Dichroic Reflections

a little mystery

Several things:

1) Today I received a mystery package, presumably a Chanukah gift. It was addressed only to me, not Rudder and comes from Borderland Books, but there was no note on the box or in it to say who it's from. I got Rudder to unbox it, and the book (I assume it's a book) is still in brown wrapping, so there might be a note inside. I've asked Rudder to look, so that I don't see what it is until Chanukah begins. Rudder is into delayed gratification so we generally don't open presents until the holiday. I don't much mind this, though I think it's silly when even on his birthday he waits until dinnertime to open presents. However, being fonder of short-term gratification myself, and because it's addressed only to me, I will assume it's for Chanukah, not Christmas. Anyway, if it's from one of you out there (and if so, who?) it got here, and I thank you preliminarily. I'll thank you for real after I open it.

2) Our turkey on Thanksgiving was the worst I've ever made. No fault of mine, I don't think - we got just the breast and it was way too juicy and the injected juices didn't taste like real turkey. Bleah. On the other hand, my kasha was flavorful, the cookies I baked were/are excellent, and the pumpkin pastries were great. The only problem with the latter was that I made the full recipe and had way too much left over after I filled the pastry shells. I put the rest of the batter in the fridge, got a graham-cracker crust the next day, and made a pie. Tasty.

3) LJ appreciation meme. Maria is true-blue; you can absolutely rely on her to always try to do right and act kindly. She is honest, good, and giving, and tries to improve in a way that's now out of fashion, but that I appreciate because some of my own ideas are old ones.

I can't write about Maria without writing about her faith and I think she'd be glad of that. It's a funny thing. I previously wrote about LA, who is not religious - not sure if she's atheist, agnostic, or Deist, but she isn't into churches. I could make a good case that LA is a good person because she's not religious; if you don't believe that God ordered the estate of the rich man ad the poor man, or that anybody's second coming will make everything all right, it stands to reason you'd better get busy and fix the world yourself, best you can. Maria is almost the polar opposite: she's a Christian who lives her faith and who is both better and pleasanter because of it. I know something about this. Like many American Jews, I suspect, I have a rather Christianized morality, from keeping company with Jo March, with Aslan, and with the Christianized versions of fairy tales we get from Andersen and the Grimms. (Also maybe from Hillel and the rabbis who stressed a merciful God rather than a purely just one and the need for men and women to treat our neighbors well, but that's another story.) Maria lives more like Jo March than like many more vocal modern Christians; she uses her faith as a yardstick not to measure other people and find them lacking but to see where she herself needs to improve, and she preaches only by her own example. I don't know if she believes that different people have different paths to righteousness or only that they need to find their own paths to Jesus, but either way she refrains from forcing her views even on those she loves most. Her joy in her God is evident and so is her joy in her friends, her family and her husband. I hope they all work to deserve her as she does to measure up to them.

Posted by dichroic at November 27, 2004 08:12 PM