Awake by Sharon Lurie

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© 2012 David's Harp and Pen

Mood:  Sleepy (Very, Very Sleepy)

DISCLAIMERS: This blog is based, in part, upon actual events and people. Certain actions and characters have been dramatized and fictionalized, but are inspired by true events and real people. Certain other characters, events, and names used herein are entirely fictitious. Any similarity of those fictional characters or events to the name, attributes, or background of any real person, living or dead, or to any actual events is coincidental and unintentional, so I don’t want to get any complaints from concerned parents that I am advocating the watching of scary movies as a spiritual discipline.  Are you listening, Morbid Redhead?

God speaks to me in many different ways.  Sometimes he speaks through the still small voice of the Holy Spirit.  Sometimes he speaks through his word.  Sometimes he speaks through my Christian brothers and sisters.  Occasionally, he speaks to me through my dog.  Then, there are those rare and special times when God speaks to me through a B horror movie from the 60s.

* SPOILER ALERT *  The Hypnotic Eye is about a string of beautiful women who mutilate themselves for seemingly no reason.  It is also about a man whose failure as a police detective is rivaled only by his failure as a boyfriend.

The movie, released in 1960, begins with a gorgeous blonde who walks into her kitchen to wash her hair.  However, instead of putting her hair into the kitchen sink under the faucet, she puts her hair into an open flame on her stove.  She subsequently dies from third degree burns.  Dave, the detective who arrives at the scene, talks to the woman before she dies, but she claims she was alone and merely confused the stove for the sink.  She is the 11^th in a string of self-mutilations, and all the women have the same story:  they were alone at the time, and they confused something harmful for something harmless.

The next night, Dave takes his beautiful girlfriend Marcia and her beautiful friend Dodi to see Desmond, a charming and handsome hypnotist and magician performing at a local theater.  Desmond, with the help of his drop-dead gorgeous assistant, Justine, performs mostly hypnotic tricks with a little bit of magic in the mix.  For the last segment of the performance, Desmond, under the direction of Justine, picks a beautiful woman from the audience to perform the levitation trick.  Dodi had commented to Dave and Marcia how amazing it was how Desmond seemed to completely dominate his subjects.  Dave makes a smart aleck remark about Desmond being a fake, which prompts Dodi to raise her hand to volunteer for the levitation trick.  As is normal magician procedure, Desmond hypnotizes Dodi before levitating her.  After the show, Dodi begins to act strangely.  Next thing we see, poor Dodi is washing her face and hands with sulfuric acid, which burns her terribly.

The next day, Dave and Marcia visit Dodi at the hospital.  Like the other self-mutilation victims, Dodi doesn’t remember anything, nor did she feel anything while she was washing with the acid.  Marcia begins to suspect that perhaps Desmond was involved.  However, Dave scoffs at her.  Wanting to prove her theory, Marcia goes back to the theater that night and volunteers for the levitation trick.  She pretends to be hypnotized, and while pretending to be under Desmond’s spell, he whispers to her to come to his dressing room at midnight.  Marcia shares all this with Dave and Phil, Dave’s best friend and the police psychiatrist who is also trained in hypnosis.  She also tells them Desmond used a device, resembling an eye, which emitted a strange, flickering light, hidden in his hand as he tried to hypnotize her. So, the three of them decide that Desmond is up to no good and that Marcia should go back to Desmond’s dressing room and see what happens.

Marcia gets to Desmond’s dressing room, but he has a trap for her, and ends up hypnotizing her for real.  He then takes her out, while she’s in a trance, for a night on the town of dinner and dancing before taking her back to her apartment.  When they arrive, they start to make moosh-a-moosh until Justine, who had been hiding out in Marcia’s apartment, stops them.  Justine then puts Marcia completely out in hypnotic sleep.  Desmond looks at Justine and asks, “How many more?”

As Justine puts her hand on Marcia’s face, she answers, “As long as there are faces like this.”

Desmond then leaves Justine and Marcia alone, and Marcia is at Justine’s mercy.  She leads Marcia, still in a trance, to the bathroom and turns the shower on to boiling hot.  She tells Marcia to step into the “cool, cool shower,” which she almost does, until Dave shows up banging on the door, saving Marcia from a fate similar to Dodi and the other women who mutilated themselves.

Fast forward to the end of the movie.  Marcia has once again fallen into the clutches of evil Desmond and evil(er) Justine (chicks in horror flicks aren’t the brightest and are known for always getting into trouble, but in this instance, the fault clearly lies with Dave.)  There is a standoff between Dave and Phil and Desmond and Justine.  Justine leads Marcia, still in a trance, to the scaffolding above the theater stage and threatens to push Marcia to her death.  As Phil tries to talk Justine, she pulls the beautiful mask off her face to reveal that she is horribly disfigured.  It is the then audience learns that the reason she had been having Desmond hypnotize all those beautiful women and then giving them post-hypnotic suggestions to mutilate themselves was because Justine was jealous of their beauty, beauty she had lost and could never recover, and so she wouldn’t rest until she could destroy all the beauty that crossed her path.

Now, before I get to the main point of this blog, I would like to teach a little lesson to all of my male readers entitled, “How to Stay Celibate for the Rest of Your Life.”  (If any of my male readers sense this to be misandrist, I promise equal time by composing a similar lesson to my female readers in a future blog.)

1.     When going out on the town with your girlfriend and her friend, make sure you tell them their ideas are dumb.

2.     If your girlfriend has a theory about someone being a dangerous person, and you don’t believe her, by all means let her test her theory on her own without any protection.

3.     If the aforementioned possibly dangerous person is a hypnotist, and your girlfriend, while unprotected and in his clutches starts to act weird, your first assumption should be she is just a flake and cheating on you, especially if your best friend, who is trained in hypnosis, has just told you that hypnosis is real and dangerous if in the wrong hands.

4.     By all means, let your girlfriend go alone with possibly dangerous hypnotist to her apartment.

5.     After you save her from being badly scalded at the hands of the villain who, for the record, knows where your girlfriend lives and most likely has hypnotic power over her, leave her alone at her apartment for the villains to come back and finish what they started.

However, if you then decide your girlfriend is really cute, and you don’t want to be celibate for the rest of your life, after you’ve unwittingly done everything in the preceding list, save your girlfriend from the villain and certain death in dramatic fashion and at great risk to your own life, because a well-executed daring rescue covers a multitude of male-pattern cluelessness.  (I’m just joking.  No man in real life would ever be this careless.)

So finally, the spiritual lesson (first presented to me in Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge):  we find ourselves in the pain and distress we are in because we have a powerful yet very crafty enemy.  Our enemy used to be God’s right hand and he was beautiful and dazzling by all accounts.  However, he got puffed up with pride, and was, therefore, stripped of his beauty, position, and power and cast out of Heaven.  Then, when God made man and woman in his own image and gave them authority over creation, Satan went into a frenzy.  He hated that he had lost so much, and so, like Justine, he decided if he couldn’t have those things back, no one else would get to enjoy them, either.  So he targeted the woman, the beautiful woman, the final act of creation and the image-bearer of the lovely, relational part of God, and he got into her head and planted the idea that God was holding out on her.  And he got into her head through a serpent, the most cunning, crafty, and slick of all God’s creatures, sort of like how Justine got to the women in the film through enchanting Desmond.  So what does she do?  She partakes of the only tree in the Garden of Eden forbidden by God, thinking it is an innocent piece of fruit, when in reality, she is digesting death, and mutilating her beauty, namely her innocence, eternal life, and relationship with God, her husband, and every other human she will meet.

Watching the movie, which I stumbled upon by accident, really helped drive some of this spiritual truth home and recognize how Satan still tries to rob us, and me as a woman of God in particular, of our beauty.  I needed to see a good analogy of how spiritual warfare plays out in every day life, because the only thing more confusing to me over the years than my relationship with God has been my relationship with Satan.  What I mean is that I’ve not always had a good grasp of who Satan is, how he operates, and what he wants from me.  The church I grew up in taught that Satan was the one who tempted us and made people in the Pentecostal church speak in tongues, but other than that, he was pretty much in permanent retirement.  Then the church I went to as a teenager believed that Satan was responsible for everything, and he has a demon for every occasion, like the spirit of fear, the spirit of infirmity, the spirit of talking too much, the spirit of always locking one’s keys in one’s car, etc.

1 Peter 5:8-9 says, “ Be well balanced (temperate, sober of mind), be vigilant and cautious at all times; for that enemy of yours, the devil, roams around like a lion roaring [in fierce hunger], seeking someone to seize upon and devour.  Withstand him; be firm in faith [against his onset—rooted, established, strong, immovable, and determined], knowing that the same (identical) sufferings are appointed to your brotherhood (the whole body of Christians) throughout the world.”

Matthew 26:41 says, “All of you must keep awake (give strict attention, be cautious and active) and watch and pray, that you may not come into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”

Satan messes with our minds, and like the women in the movie who destroyed themselves at the command of the villains, we let him into our heads when we let our guard down, when we miss Satan because he’s wearing a handsome or clever disguise that lulls us into his confidence.  He can’t make us do anything we don’t want to do, and we are also tempted by the world and our own sinful desires.  Make no mistake, though, that his mission is clear and his tactics are underhanded, and he preys on the weak, the hurting, and the spiritually sleepy.  He looks at us and sees the Beauty of God, the reflection of his image, which he can never get back, and he wants to destroy it by any means necessary.

I suffer from chronic sleep problems, so I know very well how susceptible I am to temptation when I am not well rested physically or mentally.  Keeping vigilance over my spiritual well-being is paramount, more so when I am feeling fatigued or hurt or whatever.  I have let Satan into my head and into my heart for too long, so much so that I have lost sight of who I am and in whose image I was made.  No more.  I won’t let Satan steal from me through deception what he pridefully and willingly discarded.  From this point forward, I shall remain alert, attentive, and awake.

 

The End

MILK!!!!!!!

The Sinister Side of Christmas by Sharon Lurie

© 2011 David's Harp and Pen

Mood: Somber
 
DISCLAIMERS: This blog is based, in part, upon actual events and people. Certain actions and characters have been dramatized and fictionalized, but are inspired by true events and real people. Certain other characters, events, and names used herein are entirely fictitious. Any similarity of those fictional characters or events to the name, attributes, or background of any real person, living or dead, or to any actual events is coincidental and unintentional, so I don’t want to hear from any greeting card companies, candy makers, electronics manufacturers, or toy stores accusing me of ruining the Christmas spirit and cutting into their Yuletide profits.  Just because I am being slightly grouchy calling for greater introspection doesn’t mean I don’t still wholeheartedly endorse the giving and receiving of big, extravagant Christmas gifts.

Hello.  My name is Sharon Lurie, and I’m a grinchaholic.  (And the entire blogosphere responded with a hearty, “Hi, Sharon.”)  In all seriousness, I don’t have a lot of happy memories of holidays past.  I don’t normally talk about it, because I don’t always get the most helpful of responses, especially when I say how little I have enjoyed the mother of all holidays: Christmas.

My Christian friends tell me that Christmas is all about light, love, joy, family, gift-giving, yada-yada-ya and I need to change my attitude and be all jingle-bellish.  My Jewish friends, Messianic and non-Messianic alike, tell me I shouldn’t celebrate Christmas because it has pagan origins, tree worship is punishable by stoning, etc.  My atheist, agnostic, secular humanist, and religiously-disgruntled friends tell me that Christmas is a secret plot of capitalists and right-wing conspirators to wipe out the middle class by saddling them with unnecessary debt in the name of celebrating the birth of a person who may not have existed.  So, I have avoided the subject, and done everything I could to fight the Christmas funk, from travelling for the holidays to therapy to cooking dinner for the homeless.  In recent days, however, I have witnessed a level of hopelessness among friends and strangers towards the approaching holiday I have never seen before.  Many people I have talked to are ashamed to admit how much they hate this time of year because of the rebukes they receive from Christians who tell them to “stop being a Scrooge.”  I know how deep it runs for some, having worked the prayer phone hotlines on the holidays in the past, when the suicide calls are at their highest, and hearing the despair the holiday causes.  Therefore, for the sake of all of those who feel more alone this time of year than any other, I share my story.

I have for many years associated Christmas with tension and loss.  Romantic relationships going terribly wrong.  Having to deal with people who may or may not be related to me by blood or marriage who, for whatever reason, enjoy ruining Christmas, holidays, birthdays, and any kind of special events by starting fights or staging international incidents.  People I love dying.  Or just having to be alone at a time when community and family are celebrated.  For example:  Christmas 1996.  I was in a car wreck three days before Christmas that totaled my car and left me with a busted knee and a concussion.  My boyfriend at the time took care of me and we spent Christmas Day together.  The next day, he dumped me with no explanation.  Unfortunately, this was one of my more enjoyable Christmases.  So, over the years, I have just stopped talking about how unhappy Christmas has been for me, because talking about it seldom brought comfort but rather ridicule from those who, nine times out of ten, never had any tragedy or loneliness associated with the holidays.  This year, I have lost five friends and loved ones—including my mom—and so as Christmas has approached, I have felt both the sadness of the losses leading up to the holiday season, and the isolation from feeling that I was wrong for feeling so grief-stricken at a time of year that is such an emotional high for most Christians.  Then I read something that showed me my melancholy wasn’t as inappropriate as I thought.

In the book Waking the Dead, author John Eldredge talks about the spiritual battle every believer faces.  He emphasizes that believers are often painted an incorrect picture of the Christian life; we are told that all will be smooth sailing if we follow God.  In regards to Christmas, he says we are too often presented with the Gospel accounts of a sleepy Jewish town and a quaint, picture-perfect birth of the Savior, when in fact, what actually happened was more along the lines of what we read in Revelation 12:

“AND A great sign (wonder)--[warning of future events of ominous significance] appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and with a crownlike garland (tiara) of twelve stars on her head.  She was pregnant and she cried out in her birth pangs, in the anguish of her delivery.  Then another ominous sign (wonder) was seen in heaven: Behold, a huge, fiery-red dragon, with seven heads and ten horns, and seven kingly crowns (diadems) upon his heads.  His tail swept [across the sky] and dragged down a third of the stars and flung them to the earth. And the dragon stationed himself in front of the woman who was about to be delivered, so that he might devour her child as soon as she brought it forth.  And she brought forth a male Child, One Who is destined to shepherd (rule) all the nations with an iron staff (scepter), and her Child was caught up to God and to His throne.  And the woman [herself] fled into the desert (wilderness), where she has a retreat prepared [for her] by God, in which she is to be fed and kept safe for 1,260 days (42 months; three and one-half years).

Then war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels went forth to battle with the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought.”

Not the kind of imagery one finds on a Christmas card or in the yearly church Christmas cantata.  On the off chance the aforementioned tale doesn’t jump off the page to you, the reader, let me paraphrase:

“A young woman, full of promise and loved by God, is expecting a child.  She is all alone, except for the hope she has carried inside her for nine long months.  The time to deliver has come, the time of expectation that everyone says to her should be the happiest time of her life.  But it’s not, because the Enemy, that Thief of Hearts and Destroyer of Dreams is standing by, ready to snatch the object of her hope and all she holds dear before she even has the chance to hold it in her arms.  As the birth pangs overtake her, she watches helplessly as the Dragon polishes his fangs and licks his chops.  The merciful thing to do would be to devour her first, and spare her the anguish of having to watch her only child’s life be so cruelly snuffed out.  However, the Dragon cares little for mercy.  He not only wants to destroy the girl and her child, he wants it to hurt in the worst way possible.”

The first Christmas was bloody, full of strife, anguish, loss, and uncertainty.  While most of us have never faced a literal fire-breathing dragon for the holidays, some of us can relate to the emotions behind the story.  Losing everything precious to us suddenly and without warning.  Having grief stacked upon grief until it all topples down, crushing the bereaved in its suffocating wake.  Feeling inconsolable during what should be a time of joy and expectation.  Bracing ourselves for a fight that could break out at any moment.  This is the backdrop of Christmas.  This is how the Savior of all mankind entered the world.

Jesus wasn’t qualified to be our High Priest, the One Who could sympathize with us in our weaknesses, sorrows, and struggles, until He lived a human life.  It’s comforting to think that He was willing to and did experience everything I have, including crappy holidays.

For the first time since I became a Christian, I am looking forward to Christmas, even though I have lost more this year than in all the previous 25 years combined.  And for those who have shared my lack of Yuletide sentiment, I offer this:  all that advice to be happy for Christmas because it’s all about twinkling stars, gracefully falling snow, so on and so forth, is hogwash.  On the contrary, the reason to have joy in this season is because that first Christmas was so awful.  We talk about all Jesus bore on the cross for us, but the truth is He bore our sins, sorrows, brokenness, and disappointments from the moment He entered this world as one of us.  That, beloved ones, is the sinister side of Christmas, and that is the view of the season we should choose to embrace.

The End

MILK!!!!!!!

The Beautiful Debris by Sharon Lurie

© 2012 David's Harp and Pen

Mood:  Artsy

DISCLAIMERS: This blog is based, in part, upon actual events and people. Certain actions and characters have been dramatized and fictionalized, but are inspired by true events and real people. Certain other characters, events, and names used herein are entirely fictitious. Any similarity of those fictional characters or events to the name, attributes, or background of any real person, living or dead, or to any actual events is coincidental and unintentional, so I don’t want to hear from any visual artists who think I am in any way poo-pooing their craft.  In fact, if you are able to support yourself from selling murals comprised of torn construction paper or taking black and white photographs of cow patties, then more power to you.

Growing up, I spent a lot of time in art galleries and art museums, most of the time against my will.  Even though I come from a long line of culture aficionados, I neither appreciated nor enjoyed being dragged to the latest exhibits by family or school officials.  At the time, I didn’t give it much thought.  However, on a recent whim, I decided to visit The Frist Center for the Visual Arts, and the reasons behind the aversions to the visual arts of my youth became abundantly clear.

The headlining exhibit that day was Creation Story: Gees Bend Quilts and the Art of Thornton Dial.  The works of Mr. Dial and the quilters of Gees Bend are classified as “vernacular art,” the definition of which is a genre of art and outdoor constructions made by untrained artists who do not recognize themselves as artists (http://www.TheFreeDictionary.Com/Vernacular+Art).  A word that kept coming up in Mr. Dial’s exhibits that I’d not heard before was “bricolage.”  Once again, according to The Free Dictionary, bricolage is “something made or put together using whatever materials happen to be available” (http://www.thefreedictionary.com/bricolage).  The Gees Bend quilters used scraps of worn out and discarded clothing to make their quilts, whereas Thornton Dial used garbage like discarded furnishings and electronics to make his enchanting abstractions.  I found myself getting lost in display after display of recycling at its finest, and how each artist took things that were jagged, ugly, and repugnant on their own, and weaved them together into something hauntingly beautiful.  My mind suddenly drifted back to museum outings in times past, and the allure of this current excursion began to make sense.

I had always viewed much of the visual arts as an elaborate brand of pretending.  Much of the paintings and sculptures I remember seeing as a kid were of people, places, and things that didn’t exist.  As I grew up and witnessed new movements of artistic expression become popular, I would get annoyed at the things that passed for art and sold for lots of money, things that, in my eyes, required no more talent to create and weren’t any more intricate than a tic-tac-toe board.  Stemming partially from the fact that, though I came from a visually artistic family, all the visually artistic genes had passed me by, it angered me to see some of the things that were called art that, in my mind, were anything but.  As far as I was concerned, most of the modern art was a horrid illusion, a pretending to be something it was not on a grand scale.

My family fought a lot when I was younger.  I got bullied a lot in school by the other kids and sometimes, by the teachers.  On the many trips to the art museum, however, we pretended, just like the portraits and sculptures on display.  We pretended we were a cultured family in which everyone got along.  My classmates pretended they were quiet, well-behaved, and accepting children who treated all the other kids kindly and fairly.  It was nothing more than white-washing, however, and a mode of make believe that evoked all sorts of inner distress for me.  Though I am a writer, and creating fantasy is part of my trade, I prefer those illusions that don’t pretend for a second to be real.

I made several rounds of the Creation Story exhibit.  I started crying a few times and hid in the hallway, not wanting to make a spectacle of myself.   Those quilts and those murals had struck a nerve, a very deep one.  I am like one of the bedspreads from Gees Bend and one of Thornton Dial’s sculptures.  I am comprised of overused and overworked clothing, jagged edges, and other emotional bric-a-brac that, in the eyes of the world, have lost their usefulness.  I desperately need to know that the shattered and discarded shards of my spirit can be reassembled into something winsome, if placed in the right hands.  I have no use for illusions of comeliness that would take the darker hues and cover them up with a bright, yet poorly applied paint job.  I have to believe that every scrap is redeemable, and to the Master Artist and Potter, every broken thing is not only beautiful, but a necessary and indispensable part of the portrait.

The End

MILK!!!!!!!

A Different Mirror by Sharon Lurie

© 2012 David's Harp and Pen

Mood:  Lovely

DISCLAIMERS: This blog is based, in part, upon actual events and people. Certain actions and characters have been dramatized and fictionalized, but are inspired by true events and real people. Certain other characters, events, and names used herein are entirely fictitious. Any similarity of those fictional characters or events to the name, attributes, or background of any real person, living or dead, or to any actual events is coincidental and unintentional, so I don’t want anyone to think I am advocating regular bathing in supermarket restrooms.  I must add, though, if you must take a bath in a public restroom, make sure there is a strong lock on the door and no security cameras installed.

John Eldredge said in many of his books that the three basic needs of women are to be fought for, to share in a grand adventure, and to unveil beauty.  I don't know a woman alive who doesn't struggle with the last one.  We are constantly bombarded with images of what physical, intellectual, and emotional beauty are supposed to look like, both from Christian and secular sources.  It is so easy to get caught up in the hype and fanfare.  I am sorry to admit I have spent too much money on beauty products, self-improvement books, and seminars that promised beauty and confidence but only delivered a greater sense that not only was I missing the mark, I had no hopes of ever hitting it.  And that only adds to the message that I am not beautiful, as Satan continues his battle against me and womankind at large:  to tell us we're ugly, overweight, unnoticeable, unlovable, and not enough.  Oftentimes, I have tried to combat those lies by going on diets and extreme exercise regimes, reading certain books, and taking courses on how to be a witty and engaging conversationalist and walk and chew gum at the same time.  The other day, however, God decided that the way to show me how to unveil beauty was a trip to the supermarket.

A while back, I had planned to see the movie "Blue Like Jazz" with a friend.  That particular week had been very warm, and so my hair was a bit on the slick side.  When I woke up and turned on the bathroom faucet, nothing came out.  A quick call to the landlords, who then called the water company, revealed that our water supply was going to be out for a few days due to "technical difficulties."  I went to another faucet and extracted just enough water to wash my face and brush my teeth.  I then sprayed myself down in aerosol deodorant, and brushed my hair about a thousand times to diminish the Crisco look as much as I could.

I left the house to head to the restaurant where Friend and I were to eat before the movie.  On my way there, I drove over not one but two different pieces of metal, getting a flat tire.  I'd already gotten five flat tires in the previous eight months, and I started to wonder if my wheel assemblies were magnetically charged.  The good news was Discount Tires said my tire would be replaced for free under the road hazard warranty.  The bad news, however, was there wasn't a Discount Tire in all of Tennessee that had the size tire my car needed.  So, they had to install the wrong size tire temporarily to get me on the road.

I still managed to get to the restaurant in the nick of time to meet Friend.  Now, I'm not going to mention the name of the restaurant, because I don't want to embarrass them with what I'm about to tell you.  Therefore, I will simply refer to them as Noshey's.  We went to Noshey's because, in celebration of their 65th anniversary, they were selling ⅓ pound burgers for 65¢.  This was a big deal, and so the place was packed.  Noshey's has a mascot called the Noshey Bear.  The Noshey Bear was making his rounds to all the kids in the restaurant.  I was busy talking to Friend about football and politics.  Then, as the Bear walked by, he slowly dragged his right paw across the back of neck, pushing my hair off to the side as he went.  It made me very uncomfortable, to say the least.

After we finished dinner, we got to the theater and headed for the popcorn stand.  I had a theater gift card, a coupon for a free drink, and a coupon for $2 off popcorn, so Friend and I would snack like kings during the movie.  He grabbed the popcorn and I grabbed the soda.  When we approached the usher stand where the tickets are torn, I squeezed the soda cup too tightly and sent Diet Coke flying up through the straw and all over my shirt.  I stopped short to stop the deluge, and when I did, Friend rammed into my back, spilling the buttered popcorn on himself, my back, and the floor.

Nothing else weird happened that evening, but that same stinking feeling I had felt so often as of late rested on me like a dark cloud.  I hadn't felt beautiful in a long time, and except for God, no one was telling me I was, either.  After all, it's hard to feel beautiful when I am the girl always getting flat tires.  It's hard to feel lovely when I am always the girl with the vershtunken hair, which is vershtunken because something weird happened to prevent me from washing it.  It's hard to feel captivating covered in butter and soda, in addition to the buttery, frizzy hair.  It's very hard to feel prized when so often, of all the people the Noshey Bears of the world could've chosen to get weird with, he seems to regularly choose me.

On my drive home, one of my dear single girlfriends and fellow writers sent me a text message that said, "If any man is in Christ, he is a new creation.  The old is passed away.  Everything has become new."

I have heard that verse ever since I became a Christian, but to be honest, I didn't feel very new.  Because of the events of that day and the previous three years, I was sure I didn't look new in any sense of the word.

On my way home, I stopped at Kroger to get a Delancey Street bath.  I locked myself in the ladies room, and as I was about to wash off my makeup, I looked in the mirror.  I don't know what it was about the mirror; it wasn’t a big or special mirror by any means.  Maybe it was because I usually only used my own bathroom's mirror.  I looked at my long, brown unwashed hair.  I looked at my body and the 44 fewer pounds I had compared to three years ago.  For the first time since I had gotten so sick in 2003, I didn't see a bloated, socially awkward, hormonally-imbalanced, greasy, vershtunken basket case.  Instead, I saw a beautiful woman, crafted in loveliness in the very image of God, who promises to make everything beautiful in its time.

I have been looking at myself a lot differently since that day.  As I have pondered the events of that evening, I realized that I must be particular about the mirrors I use.  The world and the church are of full of the proverbial fun house mirrors that seek to distort and condemn the images of those of whom God said at the end of creation, "It is good."  I have to be diligent to avoid the mirrors that would say that the divine image I reflect is repulsive or somehow not enough.  Mirroring the words the Beloved spoke to his Lover all those millennia ago, God tells his daughters, "O my love, you are beautiful!  There is no flaw in you!"

I have a new mirror, and it shouts to my spirit that my time to be beautiful has finally come.

The End

MILK!!!!!!!

The Sound of Silence by Sharon Lurie

© 2012 David's Harp and Pen

Mood: Quiet

DISCLAIMERS: This blog is based, in part, upon actual events and people. Certain actions and characters have been dramatized and fictionalized, but are inspired by true events and real people. Certain other characters, events, and names used herein are entirely fictitious. Any similarity of those fictional characters or events to the name, attributes, or background of any real person, living or dead, or to any actual events is coincidental and unintentional, so I don’t want to hear from any extroverts or extroversion advocacy groups who still insist that introversion is a psychological disorder.  For once, let us introverts have our moment to shine.  After all, you extroverts already outnumber us three to one, so if world domination isn’t enough for you, I don’t know what is.

My name is Sharon, and I talk too much.  I didn’t always talk too much.   When I was a kid, I was notoriously quiet, so much so that my teachers would often mark me absent when I wasn’t, simply because they never heard a peep out of me and I liked to hide in the back of the classroom.

Trying to fade into the background and not be heard became a pattern I continued through ninth grade.  I always felt more comfortable writing than speaking, and I would become incredibly nervous if I had to hold more than one conversation at once.  At the time, I couldn’t explain to you why any of this was so, except I went to rough schools with scary classmates.

When I started tenth grade, I changed schools and, all of a sudden, found myself well liked and in possession of a sense of humor that could leave my school pals and teachers in stitches.  That was the beginning of the bad habit.  Talking too much, that is.  Although often criticized, I found talking too much to be more acceptable socially than being too quiet.  After all, there are plenty of things in our culture that reinforce that notion that quiet is bad:

• Quiet and solitude are often used as punishment.  How often in school are naughty children punished by being asked to be perfectly quiet and remain totally still for extended periods of time?  Or, when we’re mad at someone, we decide to punish him or her by giving him or her the silent treatment?
• Quiet is seen as a sign that something is amiss.  How many times, when someone is silent, do those around the person usually remark, “What’s wrong?  You’re so quiet.”
• Quiet is seen as a mark of cowardice or lack of intelligence.  Messages are screamed everywhere from the marketplace, the social network, and the pulpit that we must let our voice be heard and be aggressive communicators.

My programming to hate silence continued into my early 20s, which was when I first heard the term introvert.  The definition I first heard for it was that it was a person who was shy, withdrawn, isolated, and didn’t like to talk.  Oh, and it was also a social disease, not much unlike narcissism or being an Oakland Raiders fan.  So, I got the message that being a good woman, and a good Christian, and not looked at as crazy, meant I needed to be more out-going, a witty conversationalist, and be able to express an intelligent and cogent opinion on anything and everything on a moment’s notice.  In other words, I needed to be an extrovert.

In recent days, my disdain for mindless chatter and the pressure I felt to be a smooth and constant talker came to a head because of the following:

1. I read a book called The Introvert Advantage by Marti Laney.  Written by an introvert, she did a lot to expose the myths about introversion.  (For a great summary of the book, check out this article.)  It was nice to see written out some of the things I had trouble verbalizing.  For starters, it’s not that introverts don’t like to talk, but that they need a reason to talk, and get flustered when forced to make small talk, which was always the case with me.  Second, introverts do better writing than speaking because the neural pathways in the introverted brain access the written language center more quickly and more easily than the brain’s spoken language center.
2. A conversation I had with Jedi(tor).  He brought up the fact that nowadays, most everything we say and do is recorded, particularly when it comes to social media and networking.  I thought about all the nonsense I have said on Facebook, mostly from the compulsion to be witty and outspoken, and I was afraid.  Very afraid.
3. A quote I read that is attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt.  “Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people.”  I realized how for so long I have yearned for deep and meaningful conversation but too often get caught up in the drudgery of current events or malicious gossip.  In other words, mindless chatter that drains my soul instead filling it.

I went for a walk in the park behind my house the other night.  My mind was full of anxious thoughts and all the vain and idle words I had wasted because I was trying to be something I’m not.  It seems everywhere I turn, I hear the message that if I really love God, I will be bold and outspoken about my faith.  After all, God is calling all of us to be a voice to our generation, but what good is it if my voice doesn’t roar?  However, experience has shown that the louder I get, the more distorted I sound.

I sat down under a tree and looked at the park in the pond as the sun was about to set.  My heart was uneasy because of the struggle within me over what I had been told by society and the church versus what the still small voice of the Holy Spirit was trying to say.  Suddenly, verses, which I knew very well, began to flood my mind:

• Psalm 46:10 “Let be and be still, and know (recognize and understand) that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations! I will be exalted in the earth!”
• James 1:19 “Understand [this], my beloved brethren. Let every man be quick to hear [a ready listener], slow to speak, slow to take offense and to get angry.”
• Isaiah 30:15 “For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning [to Me] and resting [in Me] you shall be saved; in quietness and in [trusting] confidence shall be your strength.”
• Proverbs 10:19 “In a multitude of words transgression is not lacking, but he who restrains his lips is prudent.”

All these verses were talking about the virtues of silence and the dangers of mindless speech.  As I meditated on God’s words to me, I noticed the beautiful reflection in the pond of the surrounding greenery and the darkening sky.  After a few seconds, something blew into the water, causing a ripple effect, which proceeded to distort the aforementioned view of the park.  And there was my answer:  the water best reflected its surroundings when it was quiet and still.  Likewise, I best reflect and display the beauty, majesty, and presence of God when I am quiet and still.  Not to say that I don’t talk or let my voice be heard, but rather seek more to be silent so that God’s voice can be heard through me.  That is how he designed me.  That God-given silence is, indeed, a beautiful sound.

The End

MILK!!!!!!!

Always Late, If Ever by Sharon Lurie

© 2012 David's Harp and Pen

Mood: Ready

DISCLAIMERS: This blog is based, in part, upon actual events and people. Certain actions and characters have been dramatized and fictionalized, but are inspired by true events and real people. Certain other characters, events, and names used herein are entirely fictitious. Any similarity of those fictional characters or events to the name, attributes, or background of any real person, living or dead, or to any actual events is coincidental and unintentional, so I don’t want to hear from any self-help gurus or life coaches who claim I am trying in any way to justify or condone procrastination.  Believe me, if there were any way to make procrastination useful or profit from it, I would have found it by now.

I just posted a blog entitled Good Enough.  I am always surprised at the way certain things that I write strike a cord with readers.  From the comments I received, I realized that the feeling of not good enough is something that we all grapple with in some form or fashion.  I discovered that I serve my readership best when I am honest and vulnerable about my struggles.  Therefore, I wanted to follow up with how that not good enough mindset feeds a terrible habit that we all have:  procrastination.

The reality is that we all procrastinate, and we tend to think that we procrastinate out of laziness or lack of desire to do something.  While that is sometimes true for me, that’s not always the reason I procrastinate.  I love writing and cooking and opening my home to others in hospitality, but I put off all those activities frequently.  I also like having a clean and orderly place to live, but I put off the cleaning and the organizing.  It’s not because I don’t want to do any of those things.  It’s because I let fear of doing those things wrong, particularly of not getting them right the first time, scare me from trying and ever getting started.

In the last year, I lost five friends and loved ones.  Whenever I lose someone close to me, I spend some time reflecting on the brevity of life and anything in my life, whether it be a thought pattern, attitude, or habit that may be hindering me from living life to the fullest.  In recent days, that hindrance has been procrastination, fueled by “not good enough.”  This week, I took a lot of time in prayer to pinpoint the root of it, because it had come to the point where not only was I putting off many things until later, I was putting some things off until never.

Part of it comes from where and how I was raised.  I grew up in New Jersey, just outside of New York City, one of the meanest places on Earth.  Because everything is so expensive, crowded, and fast-paced, people living there tend to be impatient, opinionated, blunt, and emotional.  I have witnessed some epic temper tantrums in my day, and as I look back some of things modeled to me as a kid by adults around me, I see a very dangerous underlying message.  Mainly, that the stakes for every little thing we do is super high, and so perceived failure of any degree is unacceptable, inexcusable, and irredeemable.  Because I was an introverted and overly sensitive kid, I became very scared of trying anything, because the punishment for failure always seemed so much greater than the punishment for not trying.  After being on the receiving end of some verbal tongue lashings from teachers, coaches, worship pastors, and youth pastors, I decided, subconsciously, that trying anything wasn’t worth it unless I could guarantee success on the outset.

Another part of it comes from the message that one must be fully prepared before embarking on such-and-such.  For example, writing.  I love to write, but something that scares me off from getting started is the message that I have to do all these other extremely time-consuming things in order to be in a place to be able to write.  Some of the writers’ websites I subscribe to have lengthy lists of what a writer should do on a daily basis to write well.  These lists include journaling, attending writers groups, reading famous authors to emulate what they did well, taking writing courses, reading so many blogs a day to know what’s popular in reading and literature, attend Yoga classes, buy all organic food and cook everything from scratch so as to provide my body with proper nourishment to stimulate my brain to be more conducive to the creative process, etc.  None of these things are bad, but when put together in a list and labeled as all the things I must do to be a successful writer, I start to feel overwhelmed, if for no other reason then to do all that stuff requires at least 50 hours a day, and I’m finding it hard enough to find time to simply write.

So, the aforementioned are why I’ve been a wuss and put off so many necessary, worthwhile, and enjoyable things.  I don’t want to continue this way.  Something had to change.  Sometimes, it just takes the right words from the right person to get started down the right path.

A fellow writer told me about a sports writing contest.  Whenever a writing contest or job offer comes up, I usually ask Jedi(tor) (or one or two of my other writer friends) what they think.  I’m sorry to admit that I often talk myself out of these contests and opportunities for fear of failure.  Any who, this was Jedi(tor)’s reply:  “My apologies for being blunt, but you asked what I think:  part of stopping being a chicken and getting your stuff out there may possibly mean not asking my permission to do something you want to do.  I say if you want to do it, do it.  I'll edit it, offer advice, and you can submit it.  Win or lose, I suggest you do what you can to learn from the experience, and go from there.”

Of course, he was right, especially the last part.  First of all, if we are believers and living for God, even our mistakes and failed first efforts are redeemable.  Second, most of what we consider to be failures only seem like failures at the time.  Even if we didn’t accomplish what we intended from the task, there is usually great knowledge to be gleaned from the experience.

After Jedi(tor) said what he said, I remembered the story of Jesus walking on water in Matthew 14.  Peter ventured out of the boat towards Jesus, but upon feeling the wind, he started to sink and had to have Jesus rescue him.  I remembered all the messages I had heard from the time I was little about getting things right the first time, messages that I let make me afraid to get started.  Most sermons that I hear about this story focus on the fact that Peter became frightened, took his eyes off Jesus, and almost drowned.  I don’t hear anyone say that Peter was the only disciple brave enough to even step out of the boat, or attempt to walk on water, especially in the midst of the violent storm raging at the time.  The big emphasis I have continually heard was he tried and he failed.  Then Jesus started speaking to me, and he said, “Sharon, Peter didn’t fail.  The others failed for never getting out of the boat.  If you’re stepping out of the boat in pursuit of me, you will always succeed, even in the midst of storms and distractions.  Even though Peter began to sink, he learned an important lesson about keeping his eyes on me, a lesson that has inspired millions of believers since.  Kind of like you inspire others when you blog about your struggles.  Don’t keep procrastinating to get out of the boat.  Write, and have company over, and start living.  Besides, if I kept Peter from drowning when he temporarily lost focus in pursuit of me, what makes you think I won’t save you from sinking, too?”

So there it is.  There are my marching orders.  I will write, even if in the beginning some of the finished products are, to use the proper literary term, stinky.  I will invite more friends over, even if Bruno is in the throes of his annual Shed-a-thon and I have to serve my guests something out of a can.  I have spent too much time putting everything off until tomorrow because I felt afraid and unprepared.  Tomorrow is today.  There is fun to be had.  There are people to encourage.  There are million-dollar-grossing New York Times bestseller list novels to be written, and so I must get started, if for no other reason then so I can finally pay my wise and invaluable editor what he is actually worth and get Bruno to the groomer.

The End

MILK!!!!!!!

The Drought by Sharon Lurie

© 2012 David's Harp and Pen

Mood: Wet

DISCLAIMERS: This blog is based, in part, upon actual events and people. Certain actions and characters have been dramatized and fictionalized, but are inspired by true events and real people. Certain other characters, events, and names used herein are entirely fictitious. Any similarity of those fictional characters or events to the name, attributes, or background of any real person, living or dead, or to any actual events is coincidental and unintentional…or is it?

Once upon a time, there was a young woman who owned a large field.  The field had an old well at the edge of it.  The property had been given to her as a gift from her beloved.  The beloved told her if she did what he said, her field would overflow with grain and produce, and she would never hunger or thirst again.

The beloved was the only family the woman had.  He was a kind and generous lover.  He would frequently come to the woman in the night and the two would talk and commune into the early hours of the morning.  In fact, the beloved only visited with the woman at night, and never when anyone else was there.  There was nothing good that the beloved withheld from the woman.

One year, as sowing time approached, a drought fell over the land.  The woman, as all those afflicted by the drought, labored and toiled under an unforgiving sun, but the lack of rain produced a substandard harvest.  Drought was nothing new to the woman, as it is an accepted part of life for those tied to the soil.  This year’s drought, however, seemed much more severe than in years past.  As night began to fall, after a long day of taking her produce to market, the woman sat at her table, counting and recounting the money she had received for her labors, a sum much less than what she’d hoped for when the planting commenced.  Suddenly, she felt a familiar hand on her shoulder, and when she turned to look, she saw the one for whom her soul longed.  She buried her face in his shoulder and cried, “I worked so hard!  I really needed this money!  There’s so much that needs to be done here, and I was counting on the harvest money to do it!”

“I know,” replied her beloved, as his strong hand gently wiped the tears from her eyes.

“Please tell me this is the end of the drought,” she whimpered as she looked into his piercing eyes.  The beloved, however, made no reply.

“How long?  How much more until we have rain?”  she implored nervously, for it was not like the beloved to hold back information from her.  Still, the beloved remained silent.

“A year?  Two?  What should I do?  Should I stay here?  Should I head elsewhere?  Why won’t you say anything?” she pleaded.

The beloved looked deep into the woman’s nervous eyes and answered, “The rain does its work and gives life to the land.  However, the drought has its place, too, and must do its full work before the rain can come.  The drought destroys all that is temporary, all those things that suffocate the promise of tomorrow for the pleasure of today.  You will not see me again until the rain comes.  In the meantime, my love, stay here, where we have built this life together.  Keep working the land, even in those moments when it seems futile.  Don’t water the field with any water except rain from the sky and the well at the end of the field.  Don’t be afraid to deplete the last of your storehouse.  I promise you that the next time you see me, I will bring rain with me.”

This was the last thing the woman wanted to hear.  Until that point, there hadn’t been any secrets between her lover and her, and she didn’t understand why the sudden mystery.  However, since she trusted him, and because he was her life, she knew whatever he promised would come to pass.

The time to sow again arrived quickly.  The season was a tiresome one for the woman.  The town elders predicted the drought would continue at least another year.  The water levels in the rivers and lakes began to fall, and the landscape slowly but surely turned from green to brown.  The woman labored tirelessly under the merciless sun, doing all she could to irrigate her field and slake the thirst of her unborn crops.  Despite her best efforts, the land yielded an even smaller harvest than the year before, and she began to wonder how long her field and she could go before she would have to dip into her savings and her food stores.  With all the heat and dehydration, the real heartache wasn’t the physical drought, but the emotional one, namely not getting to see her beloved.  She lay in bed into the darkest part of the night, wondering how things could become so bleak so quickly.  As sleep finally started to weigh down her eyelids, she heard a familiar voice whisper in her ear with the familiar, warm, reassuring breath, “I told you I will send rain.  I am not slow concerning my promises.  Just because you can’t see me doesn’t mean I have left.”

The woman’s eyes shot back open, and she sat bolt upright in bed, but as earnestly as she looked for her lover, all she could see were the waves of heat that had taken possession of the countryside.  She told herself again and again that her lover was trustworthy and she had nothing to fear.  And as the drought moved on into its third year, the woman would soon face her greatest test.

Making the effort to sow in the third year of drought seemed so futile.  Most of the perennial plants in the countryside were now dead or dying off.  With no sign of rain, and ever-increasing heat, what was the purpose of sowing?  The woman noticed that she had to let her bucket drop further and further into the well in order to get water.

The woman set about diligently plowing her field and planting the little seed she had left.  She didn’t want to think about what would happen when the seed ran out and the well finally ran dry.  The day came when she used up the last of her seed, and there was none more to be found in all the land.

Soon her neighbors began coming around, asking for seed and begging for food.  Because she trusted her lover, she freely gave of the last of all she had.  Despite her generosity, her neighbors, beleaguered from the extended season of drought, began to mock her.  Where is the rain, they would ask?  Why does your beloved delay, they would demand?  Why are you the only one who has ever seen him, they would protest?  The supplications for seed and food continued, and though she had no answers for her neighbors, she didn’t even want to entertain the thought that her lover and friend, all she had in the world, would let her down.  As she gave out the last of her food supplies, she whispered, “Lover, wherever you are, please send rain, and please bring food.  No one has ever understood our love and what we share, and that has never bothered me until now.  These people are suffering, as am I.  Please.  Show everyone here that you are real, and you will not leave the one you love to starve.”

The next day, the woman awoke to a sight for her drought-weary eyes:  rain clouds.  They were full and black and ominous.  Lightning and thunder crashed across the sky, and the woman waited with anticipation for the long overdue rain. 

And she waited. 

And waited some more. 

Not a single drop of rain fell.  She went to bed hungry and heavy-hearted, but hopeful that surely the sky would soon yield its fruit, and rain would fall on the land again at last.

The following day, the woman arose early and went outside.  The clouds were still there, as was the chill in the air.  Still no rain.  The land was still dry as a bone.  One by one, her neighbors came around to the house, telling about the storms and downpours that fell upon their farms.  The woman was puzzled as to why it was raining everywhere except on her field, especially since the storm clouds continued to gather.  She thought surely the clouds wouldn’t hold out on her much longer.  That evening, she lay in bed awake for several hours, hoping to hear the sound of falling rain over the sound of her empty stomach growling.

“Why the clouds but no rain?  Why does the sky tease me thus?” she thought to herself.  A rattling at her front door interrupted her thoughts.  She quickly arose from her bed and ran to the front door.  When she opened it, she was startled to find a basket filled with bread, fruit, and vegetables.   On the handle was a note from her beloved.

“Be anxious for nothing.  Do not grow weary in well doing, for in due time, you will reap a reward.”  She looked around in the night, but her lover was nowhere to be seen.

Another week passed.  Storm clouds, but no rain.  Everyone else had rain except her.  Her well was about to run out.  She was getting desperate.  Even with the basket of food at the door, she thought for sure her friend was angry with her.  One of her neighbors who had experienced consistent rainfall since the clouds appeared offered her some of his rainwater.  Her neighbor was handsome and friendly, and there was always something very pleasant in the way he spoke, although it seemed disingenuous to the woman at times.  Perhaps the loneliness and bewilderment were becoming too much for her.  She began to wonder if maybe she hadn’t heard her beloved correctly.  She thought surely, with the extremity of the situation, her beloved couldn’t have meant that she couldn’t try anything else to keep herself and her animals hydrated.  Besides, her comely neighbor seemed genuinely concerned about her well-being.  So, telling herself that her lover would certainly understand, she walked to her barn to gather up her cisterns.  Upon entering the barn, she discovered to her dismay that every last one of them had a hole in the bottom.  She fell to the ground sobbing.  As she covered her face with her hands, she heard that familiar whisper again as it asked, “Why?  Why do you worry?  Why do you make for yourself cisterns that can’t hold water?  Are my hands cut off?  Would you suddenly make a liar out of me?”

As in all the times she’d heard his voice since the drought started, she looked up to follow its source, but there was no sign of him.  She slammed her hand hard on the barn door and answered back, “Why would you make a liar out of me?  I have told all my neighbors that you are real, that you keep your promises, that you love me, and that you will not forsake me or leave me begging for bread.  I am the one trusting you, I am the one who has given myself to you and you only, yet you have not withheld your rain from anyone except me!  Why the clouds with no rain?  It’s like you’re saying I am doing something wrong, that I am holding up the works, but you won’t tell me what it is!  You are not the one being made a mockery of here!  I am!”

Twenty days the raven-toned clouds hovered over her field.  Twenty days the entire countryside got rain except her.  Twenty days her neighbors came to her home, some to inquire at the strange turn of events, and some just to mock her.  Why had she no rain?  Why did she continue to refuse water from anywhere except the sky and her own well?  Was the word of her beloved worth dying of thirst?  Twenty days she had nothing to say in reply, so she held her peace.  Surely the rain would come soon, she kept telling herself.

The woman awoke on the twenty-first day with great expectations, only to have them dashed as she exited her front door.  The clouds were gone.  The sky was clear.  The land was dry.  The heat was tortuous.  The sun was scorching.  Her heart was broken.  She gathered her strength for the moment and ran to the well.  She lowered her bucket until she heard it clank at the bottom.  Then she raised her bucket back up.  Completely dry.  Not one drop of water.  She screamed at the top of her lungs, dropped the bucket, and ran to the edge of her desolate, sun-singed field.  Then she fell the ground, beat the barren earth below her and cried, “Why, lover?  Why?  I did everything you told me to do.  I didn’t take from another’s well.  I waited and waited.  I gave until I couldn’t give anything else.  The three years of drought were bad enough, but to have the clouds and no rain is more than I can bear.  I trusted you!  I waited and waited for you!  I let myself be a fool to everyone I know because of you!  For twenty days the clouds have danced in front of my eyes as if to tease me for ever trusting you in the first place!  And you’re still gone!  You are gone, my food is gone, my seed is gone, and my well, the last of everything I had, is dried up!  What did I do?  How did I fail you?”

The woman sobbed and convulsed in the dry heat and the full weight of three years of anguish and desperation poured out of her.  She stretched out her hand to grab a handful of earth when she felt a cool drop on her finger, followed by another.  And another.  She turned her gaze upwards, but still saw the same tireless sun and the same waves of heat distorting the sky.  She closed her eyes as tightly as she could, thinking perhaps she was hallucinating.  The tiny cool drops of water increased in frequency and intensity upon her skin.  She opened her eyes and again looked towards the sky, but still no clouds.  She wondered to herself how it could be raining with no clouds and with the sun so bright.  But before she could think about it too long, the rain began to fall in torrents and sheets.  She picked herself and ran as fast as she could to the house.  As soon as she was inside, she ran to her window to witness the curious sight.  She looked out on the edge of her property to see her neighbors gather, they, too, dumbfounded at the odd, mystical sun shower.

The cloudless rain fell for twenty minutes, one minute for each of the preceding days of rainless clouds.  As the twenty-first minute approached, a strange, thundering boom arose from the ground.  In the blink of an eye, the woman’s field began to bloom and sprout, as if an entire growing season had been accelerated into a single day.  Fruits, grains, and vegetables of every stretch of the imagination shot heavenward, yielding the largest fruit and the tallest grain anyone had ever seen.  The woman’s neighbors, amazed at the phenomenon, rushed towards the fruit trees and began to pick the magical fruit.  Her neighbors filled their pockets and whatever they had with all the fruit of the field until they couldn’t carry any more.  There was still enough left over to more than compensate what the woman couldn’t grow in the three preceding years of drought.

The rain continued, and the earth yielded its bounty, until the sun had finally set.  Never had the heat subsided.  Never had a rain cloud appeared.  Still shocked and amazed, the young woman ventured out to her well.  To her joy and wonderment, she found it filled to the brim.  The light of the full moon rose behind her so that she could see her reflection in the well.  Then she saw another reflection, that of the face that she had been longing to see for the last three years.  Her beloved leaned closely into her, with his lips close against her ear.  He wrapped his arms around her and said, “I kept my word.  I didn’t need clouds to make the rain.  I didn’t need seed to produce a harvest.  I didn’t even need your faith in me.  My grace was sufficient.  I can make streams in the desert and the most barren wastelands into overflowing springs.  You asked me to send rain so your neighbors would know that I loved you.  I sent rain so that you would know that I loved you.”

The beloved was never hidden from the woman’s eyes again.  Seasons of drought came again, but there was always plenty of water and food, not only for the woman, but for her neighbors and the creatures of the field, too.  The great drought had done its work, to make ready the land, and the woman, for the great rain.  And, oh, what a rain it was.

The End

MILK!!!!!!!