Missing pieces

I started making jewelry back in the day when I had a lot of time on my hands, waiting on teenaged daughters to get home from dates. Couldn't sleep anyway, so why not make something. Crocheting and knitting was out -- yarn makes me itch. Tried painting, I don't have enough perspective so everything looks flat. Id' already torn my house apart and renovated it, so nothing new there. Woodworking was out -- way too much dust.

I've always been keenly aware of jewelry that women wear. While my tastes tend to be conservative, I love the bling. So I started making jewelry. Every time I traveled, I would try to find bead shops. People would ask me to make their wedding jewelry, and excitedly, I would. Over the years, I've bought tools and beads galore and made jewelry. People would buy what I made, what I didn't sell, I'd stick in a drawer, and sooner or later someone would need a quick gift, and viola! Perfect.

This has been going on for a few years, until about a year ago I found myself buying more and more crystals, beads, and components, always meaning to design something new. Invariably, I would get started on a design and discover, dang it, that I didn't have the right size something, so back to ETSY or Fusionbead or wherever to get what I need, get inspired by something, and buy even more to make, and the cycle would start all over.

Well, recently, I figured I definitely didn't need to buy anything else until 1) I beefed up my inventory and 2) sold something. In one of those many trips to Fusionbead, I saw a pair of earrings that I thought would be perfect for my girlfriends who ride Harleys, either riding it themselves or on the back of their SO. Much to my surprise, everyone loved them! GREAT! Except... yep, didn't have enough components. So back I went...

The earrings are great, but they're kinda simple to make. They are expensive because of the components and crystals, but they don't take much talent to put them together if you have all the right tools. So I started yearning for some custom work, to work on a new design.

One day, while selling those expensive earrings to a young cousin for her biker mom, she lamented she couldn't afford my jewelry because it was expensive. Now don't get all pissy with me, I did give her the F&F discount on her Mom's earrings, but even so, they are expensive for a young woman to buy in multiples. So I mentioned the reason they were expensive: they were either sterling silver or pewter, neither of which are cheap right now, and throw in the crystals, and they end up being pretty expensive when you add in labor and shipping. So I offered to make her some non-sterling silver/pewter earrings.

So excitedly, I started going through my inventory of beads and components and developed a design that I think she will like. I started threading crystals onto headpins and starting the loops, and when I had just about finished wrapping about 20 crystals, thought "let me put this together to see if it looks good!" So I start stringing the wrapped headpins onto the chandelier and found... DANG IT! The headpins were too thick to put more than 1 crystal per loop. No, no, no! My design calls for lots of dangly crystals! Then I remembered some of those headpins were much easier to bend than others, and discover... there were thin 1" headpins mixed in with thicker ones... and the thinner ones work in multiples in the loops... but I only have 4 thin headpins... sigh.

I guess I'm going to Hobby Lobby tomorrow. Ashley's earrings will languish yet another day.

Raised Confused

To me, as whatever I am — I was raised by a fundamentalist Pentacostal mother and an agnostic father, so if asked what faith I was raised in, I just say “confused” — COEXIST is exactly what I believe in.

To me, if you believe in a higher power, whom I call God, if you strive to follow his tenets (or doctrines, although to me, that has a negative tone), if you believe in and try to act as Christ did (or Buddha or Mohammad or whomever), if you discard the stuff that man put into HIS words (women are to submit and not lead in the church for our bible, and kill the infidels if they don’t convert in the Koran), all of whom say, at their basic level — love one another and spread the good news by your actions and love, then who am I to say that your faith is wrong?

It is my basic problem with fundamentalists in both Christianity and Muslim faith. Why is it all or nothing? Even Christ said to follow the prophets’ teachings, even when he said to follow him, that he was the truth and the light.

Sometimes I feel cursed by my upbringing. Sometimes I wish I could just blindly follow the protestant faith, but I get hung up on that this is the only way to go, and that all others are doomed to the alternative to heaven.

My God is an awesome, loving God. That I know. I believe that Jesus Christ is my lord and savior, he is the son of God, and that he was crucified for my sins, and raised from the dead. I try mightily to follow his teachings, to do what Jesus would do. This I know in my heart to be the truth and the light, the path I am to follow.

But do I disagree with some of the Buddhist tenets? No, in fact, I find the Dalai Lama to be a wise man, and although I disagree with his pacifist view, I find his teachings to be enlightened… but I am not a Buddhist.

I know a lot of Muslims who do not believe that I’m an infidel and that I need to be beheaded. I have had interesting (although at times tense) conversations with them about world affairs. Once they realize I’m not going to turn them in as a Muslim radical or try to convert them to Christianity, we have very interesting conversations about our faith… but I’m not interested in converting to Islam.

I also have friends who are Hindu, and we have interesting discussions, too, although I get confused about all the different gods, customs, and tenets they have. But then again, I get confused with all the saints and customs of the Catholic, too — especially when they start talking about the stations of the rosary… wha?!?

The only ones I have disagreements with are atheists, but maybe it's because the ones I've met seem so angry that others have faith. But maybe that is only the people I know, maybe others are okay with OPF (other people's faith - LOL). In my darkest times, when I thought God had abandoned me, I flirted with atheism, but luckily, I was covered by God's grace, and came to understand that while I was searching in the wilderness, he was there, watching my back. He never left me, I just was looking in the wrong places.

But I digress… look, if Billy Graham met with the leaders of the world’s religions, then I think we should. If Jesus Christ, at a tender age, went among the Jewish rabbis to discuss the Bible, and he diverted from that to build Christianity, then why should we dismiss others’ prophets and beliefs that diverted from ours (specifically Islam, which diverted AT ABRAHAM!!!)?

But do I believe all these people, these friends, are going to hell if they do not convert to Christianity? No, I do not. This is where I divert and everyone wants to label me as a Universalist or Humanist… but I’m not that either.

What I believe is that my God, who I worship and adore, in his grace, looks at people of faith in this fashion: do you believe in me, no matter what my name is? Do you live your life as I have taught you, no matter what name you give my son(s)? Does your love shine through to people you meet everyday? Do you do the good works I tell you to do?

Then I love you, no matter what your religion is, and I have a place for you in my kingdom.

So, yes, I want the COEXIST sticker on my bumper (actually, I hate bumper stickers, but I keep searching for the COEXIST cling for my window... sorry, digressing again). I love them all, I will do my good works to whomever without whether they belong to my faith or not, and I hope, by God’s love shining through me, that they become interested in my faith. But if not, then it is in God’s hands — not mine. Coexist. I will not wreck a crusade upon you to convert you to my faith. I will not harm you or your family by disparaging YOUR faith to convert you forcefully to MY faith.

Coexist, and may God bless you and keep you.