he doesn't kill me on the way to the food bowl, he will continue to get fed, I do not take it personally.
Tomorrow is thanksgiving. One of "those" holidays, so correctly smirked at. Not because it is a bad idea or inappropriate to celebrate through gratitude, or with much food from the recent harvest, or the coming of one's family before the winter begins, but because the origin story is really cheesy. I don't care how true it is. It's a fucking made for TV movie and we all know it.
I grew up in a church associated with the Congregationalists. For those of you who have had better things to do than study the history of the Christian churches in the colonies and then the US, they were very like the Puritans. Most of the East coast was Congregationalist for a very long time, the church founded Harvard and Yale and that college where Richard Jewell worked before he was accused of putting those bombs around the Olympics that year. We are a very tense people, as you would be if you were the descendants of a group of people who believed that no matter what you do in life, your afterlife has been determined from before your birth - predestination is the word for that belief and all of its extrapolations. Conservative Calvinistic Congregationalists. There is a reason we did not have business cards or a song.
There is something fundamentally wrong with making the teachings of John Calvin even more conservative. These people didn't dance or wear anything but black or grey. Okay, I can get behind that - not my style, but that doesn't give me the right to say don't do it - even West Coast Zoot suits were mostly monochromatic because of the rationing, and they made it cool. They made it really fucking cool, but I digress. What I can't get behind is the double whammy that comes after predestination has been presented - if you are marked for heaven, it is shown through beauty and wealth, but just because you are beautiful and wealthy doesn't mean that you are marked for heaven, it just means that ugly poor people aren't. And - now, this is where I start to twitch - it is morally required of all beautiful people to help the non-chosen ones to live good and God-fearing lives, for even though they are not destined for heaven their time in hell can be made less if they have lived according to God's Laws (What I learned from studying Shakespeare: the philosophical underpinnings of capitalism as seen through the eyes of the faithful).
They got on boats. My theological ancestors left from Leiden (Holland) and came here. On a boat. And then they got off of the boat and the rest is an odd mix of fact and fantasy told as History.
Thanksgiving was a bigger holiday in my church than any other. Even Easter. Well, we liked each other and Lenten dinners were a big hit, so why be glad when it's over. Congregationalists, appropriately contrary to their name, don't congregate unless they have to. And they like to be seen congregating. They are an odd bunch. I am glad that we left behind the mystics, though. I just don't think that a faith that is as pragmatic (to a degree) as I was raised to be has much room for mysticism. Also, there are a lot of wise people who are really ugly - how can you trust an ugly (bound for hell, remember) person to help guide you on your way to a greater understanding of god?
Now there is much eating and rejoicing in each other's company to offset the dread that in one month it will be time to do this all again, hopefully in someone else's house (Not Me!) and with gifts! More money, more expense, more dishes. Great.
This year there is much for which to be thankful in my family. Some years the gratitude is directed less personally. I will not share with you my list of things for which I am thankful. I find something in every day, therefore, the list is too long to be remembered, much less shared.
The sun has come out a bit. Just in time to melt the slush that will turn into ice the second that sun drops down past the stadium.
Oh - I added new pics of the babies and I from this morning.
See, told you it wasn't what I wanted to say - I am thinking of taking that one slightly more seriously. Also, I keep losing the page where the quote is. Cough.
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