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Five Minute Friday :: Perhaps

Kitchen table from px here

• Five Minute Friday :: Perhaps Linkup

My first thought is, "who on earth uses the word 'perhaps?'" (no offense, Sharon who suggested the prompt, Kate and everyone else who perhaps uses the word perhaps.) It's a super pretentious way of expressing maybe, isn't it? Or is it?

I can hear in my head someone affecting a fake upper class accent and saying "Perhaps I'll do this or that. Perhaps the sun will shine."

Enough of my intro. On to the content. I'll write about what I wish would happen, because maybe it will. I found my header photo (with legal reuse rights, of course) online because I'm longing for a kitchen table filled with friends and food. I'm longing to be surrounded by a world resurrected from the loss of what I had and knew. Maybe even (possibly even? Perhaps even?) recreated from those scraps of hope, pieces of dreams, images of what I assumed more than reasonably would be mine before long.

You notice the kitchen holds no food. It hosts no people. Perhaps I'll go to the farmer's market or the nearby Aldi. A couple of South Bay Walmarts have good and reasonable fruits and veggies. Perhaps (oh, just maybe), I'll venture to highways and byways and invite random strangers to my future kitchen to help slice, dice, chop, shred, and sauté and assemble a feast for all comers.

Perhaps my life finally will rebound. The sun will set on disappointments and losses. The sun will rise on a brand new day—perhaps (possibly, maybe) branded by the hugs and the hopes of friends I haven't found yet. Or is that perhaps friends who haven't yet found me?

I retitled the picture "Kitchen Dreams."

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Five Minute Friday :: Transform

Do not be conformed to this world
but be transformed
by the renewal of your mind.
Romans 12:2
• Five Minute Friday :: Transform LInkup

This week I get to include one of my all time favorite scripture illustrations and talk about Romans again.

World here is "age," eon, era, epoch, and not cosmos.

What can we say, think, or do about the way the world and its leaders, the USA and its leaders, and so much about and around us seems to be changing, not transforming into vibrant new life from death, but from health to despair to death itself?

"Transformed" in this passage from Romans is metamorphosis. Our most familiar images in creation may be butterflies and dragonflies; I did a little research to confirm what I thought I already knew.

Butterflies symbolize transformation and rebirth. In the Christian tradition, butterflies are an icon of easter and resurrection.

Dragonflies originate in water and migrate to air as they grow and mature. Throughout their lifespan, dragonflies are at home in both water and air. In addition to change and transformation that's similar to butterfly lore, dragonflies are about adaptability. Maybe you know they can change direction amidst flight, and they can fly backwards? Somewhere I read dragonflies are about the realization of dreams.

The world and its leaders, the USA and its leaders, and too much about and around us is changing, not into life from death, but from health to despair to death. Maybe your neighborhood, your family, or your workplace has troubles that appear beyond hope. Maybe your own situation has imploded and you need to start from scratch?

Like a dragonfly we are birthed and re-birthed in water; we need to keep returning to the water for sustenance and renewal; we need to keep walking the talk still "wet behind the ears" with God's baptismal promises and claims on us, with God's baptismal charge to us to live transformed, to be agents of change and transformation to help create a world filled with justice, righteousness, newness, possibilities, and hope.

Via the apostle Paul, God calls us to "be transformed," to undergo a metamorphosis, but no human can achieve that radical change on their own, by themselves. It's the work of the Holy Spirit. It's about death and resurrection. Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

Wherever we are, in whatever place we live, transformed people can be agents of change and transformation for this age, this epoch, this eon. Reborn into the cross and the empty tomb. Transformed by water and word. Amen? Amen!

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• Common milkweed in full flower this year in West Los Angeles
• Monarch Butterfly from West Los Angeles in a previous year (2018) with depleted milkweed plant. We've been planting milkweed at church for more than a half dozen years. What a ministry to creation!
• Dragonfly from hippo px

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Jenny Han :: Summer Trilogy

• Summer trilogy 01: The Summer I Turned Pretty on Powell's

From Jenny Han, author of To All the Boys I've Loved Before

"First in a series of three" with the disclaimer I read them all before writing this.

Plot, settings, and characters in The Summer I ["I" is Belly or Isabel] Turned Pretty are atmospheric and suggestive rather than grounded and concrete. This intro to bestselling author Jenny Han's Summer trilogy acquaints us with the Fisher and Conklin families who are every summer denizens of a New England down Maine beach house. We observe typical vacation activities, relationships, and misunderstandings—nothing out of the ordinary, even to a predictable degree.

You might enjoy this as a standalone novel, but experiencing kids and grownups getting older and gaining wisdom as their lives expand is the intention of any coming of age book, so I suggest you keep on reading into It's Not Summer Without You. By the conclusion of We'll Always Have Summer (volume 3), you'll discover Fisher brother Conrad has turned into the central character – an ultra-protagonist – ready to launch a decades-long dynasty that deserves at least a half-dozen more books and a classic TV or film series.

• Summer trilogy 02: It's Not Summer Without You on Powell's

Volume 2, It's Not Summer Without You, continues the Fisher-Conklin narrative. Even after dying from cancer, Fisher matriarch Susannah continues her powerful and loving influence over the intertwined families. Author Jenny Han writes realistic dialogue within relatable human messiness of misunderstanding, betrayal, reunion, divorce, romance, and not-so-romantic situations. A reader can feel the teenagers grow in every dimension!

Even if I hadn't known most of the action happened along the East Coast, I'd still compliment how clearly Han elicits its overall style and sensibility. Really! Could the Summer Trilogy have been set anywhere else? No! Geography is destiny.

• Summer trilogy 03: We'll Always Have Summer

Teens love these coming of age novels; some of us who have achieved a level of chronological maturity enjoy them, too.

What person anywhere doesn't enjoy a beach read that's even mostly set in a beach town? This is the third and final volume of Jenny Han's Fisher-Conklin Summer series that unfolds like a dynasty in progress. My research revealed The Summer I Turned Pretty was a Netflix movie during August 2013; rumors suggesting it might become a TV series circulated for a while, but that still hasn't happened. Han does well with character development, particularly as ultra-protagonist Conrad grows in years, wisdom, and influence; even more, she creates dense layers of action and meaning that never quite resolve. However, in this volume 3, we get the happy resolution of Conrad's and Isabel's long-anticipated marriage. Now the countless readers who've loved this series can create their own multipart sequel, and/or wait for Jenny Han to do so.