by Kathy Brasby | Oct 22, 2013 | Stories
Great ideas and I do this dance which sometimes is as smooth as a three-step waltz and sometimes as clunky as mashing your partner’s toes with barn boots.
The problem of how to light the candles may have sparked a clunky dance but see what you think.
I was a small-town newspaper editor in need of a special photo for our Christmas issue. This was way before you could buy photos online and way before I had a budget to buy stock photos.
I found some elegant Christmas candles and placed them in a classic formation with a draped fabric behind. Then I set up my camera on a tripod and worked out all the angles.
Everything was going great until it was time to light the candles for the shoot.
I was at the office at 8 pm in a town where all the stores closed at 6 pm. And I didn’t want to drive clear across town to my house to get some matches.
There had to be another solution.
My car was parked 10 steps from my office door. And it had a cigarette lighter in it. I had plenty of paper in a newspaper office.
Time for a great idea.
I settled myself in the front seat of the car, pushed in the lighter, and started rolling a sheet of newspaper into a long tube which ought to ignite when the lighter was glowing red. I mean, that lit cigarettes, didn’t it?
With the tube burning, I could light the extra candle in my pocket, take it back inside, and we were ready to do this Christmas spread.
See what I mean about great ideas?
I had never used the lighter before and I had no idea how long to wait for it to pop out. It did pop out, right?
I leaned down closer to be sure things were cooking around the lighter. At that moment, the plug didn’t just pooch out of its socket, it flew into the back seat.
It zinged past my ear and bounced off the upholstery. For a crazy second, I wondered if I could just light the candle from the little fire that might ignite in the back seat.
But by the time I found the lighter, the red tip had cooled to black.
I held the lighter in one hand, my rolled piece of paper in the other, studying the situation and waiting for another great idea.
It came.
I drove home to get some matches.
by Kathy Brasby | Oct 18, 2013 | Hope
Most literature belongs in a particular genre and most genres have rules or conventions that govern the narrative.
For example, if you were to read a romance novel, you’d expect the hero and heroine to meet in the first chapter. You’d expect, in spite of conflict, that eventually they would find each other and there would be a happy ending.
Within those conventions there’s plenty of room for variety.
The Bible uses such conventions with some fascinating results.
Let’s meet the betrothal convention. In this story type, we have the following rules:
- Hero or his surrogate travels to a foreign country
- He encounters a girl, a maiden, the daughter of so-and-so – at a well
- Someone – the hero or the girl – draws water from the well
- The girl hurries – needs to be running/hurried – home to bring news of the stranger
- A betrothal occurs, usually after sharing a meal with the family.
Our first betrothal story occurs in Genesis. Abraham sends his servant, his surrogate to search for a wife for his son. The surrogate travels to a foreign country and comes to a well.
Since the custom was for the young women to draw water there, it was a good place to camp. There he meets Rebekah, who draws water for him and his camels. Then she runs home to tell her family about the stranger.
Her brother, Laban, comes out to invite the servant to a meal with the family. The betrothal is made and Rebekah goes with the servant to Abraham’s land where she marries Abraham’s son, Isaac.
This narrative established the betrothal narrative structure. The next one will stretch at the edges of the conventions a bit – for a very good reason.
We’ll take a look at that narrative next week.
by Kathy Brasby | Oct 16, 2013 | Hope
I had already wiped down the kitchen cupboards and was putting some muscle into swabbing down the ceiling when my husband came home from work.
“Wow, you’re energetic,” he said, knowing my usual love for housecleaning matched my love for toenail pulling.
I should have just smiled and agreed. But the story was too good to hold back.
“You know how we usually keep the syrup and molasses in the cupboard?” I pointed down to a shelf just above the floor beside the refrigerator.
He nodded, although his eyes were already wandering toward the cookie jar.
“That wasn’t a good idea,” I said.
I had walked into the kitchen to find our youngest, at about 18 months, sitting in a pool of molasses on the floor, happily swirling his hands in the thick black goo.
“That’s not good,” my husband said.
“It gets worse because I didn’t think.”
In one of those sudden rushes that mimic panic – OK, that was panic – I grabbed young son under the armpits and lifted him out of the black goo.
“He didn’t like that,” I explained. “He started kicking in protest.”
“A little kick?” By now, my husband was examining the ceiling and cupboard doors. He knew.
“Not even close to little.”
By the time I wrapped son in a towel just to stop the kicking, the kitchen was sprayed with molasses.
I’d dunked him in the bathtub, changed my clothes and started scrubbing the sticky kitchen by the time my husband got home.
“Yeah,” he said, pulling out a cookie. “That molasses spot probably wasn’t a good idea.”
by Kathy Brasby | Oct 11, 2013 | Hope
The books of the Bible were written like most literature: in sentences and paragraphs.
However, chapter divisions were added to texts in the 12th century, presumably to make things easier for scholars. The average person wasn’t reading the Bible at that time.
Verse divisions came in the 1500s.
Those divisions are helpful when trying to direct someone to a specific phrase in a text. It’s complicated to tell someone, “See the third sentence in the fourth paragraph on the page? Yeah, the one that starts with ‘And.’”
But those divisions have hurt us in reading the Bible as literature. We focus on a verse and miss the story.
Sometimes the verse starts in mid-sentence and ends before the sentence does. And we read that one verse and think we’ll gain great meaning.
Try reading a biblical narrative as the author wrote it. All the paragraphs and all the sentences. Just like you read a magazine article or a novel.
Sometimes reading a single verse gives us incorrect meaning. Sometimes it limits the meaning or directs it down one path when the author had a wider and richer meaning in mind.
Look for sentences and paragraphs. Ignore the chapter/verse markings when reading.
You may be surprised at what you read.
by Kathy Brasby | Oct 8, 2013 | Hope
I didn’t expect to get such a spirited free spirit as my youngest daughter grew. But she was the one who always saw things her way.
For example, the dance in the mud puddle.
We didn’t get rain much on our hobby farm but this soaker had left several large puddles in the driveway.
So, of course, she needed to go outside and explore. Puddles, drizzle, thick cloudy skies… these things have to be experienced when you’re 4.
“Don’t get your clothes muddy,” I said as I zipped up her jacket and tightened her boots.
She scampered outside and I went back to folding laundry. I wished I was exploring with her.
But I knew she was having fun.
I didn’t know how much fun until I looked out the window. There was my lanky little girl, her arms raised high and her fingers pointing delicately toward the clouds, as she pirouetted in the muddy water of our driveway to an orchestra that only she could hear.
Stark naked.
I rushed outside with a big towel and she broke off from her ballet.
Her clothes were neatly folded at the edge of the puddle.
“You told me not to get muddy,” she said. “So I took them off.”
The answer a free spirit would give. I admired her imagination and quick-thinking obedience. Her innocent joy in the rain captured my heart. Her upturned face touched me. I was moved by her exuberance.
But… naked is naked. She still had to come inside.