Purples in various settings, and bridal clothes.

"Neither elder bother nor  younger brother"

 Japanese proverb, Benedict, The Chrysanthemum and the  Sword 

Seems I've been a little... ponderous lately. As if some great matter had weighed heavily on my mind.  I bet if I read my back-post  I'd laugh at the note of deep thought I've tried to infuse into them. With that conviction slowly burning away in my heart I've decided to stop being so pretentious. So here, view my heavily edited accomplishment of the month. A solitary glovelet. I've Cast-on for its mate, but haven't got much

 farther than that. There is hope that it will be a complete pair by, say, December. Maybe it will become my plane knitting. Oh, now that I think of it, I never mentioned that I got my tickets, did I? I leave June 6, a month and a week away. 

Totally unrelated, but on my mind, I read Matthew 22 a few days ago. When I got to verses 11-13 I paused, perplexed.

“But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have on a wedding garment. So he said to him, ‘Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?’ And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, ‘Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’"      (Courtesy of BibleGateway)

When I think about the moving church  in America I suppose I picture youthful people in the traditional jeans-and-a-T-shirt garb. The past seven months have not done anything but reinforce this idea. And if we all go to the house of God in our jeans then why not to His wedding? But perhaps it is a metaphor for something, not a literal 

indictment on one's apparel.   There is another passage of scripture that I thought of when I read these verses: Revelation 19:7-8. It warms the cockles of my heart, this verse. I'm so grateful to the Breaking Free work book for introducing me to it, for I don't get over to Revelations much on my own.  In particular verse seven always fills me with that special hope-joy of faith. I read it when I get discouraged. Anyway, it reads "The marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready." 

Can you think of anything more natural then a bride preparing herself for her groom? In old times girls prepared hope chest, filling them with sheets and towels. Sugimoto, of daughter of the Samurai, mentioned the many little things a young girl would do to prepare for her future husband. Her older sister, for instance, stopped eating plum jelly because it would be disrespectful to her fiancé's crest, which contained plum blossoms. Estu-bo herself started eating tuna, because that was her future husband's favorite fish.

Even today the bride prepares through elaborate wedding  preparations, dress fittings, and hair-dos. It may seem a little shallow to hear a young girl talk about how busy she is with dress fittings, or how she wants this or that at her wedding, but what would one assume if a bride came to the alter in jeans? Sure, there are alternatives to the traditional white gown, but there is no alternative to the time and care put into her appearance, and there shouldn't be. It is the naturalist thing in the world to see this passage and know that His wife loves him, has been waiting for this day since she was born, and wants to make him proud. So she prepares herself. She learns to make his favorite dish, she gathers the things they'll need for their new home, she thinks about Him all the time, considers His taste and opinion in every decision, and makes herself beautiful on their special day. A women who does not do all that, who can fathom her heart? 

And so, back to the wedding guest, who could not prepare to meet his King's daughter-in-law. It may not be as drastic an example as that of a  bride in drag, but it conveys the same level of thoughtlessness. As if the man woke up in the morning, loitered around his coffee pot, glanced at the clock, and thought "Hey, there's a wedding at the palace today, I think I'll go." What do you think, oh vast void, do these passages have a connection? How do you interpret them? 

Voom! And the world is green again.

"There are flowers uncurling and buds on everything and the green veil has covered nearly all the gray"

- Francis Burnett, The Secret Garden

Summer days are here, or something like them. I had forgotten how close the air is, how near it clings. Spring must be a very unreserved creature, for it embraces you without even asking your permission.  And it brings with it its own peculiar kind of snow too. Pink snow. Though this is only a carpet of petals, it still makes me think of eating cake in a hot tub, and other extravagant pleasures.

I've been getting on in Daughter of the Samurai, but the chrysanthemum book has been sadly neglected.  A story of another's life is more inviting to me than the guessed at essence of a whole nation. It is more personal. Individualism, I suppose, has a great hold on me. And I think it has finally managed to plant seeds in little Estu-bo. Well, she is not so little now. The timeline is a little hard to construct, but I gather she is around fourteen

 at this point in the story. And, of course, she is engaged to a friend of her brothers. Lets forget the fact that she has never seen him; that he lives on the opposite side of the world. She was not surprised, not overly alarmed, not crushed by raging emotions. So why should we feel for her? I wonder if it doesn't stem from our own individualism. 'Cause don't we sometimes feel we were born with the reigns of life in our hands? And, though every now and then someone comes and gives them such a jerk, so that our life goes completely off course, we believe that we can chart our destiny. The American dream, you know? 

                The question is, do we really think we're competent enough to plan our lives? Estu-bo grew up knowing that she would marry and "die" to her family. She was used to the idea of it being her duty, but I wonder if she gave anymore thought to how it could be her duty than we give to how it can be our right. Insisting a thing is so does not mean one knows why that thing it is so. Of course, as Sigimoto tells us, tradition stated that there were marriage gods in charge of placing the right people together. Makes you think of Fiddler on the Roof.

"Have I got a match for you, he's handsome, he's young. All right, he's sixty-two."

             Secretly though, I rather like the idea of someone older and wiser helping young people along. And even more beautiful is the true, and oft repeated verse. Jeremiah 29:11 - "For I know the thoughts that I think towards you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end." God, infinitely wiser, and with a better knowledge of our destination, will take the reigns if we will only let Him.