Thursday Threads: Clay, Turkish Prayer Rugs, Accidental Soup, and Bloomings

Once again, we get to a Thursday where I have more threads than one unified cloth.  Let's see what happens.

--A week ago, I was making meditation kits (more on this tomorrow).  It required me to take 5 pounds of air dry clay and turn them into small lumps the size of a really large strawberry.  I found it very soothing to do that.  It's similar to gardening, which I wrote about yesterday in this post.  So if you're longing to garden, but you can't, get your fingers into some clay.

--Yesterday's post also talked about prayer flags, which I keep thinking about.  Could one create prayer flags with children?  I'm already on the lookout for good arts and crafts projects for Vacation Bible School.  I love the idea, but I wonder if parents would object to a discussion of Tibetan Buddhism as background to prayer flags.

--But hey, I'm a big believer in ecumenical outreach and education.  Today I wrote this blog piece for my theology blog on the travels of my Turkish Muslim prayer rug.  It includes a photo of an altar lit with dozens of candles, and that picture captures the glow.  I wish I could take credit for it, but it was taken by a different participant (Pastor Mary Canniff-Kuhn?  I found it on her Facebook site, but that doesn't guarantee it's hers).

--While I was away, Roger Ebert died.  I'm still processing this reality.  Linda Holmes expresses the strangeness of it all in this blog post.  I particularly love this quote:  "The irony is that it all feels so personally sad. It feels so personally, profoundly awful and unfair, and I feel it with the grief nerves, not just the admiration nerves, because people whose books you destroy from overuse as a 16-year-old, you will grieve when they die as if you knew them, whether they are novelists or critics. But still, after all that, I was doing all right until I remembered that he's not going to write about any more movies. And I'm still not ready for that."

--I'm making an accidental soup which smells so good that I may make it again on purpose.  I had grilled cauliflower and grilled peppers from a week and a half ago, both of which have texture issues.  The cauliflower is too hard, and the peppers are too slimy to eat by themselves.  So, I've put them in a pot along with some potatoes and spices:  basil, oregano, cumin, garlic, onion, and a bit of cocoa.  I'll grind it all up in the blender and send it back to the pot with grated cheddar.  Yum.

--All my D.C. friends are posting pictures of cherry blossoms.  I always feel a stab of envy, and then my competitive streak shows up.  I want to post bougainvillea blossoms.  I want to show everyone the mangoes ripening.  I'm resisting this impulse.