A day in the life ~ Navigating the Mad Giant

It hadn't started that well.

Saturday coming up for one-ish and we think we'll drop into 1 Fox in downtown jozi and poke our noses about, pick up a pint & pizza and that'd be a nice way to set up the rest of the weekend.

We'd circled around in the drizzly wet heading for a parking spot I knew which was good on busy weekdays and offered free parking if you drink at the Mad Giant.

Only no-one had said anything to the parking jockey and he nicked a twenty off me which annoyed her because CLEARLY there were empty bays outside the lot. And a misty off-on drizzly which didn't improve the mood as we walked past the empty bays down to the entrance. A girl doesn't like her hair getting frizzy before the weekend has kicked off.

So you can't blame Mrs T-Potts because she offered a moment's pause from the wet and if there're two things herself loves its books and flowers. Even if the books were leaning over a bit. It wasn't the books or the flowers that delayed us though ~ Tea pots, Tea sets. and teas, teas, teas everywhere. A quick moment to catch breath and warm fingers and toes and plunge on became a drifty "oh that's nice", "what about this" "I really can't afford ..." (~ wistfully, that one!) and it was a good 20 minutes before we stepped out to head to the Mad Giant and his inhouse brews and tables.

Looking up bits of sky were visible and the light much brighter, even though the clouds had deepened to black and steel. That was a warning sign, should've taken note!

Now, I really like the Mad Giant. Fridays the team'd trail down from the offices and fill the bar and tables with chatter and work-related stories, slag off the bosses and wipe the foam from the mouth as the brew sipped down. By the time we dispersed the stress of the working week'd be dissipated and its all become good.

You don't notice in that atmosphere that really, this is a fine dining place, with fine dining waitrons (hate that word!) and menus. Something that's glaringly obvious when the place is mostly empty and the fine waitrons are amusing themselves ~ well somewhere. Still and all it's a nice place to look at, the high ceiling, the copper vats and pipes, wooden counters and benches contrasting with the fine dining tables.

So by the time we'd done that, and decided the food hall across the way was the answer, those black clouds had closed off the sky and the light outside had dimmed. The sound of hail on a tin roof is very distinctive! and we knew as we stepped out under the afdak that we'd waited just a little too long.

So here we stand under that same afdak and think . . . "just a measly 3 meters or so from the warmth, the smells, the happy chatter in the food hall. Beers & Pizza! just 3 thundering meters away . . . " and then we lean back up against the wall. Soggy underwear and squelchy shoes? somehow just don't go that well with beer & pizza. The gods will be kind. We'll get there soon enough.

and so they were.
and so we did.

And as we sipped the beer and piled into the pizza the thought was also that here's something quite fine about standing under a sturdy tin roof with the hail clattering down, waiting for that moment when you can duck across skipping puddles and torrents and into that warm waiting space. There's nothing quite like beer & pizza to restore the blood-sugar level, is there? Time enough for a little Scientific Research!

Images all (c) Author (all rights reserved) Oct 20, 2018

The Fates: What lessons do the Ancient Greek Sisters have for us today?

The sisters ponder on and weave the tapestry of a life *1 Read from ... Lachesis Chlotho Atropos Conclusion

The Ancients believed the three Fates had roles at the start and ending point of their lives, and at the various crisis points. They were the mistresses of the mother thread in the life everyone, both gods and humans. Is there something to learn from it today? That's the topic of this blog post. Let's kick off with a brief summary of who they were. Looking at the image, we see

• Lachesis (the assigner, sitting at the back) she decided how long you would live for;
• Clotho (the spinner on the right, that's the thread of your life she's pulling on), Clotho spun the story of your life and intervened at critical moments in it; and
• Atropos ( on the left - the 'unturnable', preparing for the moment when she will cut off the thread) she also ensured that you never deviated from your fate.

Each of these women acted independently from the others, i.e. they could not influence each other's actions. No doubt, being women they likely gossiped about our foibles, but at the key points they acted on their own volition. No court of arbitration. No appeals. Dice rolled, wheel of fortune spun, now get on with it. You wish our leaders could act with that sort of firmness and decisiveness!

How might this work then? and what value did people get from the process? Why were they so accepting of it? Let's do a plain language, somewhat allegorical deep dive into it.

Lachesis

She had a rod which she used to calculate the length of your life. Your life would be spun on a spindle, so her measuring rod was used to determine how much thread is allocated to you. Think of it this way ~ every heartbeat is a stitch, and when all the thread is used up, your time has come.

Freedom from the fear of death
You might say that there doesn't seem to be much value in that! Not so. The ancients were very pre-occupied with the reality of death. Life was uncertain, and death or misfortune could strike at any time, from anywhere, without warning or mercy. Much like today, in fact ~ only we put it to the back of our minds. Modern life insulates us from death until it strikes those around us, and then we are overwhelmed by it. Thereafter it haunts us, a silent breathe on the nape of the neck.

Lachesis takes this most primal of fears away: this fear of dying. Since our days have been numbered, down to the last second, they were able to live life fully and without fear. You're going to die when you're going to die, whether you act with cowardice or courage, with honour or deceit, so you're free to live your life to its allotted span. At the end of your days you will be remembered for how you lived, and for nothing else. Your legacy is in your own hands. This is the promise of Religion expressed in a different way: both view death as a portal rather than as an ending. Both offer a means to immortality.

Having done her work she plays no more part in our lives: Easy job. Some goddesses have all the luck! Look at her up there with her chin in her hands, chatting about this or that while the other girls do the hard yards.

Clotho

She has skeins of twine with which to weave your life's story around the mortal thread. Not forgetting a spindle and a needle to do the weaving with.

Imagine it this way. You're living your life, and unbeknownst it's been recorded on a tapestry which can be seen by those who have sight of it - not mortal people, of course! but by those who'll judge you one day and call you to account. We have come to a Big Moment waiting on a Big Decision. Maybe your relationship with your partner has soured. Maybe chance has brought someone new into view, and temptation beckons. What to do? Well, let's see …. hmmmm. Divorce, that's an option. Murder. An Affair (sounds exciting!) Couples Therapy? Maybe do nothing (because doing nothing is a choice with consequences!)

Knowing you (as Clotho does, she's been weaving your life's story since birth!) she knows what you would do in the event of each decision, and so she weaves a different path for each choice: one that you will be fated to follow once you've made up your mind. Beware! The law of unintended consequences always applies. Clotho is also the Goddess of Chance. She (metaphorically speaking) spins a wheel of fortune and let's that influence her weaving. And so Murphy's Law was born . . . . .

Let's think about this for a moment. Your life now comes down to a cycle of issues and events that lead up to a decision point. It's your decision, no one else's. You could get someone else to decide for you, but again that's what you chose. Having made your choice you're committed to follow whatever transpires. Once begun Divorce follows its path. You can't undead your partner once the murder is done (or attempted.) There's a process waiting, with police, judges, jails and who knows what else. The affair, well that could go anywhere! And not all of it to your liking either. Doing nothing will most likely lead to a deepening of a poisonous relationship steadily souring two lives. More if there are children or other dependents in the equation. Maybe couples therapy would've been a good choice after all . . . committed couples therapy, that is.

You live your life, you're confronted with choices, make them and then you're on an irreversible path. Nothing much has changed in 5000 years, has it? To live well you must choose wisely. But wisdom is not given us, it is acquired through our life's choices and reflections: we are iron hoping to be forged into steel in the furnace of life.

Atropos

Atropos has a pair of shears, probably better to think of them as scissors, these days. They never had modern manufacturing plants. The modern Atropos probably dresses like a Goth and has a range of really cool scissors in her hand bag. And hates her parents & siblings (careful dears, those scissors have purpose!)

So what's her role then? Keeping the end in mind, once the length of your thread has run out, she makes sure to cut off any that might somehow have remained. She cuts off the thread and so ends your life's tapestry simultaneously drawing an end to your life.

She has other duties during your life. After her sister has woven the possibilities, Clotho steps away. Atropos waits until you choose and then cuts off the ends of the lives you chose against. These are your ghost lives, shadowy possibilities of might-have-beens irrevocably pruned and composted.

There is no value in the moment of cutting, the value comes later in self-reflection and awareness, if you choose to make it so. 

Wisdom begins here, because as we reflect on the lessons of our choices, and ponder our ghosted lives, so we start on our journey towards it. We come to understand that the Wisdom of our mentors and influencers are their stories partially realised in ours: the contexts of our own lives might differ, but human emotion, honour, morality and ethics and their opposites are eternal. To become wise we take the wisdom of the past and adapt it for the present, and then hand it on to the future.

So what is there to conclude?

That the process the Fates followed are a mirror of our own lives maybe?

How will your tapestry look, laid out at the end of days?

All your struggles and choices laid bare:
a legacy built from the ugliest clay in a life well lived,
or one torn down from a golden plinth?

We know and understand so much more, yet still our lives are woven under the influence of random chance and in the midst of mindless chaos, and here's the only difference between then and now: The Ancients had an external force to blame for how their lives unfolded. We can own our lives.

*1: Public domain image sourced from Wikimedia Commons

My grandmother said: Sorry? Three steps: the Mouth, Hands and Head

I'm Sorry - but am I really? Three steps to genuine forgiveness.

The Mouth, the Hands, the Head

We all learn it when we are very young: "I'm sorry Mommy!" "I'm sorry Daddy!"
And if you aren't saying saying it, then someone is saying to you "Say you're sorry now!"

What does it mean, all this saying sorry?
It's a sorry state of affairs that we don't look at the kernel of being sorry: Really, we want to be forgiven for something we did.  How to get forgiveness?. That's the crux of the matter.

Here's my Grandmother's take on it

After the umpteenth time of saying sorry (for the same old thing of course!) she took us kids aside and said:
"Look at me"!
"To be really sorry, you must remember the Mouth" (pointed to her lips) "the Hands" (clapping them lightly in front of her) "and the Head" (tapping her temples quickly). She then proceeded to explain:

The Mouth

The first thing you have to do to show that you are sorry for what you did is to say it out loud. Tell the person. As soon as possible. Its best to do it face to face, that works best of all because the other person  sees it, but sometimes it's not possible, so you send a message. And if you have left other people with the wrong impression with what you did, then they have to hear it too.

The Hands

Its not enough to say sorry.
We all know the phrase "Lip Service". Don't pay Lip Service:
Something is broken, its got to be fixed.
The hands are a symbol for that.
Spilled some coffee? Say sorry - and clean up the mess. Properly.
Spread some gossip? Say sorry - and now go to the people who you told the story to and tell them the truth. And say sorry to them for creating that bad impression.
Broken something? Say sorry - and fix it, or replace it, doing your level best to replace it with the same one.

The Head

But that's still not enough.
Why, you could be breaking someones cups, telling lies, using their stuff without permission and so on over and over again - would saying sorry work? Of course not. they would pretty soon get tired of it all.
No, the only way to show that you are truly sorry is to not do it any more.
In other words, you have to change your behaviour, and sometimes, even how you think.

So that's it.
You show that you are truly sorry by not doing it any more, and by talking and behaving in a different, better way.

And I remember it all by those three quick little motions she made, as she touched her lips, clapped her hands, and tapped the side of her head all the while repeating the Mantra "the mouth, the hands, the head"

The path to true Forgiveness is a 3 step process: and if you follow it, everyone will know that you are truly Sorry.

...

Arising: beyond body, belief, and into the meaning of it all

My Grandmother and knowing yourself, reaching towards your soul

Stephen Hawkins has plonked himself firmly on the side of Physics in the battle between pro- and anti- God Factions.
Of course, he assumes the constituent parts for Universes to evolve exist, so that knackers his argument too, as it begs the question where do those constituents parts spontaneously erupt from (his answer is nothing coming and going to nothing)? ... it's a circular argument that supports every opinion.
And, since it's a fight no-one can win, let's digress away from that and reflect on the steps that spiritual people might go through to become able to rise above the arguments.

When someone says to me "I don't believe in mourning" or "I don't believe in wasting my time pining over a relationship" I look askance and I look askancer. Because what I am really hearing is that this person is not mourning, or pining. Their feelings were never that deep about the missing person/object/pet/whatever in the first place. Belief has nothing to do with it; turns out their feelings were just plain shallow to begin with. Otherwise they would have to go through a period of mourning or pining or whatever. In the same way, atheists just don't need that communal religious thing, their religion is atheism. Go figure.

My Grandmother, who had a thing or two to say about a thing or two, was once put in the awkward situation of explaining life's progress towards God: a sort of phasing of the soul, as it were. Explain that to the under 8's. So this is what she said (as best I remember - although I paraphrase and use my own words … obviously …)

There are three stages to the liberation of the Soul.
The body, the idea, the spirit ~ that's pretty much as I understood it.

The Body 
We are born, she said, with what we are born.
So far so easy: If you believe that you have a Soul, then it is contained within your body, and what you've got is what you've got (despite the best efforts of Change Artists, be they stylists or surgeons!).
For example. If you have a bad temper, it's there, isn't going away. No amount of "get rid of your temper" is going to help. "Control your temper" now that'll work ~ if you keep trying sooner or later it will come under control. The message is: Learn to cope with your body, it's the base animal encapsulating you, and until you learn to master it, it masters you.

The terrible tragedy of Abusive/abused people is that their abusive/accepting natures have never been brought under control. They are both victims of their natures, and the villains too. (It seems that culture vs nature has plumped down on the nature side, which would have been satisfying for her had she lived. "In the blood" is more correctly phrased "in the DNA …")
Back to the point. Our Parents, Teachers, Friends, Society, and the rest *should* be helping us to learn the vital art of Coping with our bodies: their physical state, their natures and temperaments.

Until we have mastered our bodies, the animal natures will dominate.
When (and only when) we have mastered that, we are ready to tackle our …

Our Beliefs 
We are immersed in a myriad of interlocking belief systems: the backdrop to our lives and cultures. As a small sub-section include Religion, Nationality, Race, Gender, Language, Local custom, etc. etc. etc.
Where do we learn, take on these beliefs?

From wherever we were born to wherever we travel, of course.
They stream in early: Parents, extended Family, Teachers … in fact the same crowd who teach us to control our animal natures use these belief systems to be the agents of control. Since it worked the first time round, we naturally assume this is good too.
Here's a generalization: Most people accept beliefs blindly and are contained within them for most or all of their lives. What does it mean if you never challenge your beliefs? Necessarily, you remain in blind obedience of them. Maybe that's because it's the safest position to be in, vis-à-vis the communities you must interact with and survive in.
If you never challenge your beliefs, then you are the servant of them.
It seems to be a perfectly natural thing to challenge them. From late teenage to mid 20's, all of us, to a greater or lesser degree "rebel" against authority. To the degree that society lets us, to the degree that our upbringing supports it, to the degree that the spark in our breasts demands it, we challenge.
By the time we reach our early 30's most people are patterned into, have accepted the basic truth of, their belief systems.
For most, this is a lazy acceptance of the status quo.
For the rest, the journey can result in a radical change in belief systems.
And it can happen more than once too.
For those who have never contained their baser natures, the combination of a powerful animal nature and unchallenged beliefs is a monster that behaves outside reason. Sorry for them, sorrier for those under their sway …

So here's the important thing:  

• The best we can do about our animal natures is to learn to cope with them;
• We have the power to take on or let go the beliefs taught to us: they can be challenged, modified, discarded, assumed…

Once we have done that, we are ready to approach …

The Spirit, the Soul, the Meaning of Life 
In whatever way you would like to express it.
If there are Eternal Truths, if there is a God, it/they certainly do not need anyone to stand up for it/them. By definition, being omnipotent, it is beyond existence and time, is what was before the physics of Universes became possible.
So here we stand at a threshold. For those who truly believe, their belief systems are utterly immune from challenge. To be utterly immune from challenge requires a good deal of thought and introspection, and will only happen after the side tracking body has been dealt with, and the beliefs imposed accepted and rejected with conviction.
This is that point at which one can truly approach one's place beyond the Universe (which, after all, lives and dies and rebirths like anything else we know).
To approach God, whatever that might be, we must rise above the physical animal that is our container, the self serving beliefs that govern us, into a space where the mind and body is accepted and accepting of the search.
Wisdom, Spirituality, the meaning of it all, my old grandmother implied, will only be for those who have mastered their bodies, stripped and examined their beliefs, and are then ready to move forward into those Eternal Truths.
And for those who will come with, come with.
And those who do not, well their pain and fear will be a constant threat.
Its hard work, consumes that spark of life, and in ,most parts of the world - dangerous, to go beyond.

So, Back to Stephen Hawkins!

It’s not a new position for him, but it is a rather silly one – having no religion he is better off with pure Physics.

Truly spiritual people aren't concerned with the nature of the Universe, with whether a button initiated it, even whether it exists.

They are concerned with whether the infinitesimally small spark of life contained within themselves has a purpose, and having assumed that is the case, with how to fulfill it. And that is a far, far cry from evolution debates, after all.

In fact, got nothing to do with it …

 ______________________________
The images are from the Goddard Space Station:
© http://dayton.hq.nasa.gov/copyright.html
Top image: Image # PR00-07: Hubble Reopens Eye on the Universe
Bottom image: Image # : PR00-14 Galactic Silhouettes 

The difference between caring and just remembering

We used to send cards on birthdays and anniversaries because we wanted to show that we remembered.

These days, Facebook, eCards, etc etc, have made it all rather trivial. Can you be sure if you've really been remembered? Its just as likely to be the automated memory of Facebook (yet, yet ... note to my Facebook friends below :)). Anyone can do it, and everyone does. And we reply to all “Hey, thanks to everyone for remembering my <choose the occasion> it was really cool I love you all smiley face” Sheesh, the thanks can be as shallow as the remembering!

So these days going out and buying the card and putting your name to it lifts it from the “oh, yeah, click the button” to something that is a genuine "act of remembering". The act of buying is part of the act of remembering.

Home made cards and invitations ~ they hold a special place in the heart, don't you think?
Here is the true difference between remembering and caring. Its a truism that over time people forget what you said back in the day, they forget what you did at the time; but they never forget how you made them feel. Hand written and drawn cards make you feel special, and while the message inside is soon forgotten, the feeling of belonging in someone's heart endures.

Which finally brings me to this card: This birthday, as in so many before: I really did feel special :)
________________________________________
yet ... yet .. note to my Facebook friends ...

I love it that you post greetings on my wall, on birthdays and other special days ..
I love answering, I love it that sometimes we catch up and get together again ..
or maybe just reconnect .. that long distance recollection of what was, and might be again.
So don't stop doing it, because I won't either, this annual reaching and out touching across the virtual world is important, in its own, special way :)
____________________________________________

My Grandmother Said ... About Heaven and Hell, and souls as light as a feather

Grandparents are good with analogies
They have a way of explaining stuff - life, the universe and everything stuff - in a way that sticks with you for most of your life. Maybe its because they have had so many experiences, and also learned from others, and they have picked up the art of telling stories too, so these things together make it really easy to paint a picture that just makes sense.

So there we were, little people of 5, or 6, or 7, just back from Sunday School, and we are asking that age old question: "What happens when you die, Granny, how will we get to Heaven? Is it scary?"

So she tells us that Hell is like a big tall building with a fire escape on the side, and doors to go into each of the levels. Only, the building goes down into the ground, not up into the sky. And right at the bottom of the bottomest part, there is the door into the WORST part of hell, and as you go up the stairs to the next levels each level is a bit milder until you are as close to Heaven as a sinner can be, without quite getting there,

Got that picture in your mind?

Good.

Stairs all the way from the bottom to the top, and if you start at the bottom, why you can walk all the way to the top and go into any of the Chambers on the way up.

Only that would be rather silly, don't you think?

You'd want to just carry on going up, and go straight to Heaven, That would make MUCH more sense.

When you die, you find yourself down there in the depths of Hell, right at the bottom of the deepest pit.

Looking up, you can see the steps stretching all the way to the top, and the Shining Light of Heaven is there, clearly visible and waiting for you.

"Your body is heavy, but your Soul is as light as a feather" - that's what my Grandmother said.

And when a little baby or an innocent child dies, well, it doesn't have to do any climbing at all.

The heavy body is left behind, and that soul it just floats up and up and up all the way to the top like a feather on a breeze and before you know it the soul is safe in Heaven, no problem.

Now, what about the rest of us?

Well, when you are born, God gives you an invisible bucket.

It's quite light, and very strong.

Every time that you do something wrong, or tell a lie, or worse, God puts a pebble into your bucket.

Sometimes its a big stone, for really bad things (like stealing someones lunch at school, or being a bully) or maybe just a grain of sand for a really small thing, like stealing your sister's cookie when she wasn't looking... and another one for blaming Mr nobody for doing it. REALLY bad things - well you could end up with a whole lot of ROCKS in your bucket!

What happens if your bucket gets full. Well IF your bucket gets full, why then God is quite happy to give you another one. And another, and another, like that until one day you die and guess what?

You find yourself down there at the bottom of that bottomless pit, with nothing but a a staircase, the distant light of heaven, and all those buckets of sand and stone and rocks. Maybe even some BOULDERS if you have done some really HORRIBLE things. Lets not go there.

Here's what you have to do.

You have to carry those buckets, each and every one of them, from the bottom all the way to the top.

From Landing to Landing, past door after after door, you must make your way to the top.

"What happens if you grow tired, Granny, and the buckets are too heavy, and you just can't go another step further?"

Ahh Children, that's the thing.

You see, you have found your place of judgement, and you must go through the door on that landing, and go into the Hell that you have made for yourself, and wait and hope for Gods mercy on the day of Judgement.

"and is there any way to empty the buckets before you die?"

Well that's the cool thing about God.

For every act of Kindness, 

for every Good Deed,

For every time that you truly seek forgiveness (and stop doing that thing again!) -

For every one of those,

God takes out a whole handful of sand and stones and Rocks and pebbles.

And you must never forget, she said, that the suffering of the poor and the downtrodden is the greater because it seems never ending ~ so the handful is bigger there than elsewhere.

So the lesson is this - you can lighten the load easily - simply by being kind, seeking forgiveness, and doing the right thing always:

Because while bodies are heavy, souls are as light as a feather, and all you have to do to get Heaven is to keep your buckets empty, and then, well you will just float up as easy as can be.

Images of staircase by nouQraz and feather by Caro's Lines via Flickr

Russian Wedding Rings and the meaning of Love

This is a story that my mother told me when I was a very little boy, a story that mothers weave for their children. The symbolism of the 3 gold bands resonates across the years. At the end are some links you might find handy.

My father used to manage small hotels in the Free State when I was a little boy.
It was not common for people to stay there for any length of time, people just passed through going from one place to another: overnighting for at most a night or two.
Mostly they were travelling salesman, or people migrating from the big city to the coast, or vice versa.

I remember one couple very clearly, though. They were foreigners, and spoke in a rather strange tongue. And although she was a remarkably beautiful woman (I could see that, even though I was a very young boy) it was the strange ring that she had on her wedding finger that struck me the most.
It was actually 3 interlocking rings, a sort of a puzzle ring, and each ring a different colour of gold.
I asked my mother what it was. She told me it was a Russian wedding ring. "Oh", I said. "What's that?"
Well, in those far-off days, mothers never had the Internet to go to, and trekking off to the library to look things up in the Encyclopaedia was not going to answer the question for a persistent little boy!

So she did the next best thing, which was to tell me a story.
Years later, I looked up Russian wedding rings on the Internet. I learnt that the Russian wedding ring is a Christian symbol, representing the holy Trinity. And while that is true, I still prefer my mother's story. Here it is, maybe you will enjoy it too.

My mother's story

She told me that marriage was about two people who loved each other.
She told me that the ring was a symbol of this love, as all wedding rings are.
But, she told me, this ring brought together the three most important things of a loving relationship.

The white gold ring, she told me, is softer than the other golds. Being softer, it will take the shape of the finger. "Love is like that", she said. "In the journey through life, two people in love have to change their shape. They have to give some things up, and take other things on. To become a family each one has to move towards the other". So that's what the white gold represents: bending towards each other.

Yellow gold, on the other hand, is very hard. You can bump it and knock it, and afterwards, all you had to do is to give it a hard rub, and there it would be: all bright and shining again. "Life is like that" she said. "It's not easy. Sometimes things are really difficult. Then you have to support each other. Sometimes love has to be hard". So this is what the Yellow Gold represents: the strength to get through life, and then come out on the other side all bright and shiny and new.

Then she was silent for a time. So I asked her "what about the red gold mommy?"

It took her a moment before she answered.
"Have you ever seen red gold before?" she asked softly.
"No", I replied.
"Well," she said, "Red Gold is rare". "And love", she said "is just as rare. When you find it, when you finally have it, you must look after it. You have to protect it. If you lose it it might never come back to you again". And that is what the Red Gold represents: that Love must be cherished, because life is short and every moment spent without love is a moment lost forever.

Related links

Origins of the wedding ring	This site was built to search out and explain the history of the wedding ring. You will find information on the evolution of the wedding ring and its history through the Christian faith.
Professionally researched answer from the AnswerBag	Reviews the various kinds of three-ring wedding bands
A brief history of the wedding ring	An article from the blog "Sex, Love, and Marriage"
Russian Wedding Customs	From Wikipedia
Symbolism Of Wedding Rings	A nice little article on the symbolism of wedding rings in general-ignore the Russian cyber brides!
Russian Weddings	The full paraphernalia, courtesy Wikipedia
Traditional Wedding Rings	A history of some of the most popular traditional wedding rings, courtesy the Wedding Channel
Wedding Ring Traditions Around the World	From Ancient Egyptian Culture to Modern Irish Claddagh Rings, courtesy Suite101
On Russian Wedding Traditions of the Past	Some background on wedding traditions and rituals in old Russia

...

Freedom and the Ties that Bind

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose

Nothing, aint worth nothing, but its free (*)

Today, a Hyacinth sits on the window sill of my bedroom window, and its soft scent drifts from there to permeate the house. It carries its own memories, and they intertwine with mine.

Of all the prisons of the mind, those borne out of obligation and loving kindness bind the deepest.

What gifts do you have left, when all your gifts have been given?

What gifts do you have left to give, when every gift chains tighter?

Dying is the only way

For you to float free (**)

Freedom is the only gift that remains.

but Freedom cannot stand the sight of its walls, 

cannot bear the sound of its chains, 

shivers at the feel of its bars.

If the gift of Freedom is to forever release the receiver,

Then it must send the giver to exile, that curious form of dying-in-life.

It is a gift that cannot be explained.

It demands a cold, clean cut and does not permit regret.

This lonely gift that causes pain for both the giver and the receiver is soon overcome by the former, is a permanent loss for the latter.

So.

Having given everything else I finally came to understand that the time for the final gift had come.

Today, I remember that gift, and hope that its outcome has blossomed, even if the vacuum will never be filled.

Yet memories delight, and unlike the fragrance of the hyacinth, which must pass forever:  her fragrance is ever near, and every day's little pleasure.

* Kris Kristofferson - Me and Bobby McGee
** Haruki Murakami - The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

A River of Tears

We stood at the graveside
Her mother wept.
Her father looked dazed: the comfortless can not comfort.
She was 3 years old, dressed in her favorite frock, a bright pink bow in her hair, her arms crossed to hold her cherished Garfield; the coffin so very, very small.

And still her mother weeps.
For some mothers its like this: you have one shot at motherhood, and one only.
Its 25 years on and she goes to the cemetery and places the flowers every Saturday morning. Love is an obsession: its loss assuaged by a lifetime of tears.

As for us, on that bright Summer's day in the heat of the Highveldt, we, the voyeurs of pain, we went home, and put up gates, and fences, covers and nets, and watched our children: it had only taken 2 minutes: a steady count to 120, to learn that swimming pools are no place to be complacent.