The Joy of life is God, Family, and Books. And, of course, Dragons.
Author: wordworkerrussell
I'm a homeschool mom of five, three girls and two boys. I'm a daughter of the King who works hard to keep her family living as close to God as we can. God created a world perfectly designed to provide everything we need, and designed us to reflect Him throughout it.
Writing is my happy place. I have always loved stories and words because they express the human spirit so beautifully. A story can speak many messages, each received by the reader as needed or understood by individual experiences. I hope that my stories, both true and fantasy, speak to you in some way.
Her sisters already framed the night sky, swirling gently into the place reserved for them by Zeus. Only she remained, already touched with the stardust of the light she would become. The light she had not chosen.
The grasses crushed softly under her bare feet as she walked slowly across her mother’s pasture, their scent drawing agonized tears to her eyes. If she joined the others in the globe of the heavens as commanded, would she ever smell the sweet scent of life again? How could this be protection? Why could not Orion be cursed to travel the heavens, far from his beloved forests and the game he sought?
Her sons were so young, only millennia yet gifted to them. Especially Lycus, so impetuous and headstrong. He was his mother’s son, she thought, a quick smile chasing stardust from her face. He would take what he wanted, she knew, but without her guidance he would never escape the consequences. After all, had she not learned from her father’s fate? Some battles could not be won by force, only by wit and cunning.
Yet even she seemed unable to win this one. Celaeno, the daughter of the mightiest Titan ever to walk the earth, would be banished forever, while her tormenter remained free to choose his own fate. The stardust thickened and she clenched transforming fists around the folds of her now radiant gown. “I will never be a star!” hung voiceless in the windless night as a seventh light joined the circle above.
Have you ever been on safari? Bought a juicy mango from a street vendor? Searched for the elusive crown of Mt. Meru in the clouds? If you live in Tanzania, chances are you have at least chanted about doing all these things and more while playing childhood games.
Tanzania’s rich and varied cultural tapestry is beautifully painted in Nikki Grimes’ simple poems. Ancient traditions and native foods blend with crowded bus rides and modern adventures in the pages of this book, just as they do in Tanzania itself. Every young reader can experience the cozy hut in rainy season or run from the hungry lion.
The language in this book is simple enough for children to read on their own, but we had so much fun using this as a read-aloud. We enjoyed stumbling over the swahili words introduced by Ms. Grimes, then checking our pronunciation on the glossary page at the end of the book. Perhaps your children would enjoy making up tunes or dances to the catchy rhythms of the poems.
He flexed his fingers and shifted nervously. He stroked the keys, drawing a deep, ragged breath as he moved his hands into position. The first notes were soft, tentative, sending dim blue tendrils into the darkness of the sound chamber.
His pulse quickened, notes grew stronger. The tendrils thickened and swirled, the darkness within their coils taking shape. He closed his eyes, desperate to focus on the music, but that coalescing shape tugged at his consciousness.
A face emerged, sound pulsing across delicate features. His chest rose and fell with increasing intensity, and first one note then another fell flat. A discordant clang echoed around the room as the song ended. A set of wave blue eyes opened, lighting the chamber with their residual glow. Symphony awoke.
“Boris, dorogoy, please come away from the window! The hall will not come to you, no matter how hard you stare. We must go to it, and soon or we will be late and the Chinovnik will mark against us.”
Boris sighed and twisted his cap in gnarled fingers, his eyes not leaving the hall. “Remember the day we wed there, Anushka? It was still the village chapel then, and as lovely as any cathedral that morning!”
She leaned her wrinkled cheek against his arm and smiled at the memory. “I can still smell the flowers the children picked to cover the floor. The chapel was full; no one in the village would miss a wedding!”
“Nor a christening,” he chuckled. “Who would turn down a half day’s holiday from the fields, especially when feast was involved? I remember on Sergei’s day all the women baked for a full day before, and we still ran out of food!”
“Ah, the greedy boys!” Anushka exclaimed with a laugh. “They would have eaten themselves sick if there had been any more syrniki! Ah well.” Her smile faded. “To speak of such memories in the village now is dangerous. We will earn a mark from the Chinovnik if overheard, or worse.”
“Let him mark,” Boris sniffed. “Love may be out of fashion with these oh-so-serious youngsters, but we will walk to the chapel like newlyweds.” He gently took her arm in his and they left the house, shuffling feet leaving two flattened paths side by side through the grassy commons.
Harry and Leah have a problem. There’s a fish in their bathtub, but that isn’t the problem. The problem is that the fish is dinner.
Mama’s special Passover dish is gefilte fish, special fish balls made from a carp. The best fish always sell out early, and dead fish spoil quickly, so the carp has to live in the bathtub for a week waiting to be cooked. Harry and Leah love to feed the carp, and especially appreciate that as long as the fish is there they can’t take a bath.
But Harry and Leah cannot bring themselves to eat gefilte fish. Who could eat a friend? And thus year’s carp is extra special; he is smart and friendly, and his name is Joe. They have to think of a way to rescue Joe before Mama turns him into the Passover meal!
The Carp in the bathtub is a delightful story about understanding and responsibility. For my children it was also an introduction to a time and traditions different from ours while demonstrating that children everywhere and in every age are all the same. By the way, Harry and Leah still don’t eat gefilte fish.
In the Sinai law system, God provided specific celebrations that would remind the Israelites of important concepts they needed to hold onto. The first celebration of each year was of course Passover and the Festival of Unleavened Bread. This eight day long celebration was intended to remind the people that God had delivered them from a life of servitude and poverty and demonstrated His undefeatable power. The last celebration of the year was the Festival of Shelters. During this celebration the people gathered palm fronds and other greenery traditionally used to greet and honor royalty and used them to build temporary shelters in which they would live for a week. The Festival was an opportunity to remember the years of homelessness and helplessness in the wilderness when every necessity came from the King of Kings. These memories were intended to create the awareness of need for God, of need for a Provider and a Deliverer. They, along with the other sacrifices and celebrations, promised an ultimate deliverance and a final reconciliation with the Anointed One, the Priest-King.
After three years of wandering and willing dependence, Christ sent word ahead and made preparations for entering Jerusalem for the Passover feast. Based on what we are told in scripture, this was unusual behavior for Him. Like all other Jews, he had travelled to Jerusalem without fanfare three times every year for the festivals. This time He made sure His coming would be known. As it was Friday afternoon, the people would have been gathered near the temple preparing for the sacrifices of the following day, or scurrying to their homes to eat the Passover lamb with their families. The temple itself would have been filled with frantic activity as the priests and Levitical workers contained thousands of animals and prepared to lead the people in song and sacrifice.
The moment Jesus approached the city, however, everything changed. Forgotten were the Passover sacrifices, forgotten were the humble meals set on family tables. The palm fronds and greenery of the Festival of Shelters filled the streets as the people hailed the Anointed One and His deliverance. They knew. They had watched and listened for three years. They understood that the moment for which the Sinai law had prepared them had arrived.
The Jewish leaders also understood, and knew that the system upon which they had built power and wealth was ending. Already the people abandoned them for the true King. They were left with only one last-ditch effort to convince the people that He was a fraud. So they killed God.
In their worldly wisdom it was an effective move. In the aftermath even Christ’s closest followers and friends were confused. Had they been wrong? How could man dispose so easily of God? For fifty days the Jewish people lost conviction completely, convinced by a mock trial and a lot of frenzied shouting that they could not believe the evidence of their own senses. The leaders, knowing full well the gravity of what they had done, spent that fifty days looking over their shoulders, exceeding their legal boundaries in order to control any activity that might expose their betrayal. To their horror they could not win. The living God would collect His harvest and their fields would be left to languish.
How often do men fear losing what this world can give them so much that they are willing to kill God to keep it? How often do we as humans allow dramatic lies and frantic noise to convince us that the Anointed One is anything less than the King of Kings? The Jewish leaders knew they hadn’t succeeded, and the knowledge made them paranoid and controlling. For a century they continued to attempt to kill God, knowing already that they could not win. The lamb had sacrificed himself, the Passover had occurred, the Day of Atonement had arrived, and the world had received its King. Will we continue such a worthless fight, or will we abandon our tents for the shelter of the Throne?
She stretched her nearly thawed wings to brush the trees on either side. How much fun dancing among the branches had been, their bare bones crackling beneath the ice of her feathers. How delighted she had been by the cooling that had silenced the world and dressed her in crystal lace. The touch of her dancing feet had adorned every surface with a shining imitation of her, and the flakes that fell from her fluttering wings left white drifts into which she plunged again and again in gleeful abandon.
How strange when warmth began to creep upon her, first little more than an odd spark within her belly but quickly growing to melt her lacy garment thread by thread. The warm drops that fell from her exploded with color where they landed, transforming her playground into an artist’s palette. Silence slowly filled with song and chatter. The wind that had played with her became drunk on her increasing warmth and ripped the melting ice from her wings to fling it to the ground where it sprouted green in soggy puddles.
Soon enough she understood. The warmth had tired her, left her sitting or walking quietly among the blossoms, until her body could no longer contain it. Her child, this flame that had transformed her, hovered near her with the uncertainty of infancy. Wings still unformed, she blinked at the world from the familiarity of her mother’s palms. Her mother fed the last of her strength into the child, who sprouted wings of flame and hurtled skyward with all the enthusiasm of youth. Her fire would grow until the world reflected it’s brilliance, then cool in the last fling of youth before the birth of her own spring.
On the Day of Atonement the High Priest carried the blood of the sacrificial bull and goat behind the veil and sprinkle it on the mercy seat. This was a symbol of God’s cleansing and sealing the people for His own holy purpose. It was also a solemn moment, as on the Day of Atonement the Lord Himself hovered behind the veil in the form of the cloud by which He guided His people to their promised home.
For the Israelites this was something to be longed for, a connection that only the divinely chosen representative was allowed to make with God. It was a moment for which the entire nation made solemn preparation, a moment of purification for every individual within the nation. It was the day that the death of sin was covered, overwhelmed, with the life of blood.
The word that is translated “mercy seat” literally means atonement, or reconciliation. This ceremony of blood, the solemn entrance to the separated presence, symbolized the restoration of a broken relationship. Because death brought by sin had broken the relationship between God and His children, only life offered could restore it.
The blood of the bull and the goat only symbolized the life, however. In order to offer the blood, the life of the bull and goat had to be ended. Only one could truly offer an unendable life, and that was God Himself.
Because He is Life, Christ is not only the blood spattered on the mercy seat, but the atonement the blood represented. Without the blood, even the High Priest could not approach God or make connection with Him. Without God’s gift of His own unendable life, none of us could approach Him either. The Israelites could not earn reconciliation by perfect law-keeping; in fact, keeping the law was an act of love for a protective father rather than an act of appeal to a vengeful lord. We cannot earn atonement either; our faith is not in our own goodness, but in His loving grace, His offered life. Our obedience is not an attempt to win an argument with a prosecuting lawyer; it is the adoration of a child with his arms around the father’s neck as he is held on the mercy seat itself.
At first glance the figures gliding down through the trees seemed non-threatening, almost human. They wore leather jackets that hung low and had ragged holes worn in elbows and tail. As their feet touched the ground, my skin began to crawl. Three pairs of red eyes stared out of bloodless faces. One of them focused its gaze upon me, a smile snaking across its face to reveal the tips of sharp yellow teeth. His head slowly tilted to one side then the other as he moved with sinuous grace in a semi-circle around me. A finger tipped with a long, cracked nail traced a line up my arm, setting my hairs on end and sending a shudder through my entire frame. The finger traced its way around the back of my neck, and I could feel its breath in my hair, its scent oddly metallic, but I could not will my feet to move away.
“Enough!” Dagda’s voice cut through the fog beginning to fill my mind, carrying a sharp anger I would never have associated with the gentle Dagda of Earth legend. The creature sucked in a breath and stepped away, turning attention to him.
“Your Majesty,” he hissed, making the words an insult rather than an honor. He bowed low, sweeping an arm wide as greasy tendrils of hair trailed across the grass. I shrank in disgust to the protection of Balhon’s great side as I realized that everywhere a part of the creature’s body touched the grass turned brown and yellow, as if the land itself sickened upon contact with him.
“What brings you to Tylwyth, Grigore?” Dagda demanded, his voice icy. “This valley is far from Upir, and I don’t recall granting you safe passage.”
“Dracul rages against your enforced borders,” the creature sneered. “We starve in the dead lands; we need blood.”
“You are provided with blood in plenty,” Dagda responded coldly. “Live game is driven through your borders daily upon which your people sate themselves with disgusting abandon.”
“Animal blood!” Grigore spat. He eyed me with his tongue caressing the fangs revealed in his sudden feral grin. “What kind of life can be eked from blood with so little power? Dracul craves the blood of intelligent beings.”
The Word Worker 