This is the fall wreath I made a month or so ago. It's been hanging by my door like this, and has been bothering me.
It wasn't symmetrical. The lower left of the wreath wasn't as full as the rest of it. So I got out my glue gun and just added two leaves. Much better! Sorry for the before pic being shown twice.
I know I had a setback over the last couple of weeks, but I'm ready to delve back into writing. I need to start racking my brains in order to remember a small lesson a woman from church gave me once called “Advocates in the Bible”. She wrote the lesson herself years before she showed it to me, and taught it to me briefly when I was staying at her home between apartments. I was about 23 years old then, and she was a mom figure to me. I often referred to her as my “foster mom”, even though I was grown and not a foster child. To make a long story short, she was a spirit-filled Christian and was diagnosed with bone cancer. Her denomination believed in miraculous healings, and she prayed for one. She believed she would receive one, but didn't. Her passing was what made me sort of “give in” to dating my first husband, Anna’s father. I didn't believe that I really could ever have a partner, but grieving her just made me give up and be like “ok I'll go out with you.”
Before her tragic passing, though, she did write this lesson called Advocates in the Bible, and perhaps she taught it to others in the past. She and I spent a few days at her table going through the lesson. She went through all these biblical characters and explained how they were advocates of a certain cause. I hope that makes sense. I was a little lost in life, because I really wanted to know what advocacy was, but was constantly told it meant I had to go to law school. An advocate can mean a lawyer, but it means many other things too.
I no longer rely on the Bible for inspiration, but I did then. Over the past 20-something years since she passed, my faith has evolved. I deconstructed before deconstructing was popular.
However, in the last couple of years, I honestly hate to say it, but the war in Israel has really caused a totally unexpected wave of deconstruction. Some people say this war started on 10-7-2023, some say it was 1945, but honestly, it started when Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down.
As I watched the news over the last couple of years, I realized that the stories in the Bible that used to bring me so much inspiration are actually stories of this same war that's been happening for thousands of years. The Queen Esther story was part of this war. When David killed Goliath, we are also taught that it was an inspiration for if you are facing an insurmountable problem. When Moses went before Pharaoh (as an advocate) and said, “Let my people go”, it laid the groundwork for the following battles. “The promised land” is used as a euphemism for either the end goal of something positive or maybe going to heaven, but it didn't start out meaning those things.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking a side in a war in a part of the world I've never been to. I've struggled enough taking sides in my own country. I've spent the last year or two listening to the advocacy of Ms. Rachel, the education from Miriam (and the subsequent antisemitism against even her 1-year-old baby girl), and I can't stomach the hate against the innocents on both sides. That's all.
Going back to those biblical stories and remembering my inspiration when it's now two decades later and I'm learning to associate those stories with current events is going to be really hard. There's no room in my book to talk about the war in Israel since 10/7/2023. I do talk about the crisis of faith in other ways.
To sort of get back into the spirit of who I was when Mary sat me down at her table and essentially gave me what I wanted by teaching me what an advocate actually was, I've started listening to some songs that I stopped listening to. The main one is Jericho by Andrew Ripp. It's supposed to be an inspirational song, and it is. The chorus goes, “All of my fears like Jericho walls gotta come down, come down, come down.” No one is actually talking about what happened in Jericho- we just want our fears and anxiety to come down like Jericho walls. The song is about us, not them. I'm trying to get back into the innocent t headspace I was in when I was 23 or 24 and sitting at Mary’s table.
Once, right after the October 7th attacks in Israel, I was venting to my mom that this has been going on since Joshua fought the battle of Jericho. Now my mom is very religious, but has never read the Bible. I think that's pretty common for her generation. When I said that, she told me, “I don't know the story of Joshua, but I do know the song.” I thought she meant the Andrew Ripp song that I mentioned above. No, actually she meant when Mahalia Jackson sang it to MLK. The fact that we have drawn so much inspiration over the millennia from the battles and wars that led to the events of today is wild to me now.
In order to write about this effectively, I have to temporarily let go of all the ways in which the current events have clouded my view of the biblical stories in the actual lesson Mary had. Mary lived from the 1950’s until then early 2000’s, so probably never had the opportunity to watch the ongoing conflict live like we do now in 2025. RIP Mary C,
I'll do my best.
Today, my manager introduced me to a song I've never heard before- I've Been Everywhere by Johnny Cash
I liked it, and it reminded me of that time in 2020 when I took off and did these side hustles on the apps and made a lot of money. I went all over nine states plus Memphis, Tennessee (but not into the rest of Tennessee). I often say I may do it again someday and visit the entire lower 48. We'll see. I thought about copy pasting the lyrics here and answering yes or no to each location Johnny Cash names in the song- did I go there or not during the time period that the apps were my only job? Here are my answers:
My answers are in ALL CAPS. I went all over Oklahoma too, and some of these town names sound like Oklahoma.
I've been everywhere, man
The main character is Bill Henrickson, played by Bill Paxton, a Mormon polygamist with three wives and nine children (three per wife). His first wife Barb was born and raised in the mainstream LDS church. His second wife Nikki was born and raised in a polygamist compound on which her father was the prophet. (Her sect of Mormonism was fundamentalist and separate from the mainstream LDS). Bill’s third wife Margie was raised by an alcoholic single mother who was a non-practicing catholic. Margie was 25 years younger than Bill and didn't become Mormon until after she married Bill (and essentially Barb and Nikki).
In the first four seasons, only Barb is Bill’s legal wife. Then in the last season, they obtained a divorce on paper only so Nikki could be the legal one.
Bill is the owner of a chain of home improvement stores. He then buys into a casino and ultimately runs for state senator. During the election, he hides that he's a polygamist, wins the election, and reveals that he's a polygamist while accepting the nomination. Kind of sneaky!
I've never been Mormon, but I lived in Arizona for exactly nine years. I had a lot of Mormon friends, a lot of ex-Mormon friends, and a little bit of a fascination with the LDS church, even though I do not believe in it. Nowadays, one of my side jobs (which I haven't done in several months ) is to take pictures of the landscaping around LDS churches. Kevin asked me why a fascination if I don't believe in it. I said mostly because of their extreme niceness when you first meet them, their emphasis on having large, loving families (which my first boyfriend Matt and I wanted), and just the sheer number of friends I had as a teenager who were born and raised in it. In my high school on the south side of Phoenix, LDS kids could skip one class period per quarter to go across the street and attend seminary. When I used to visit Arizona back when my side hustles paid a lot better, I often made about $60 per hour on the landscaping jobs because of so many LDS churches in the greater Phoenix area.
I have one funny memory of when I was in high school, and they were going to have a hypnotist in either an assembly or a senior event (don't remember exactly). Several LDS kids were getting religious exemptions from participating in the hypnosis. My mother, a devout Greek Orthodox, also went with me to get a religious exemption from the hypnosis. The school administrator commented to my mother like, “If you have a note from your Bishop, you can submit it, but it's not necessary.” I burst out laughing. In Mormonism, every single church location has a bishop. In the Eastern Orthodox church, there's only one bishop over an entire area including several states. Living in Phoenix, we were actually in the diocese of Denver, whereas the local LDS churches with one bishop each were everywhere. My mom looked confused and said, “The bishop? Why would I ask the bishop????” It was just a funny side memory, because my mom didn't realize the disconnect in the meaning of that title across denominations.
But back to the show Big Love. It took a lot of mental gymnastics to watch that show! A marriage with four people instead of only two really gets convoluted. The three women all slept with Bill and considered themselves married to Bill, even though only one was legal, but they weren't lesbians and didn't sleep with each other. There were never three ways or four ways. They had a schedule for “who gets Bill” when. But the three women all talked to each other and used lingo with each other as if they were married to each other. In their eyes, they were.
Bill grew up on the polygamist compound where his second wife Nikki came from, and his parents were also polygamists. However, he was exiled as a teenager by his father. This is very common in polygamist groups. It's referred to as “polygamy’s lost boys”. It's because in any society/group of people, it's likely to always be roughly half male and half female. Any time you get pregnant, it's literally always a 50/50 chance of having a boy or a girl. So what happens is that polygamists have a ton of kids, and the next generation is roughly half male and half female like the rest of planet earth. But the men are only considered worthy to go to heaven if they have at least three wives. The more the better. This results in teenage boys being seen as competition for the younger girls. The men want to keep taking wives, and as the young people get old enough to marry, the older men don't want the younger men marrying the younger women, so they exile them in very horrible, abusive ways. Most of the time, when you hear about abuses on polygamist compounds, you only hear about the abuses towards girls and women. The lost boys aren't talked about. But they're pretty much a mathematical inevitability. In the show, when Bill was exiled by his father, he went out into the world and made something of himself, joined the mainstream LDS, met Barb, and then after years of marriage to her, he realized he wanted to be a polygamist too, and married Nikki and later Margie.
The show has all viewers asking how they would feel about sharing their spouses. No, I wouldn't want to share Kevin. When I was married to Anna’s father, I wouldn't have wanted to share him either. If I had married Matt, I wouldn't have wanted to share him. But when I was on again/off again with my long-distance boyfriend in Arizona, I suspected he saw someone else, but didn't care. I didn't care, because I knew that it was expected of me to be single, independent, and not need/want a man. But going to see him was still fun. People who knew about it were mad that he was a single parent (even though I was too- make it make sense). People were angry and said I “needed to get her side of the story.” One time I said, if she sends her kids a birthday card with five bucks, I might care about her side of the story. My daughter’s stepmother never cared about my side of the story. I even got yelled at once as if I didn't know how to add one plus two. “Do you realize that if you marry him, YOU WILL HAVE THREE KIDS?” Yes. I know that his two kids plus mine would make three.
With all of this outside influence, I didn't consider him a real relationship and knew I wasn't supposed to want one anyway. So the possibility of him seeing someone else was moot..
Women who grow up and are in polygamist spaces are actually taught that they are supposed to share their husbands as a part of God’s will. I understand being ok with something due to your surroundings, due to my complicated feelings about my long-distance relationship. I was born and raised and still live in a society where polygamy isn't the norm, so of course it makes sense that I wouldn't “want to share my husband”. I wonder how I'd feel about it if I were raised in that world, though. Your surroundings shape your beliefs more than you know!!
At the end of the show, as a senator, Bill initiated legislation to legalize plural marriage. It was an extremely emotional scene. He made a lot of good points.
I do believe that there isn't anything wrong with polygamy and polyamory. Yes, there are good points for making it legal. The problematic part is when you start bringing salvation and God’s will into it. If God really wanted every man to have three wives, then babies would be born at a rate of 75% female and 25% male (at least). And this goes for everything else in life- what's right for some will never be right for “everyone”
That's just the way it is.
In the last two seasons, Bill has become a major asshole. In the first three seasons, he's only a little bit asshole. The ass-holiness grows exponentially when he runs for office. At the end, I believe he redeems himself greatly before he gets shot and killed by one of his many enemies.
I really really admired the writing in this series. It was so good at capturing many elements around a specific topic, and this is what I strive to do when I write.
The epilogue sucked- I wish there could be a season six with just the wives. It could happen. Bill the character and Bill the actor both are dead, but all three main actresses are alive and could pull it off. Eh maybe they will someday.
Yesterday I was in a pretty rural part of the country near the Texas/Louisiana border. I was doing inventory of all the merchandise sold at the checkout lines, and the two teenagers working there as cashiers were cracking me up. (A boy and a girl). They were clearly flirting with each other, and they were arguing about who should be homecoming royalty.
Then, a customer came in who they knew on a first name basis. This customer looked like he had done some methamphetamines in his life. He was bald and had no teeth, and just looked worn. They conversed with him quite a bit actually and obviously knew him. Then, he paid for his stuff and left. The boy cashier said jealously to the girl cashier, “I think he likes you. I think he was flirting with you.” The girl cashier said, “ew! I don’t want that old man! He’s like 32!”
I had not been talking to these kids at all, just eavesdropping, but I laughed out loud.
Was that man actually 32, because the features he had from apparent past drug use made him look about 60. Or, was the number “32” just, in the girl’s mind, this extremely old age? Of course it’s too old to be flirting with her, but the way she said “That old man is like 32” made me think that either she just thinks 32 is really old- or he really was 32 and meth really is that much of a hell of a drug. I told Kevin and he said, “Maybe he was really 39.” I bust out laughing again.
This is the fall wreath I made a month or so ago. It's been hanging by my door like this, and has been bothering me. It wasn't sy...
