Daily Archives: December 4, 2022

Holidailies 2022, Religion

Day Four: A KEY!

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CW: Penguins, Religion

I’m keeping the religious/spiritual part of this part at the bottom, so you can go ahead and skip it if you like.

Anyway.

Today’s Adventure for Pancake and Pep involves going to their uncle Nav, who apparently owns a golden key that can open a secret treasure chest. Here is a picture of the key:

A paper key!
Uncle Nav’s Mysterious Key

Inside the chest is Secret Christmas Magic that will make a penguin able to FLY on Christmas Day! Now this is spiffy. It reminds me of the book, A Wish for Wings that Work, by Berkeley Breathed. It features Opus the Penguin from the comic strip Bloom County, and that’s about all I know about it. It was published in 1991 — 1991, people! Back before the turn of the century! BEFORE THE TURN OF THE MILLENNIUM! AIGH! Ahem. — and I don’t think I’ve read it since then.

Anyway, it seems sad that Pep doesn’t get to have any special adventures on Christmas Day. Does Pep get to fly as well? Or walk on land? I don’t know. Perhaps at some point, we’ll learn.

I was also sad that today’s piece is not something to assemble, just a piece of key-shaped cardstock paper. I will place it on the molding, next to Pep, and hope it doesn’t fall off when the wind blows.

‘Tis a season for Holidailies!

Advent wreath with two candles lit

Today marks the beginning the second week of Advent season 2022. Some time ago, Michael Curry, the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, began preaching about the Way of Love — “If it’s not about love,” he says, “it’s not about God.” — which has seven stages. In the Episcopal Church’s Advent calendar, each day of each week is associated with a different stage of the Way of Love. The stages or steps are:

  1. Worship
  2. Go
  3. Learn
  4. Pray
  5. Bless
  6. Turn
  7. Rest

Today, being the first day of the second week of Advent, is about Worship, and this calendar from the Episcopal Church’s website provides meditations and activities that go along with the theme of the day. Today’s reflection: “Read Luke 3:1-6. How does the story
of John the Baptist fill your heart with hope?” I’ve already answered this question for myself in my first blog post of this season, so I won’t answer it here. I will say, though, that I have not been to an Espiscopal service since before the pandemic. I feel like a bad Episcopalian.

I have to say I miss having a lit Advent wreath at home. It was pretty special when I was a kid, having the wreath on the table and lighting each candle at suppertime. Unfortunately, in a house full of curious cats who don’t have enough sense of self-preservation to keep their noses away from a candle flame, a lit advent wreath just isn’t worth the effort.

Anyway. Happy Advent! Remember, the season of Christmas and the Twelve Days of Christmas begin on Christmas Day. So there.

Holidailies 2022

Day Three: Glurgle

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On Day Three of Pancake’s adventure, we meet her sister and best friend Pep. Pep is a fish, so apparently Pep is adopted, and Pep and Pancake have some sort of arrangement where Pancake doesn’t eat her.

Pep is a fish
Pep is a fish

This is a dramatic moment; you can tell because of the tilted angle of the photograph. This assembly is very fish-like.

Next, we also encounter the house that Pep lives in:

Pep lives in a house
Pep lives in a… house?

Again, I was not sure which wall of the house was the front, but I determined that the fish-shaped flap was the front door. Curiously, there’s no water pump or sign of anything that could support a fish’s above-ground lifestyle. Must be Magic. Hold on to your hats, because there’s more magic coming soon!

You know, I’ve always been intrigued by interspecies friendships and partnerships. From the lowly birds that clean a hippopotamus’s teeth to the fish that befriend the penguins, I find it fascinating. I am also a sucker for heart-warming tales of dogs and cats or deer and possums being snuggle buddies.

In this case, though, Pancake the Penguin has befriended Pep the Fish. This is interesting. It’s like naming your chicken or goat or whatever animal you plan on eating. Once you’ve named such an animal, you’ve shared a bond with it, and it’s hard to do the actual eating when the time comes. The fact that Pep is an adopted sister makes me think it’s Pancake’s mother who initiated the relationship and has passed it on to her daughter.

I could go on and on about the theoretical zoology that goes on behind the scenes of this tale, but I can tell that, biologically speaking, this story is just a disaster in the making.

Stay tuned!

Swimmin’ through Holidailies 2022!