Tag: religion

Now & Forever ABCs (Lauren)

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Lauren Felicia Conners

9 January 1996
Lutheran (ELCA)

Lauren is a perfectionist.  She is always striving for excellence in anything she puts her hand to, be it her dancing, her studies, or setting the table.  Often this leaves her with an remarkable lack of confidence — she’s always worried she’ll mess up or fail.

She fell in love with dance at an early age.  By three she had shown such intense desire to dance that her parents had signed her up for lessons, because her wish to learn exceeded her family’s ability to teach her given that none of them knew more than ballroom dancing.  It became her life.  She has studied ballet from that first day — her love of dance having been born upon seeing a ballet, she’d begged to learn ‘the pretty dance’.  From there, however, she branched out and has taken further lessons in ballroom and latin dancing.  She has taken belly dance lessons, and is a long time student of a local modern and jazz dance instructor.  And, of course, ballet — always, she studies ballet.

Eventually she moved from her old ballet school to Mademoiselle Jeanette‘s as it offered a chance to gain greater experience on stage as well as a far more advanced study of technique.  In addition to dancing, Lauren has some interest in general performance so often tries out for school plays and takes drama electives when she gets the chance.

Lauren’s next great love is church.  She has grown up in a very religious family, and has a strong sense of the importance of God and faith.  Between that and having received all of her schooling from Catholic schools she took a strong interest in theology, especially Christian theology.  She has read every English translation of the Bible she could, and thoroughly, as well as making a devoted study of the history of the Abrahamic faiths and the Hebrew people.  She tries to understand her religion and its origins.  This has lead her to frequently excel in her Religious Studies lessons, such her school eventually ran out of options but to skip her ahead in subject, first placing her in Freshman theology in eighth grade, then in Junior’s level in her ninth grade year.  Even placing her in AP level courses has done little to assuage her boredom in these classes.

Her perfectionist and pious nature expresses itself in her relationships with others.  When she dates, she approaches it with the assumption that this person could be who she spends the rest of her life with — she doesn’t date to date or for social status, but to find the one person God has meant for her to be with.  When she makes friends she loves those friends and values those friendships deeply — even a casual friend, or even simply a friendly acquaintance is someone who Lauren cares deeply for and about.  Her capacity for forgiveness and caring even extends to those who are anything but friends — she’s human, she still manages to have angry thoughts and to see horrible things happen to those who upset her, but she simultaneously feels rather guilty about those thoughts and quickly tries to forgive them as much as she can.

This, plus her encyclopaedic knowledge of the Bible have led many to, depending how much they like her, affectionately or derisively refer to her as Saint Lauren and similar.  She’s seen as too sweet to be real, too good, and other things.  Those who know her well know this isn’t true — that she can be catty or mean when provoked, the she can hold the occasional grudge, that she does not always follow the rules, and that — despite being a virgin — she possibly knows as much or more than some who aren’t — she will investigate any curiosity she has in books and internet, including sexuality.

The one naïvety she ever expresses is in the form of aspects of pop culture.  While Lauren’s family has a television, it is used expressly for watching DVDs, Apple TV, and Blu-Rays; they have no cable nor antenna.  She does listen to the radio, both internet and airwaves (primarily satellite, but sometimes FM) and has an impressive collection of music, both physical and iTunes, and she enjoys movies from every era starting with the original silent silver screen flicks to the newest special effects blockbusters.  Still, the latest hit shows, latest popular talk show trivialities, and other goings on in the daily lives of the little people in the magic box are lost on her.  She’s watched the telly before, and it bored her.

Her friends call her a humble Hermione Granger (simply Hermione for short), and Linus — as in the Peanuts character who has such a habit of quoting Bible verse — but thanks to Salencia they’ve taken to simply calling her Pixie; a nickname she’s far more fond and proud of.  It’s also rather apt.  She has forever been a tiny girl, not always shortest in her class, but close to, very much lithe and petite — many of her clothes can still be bought in the children’s section of the department store, what of it she doesn’t make for herself, and combined with a complexion that is all freckles with copper red hair, she agrees with Sally:  the name fits.

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Now & Forever ABCs (Gramps & the Witch)

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Albert Lee Swanson & Claudette Isis Swanson née Baardsson

10 October 1935 & 2 June 1933
Anglican & Church of All Worlds

The couple who brought Yvette into the world, and an eccentric pair.  Gramps, as far back as Yvette can recall, tended to give people names to suit a mix of who the person was and his own unusual sense of humour.  The Witch, on the other hand, felt that children should actually have names — so insisted on giving permanent names to her children, and also insisted that, given that they’d have to live with them, that it should sound like a name rather than an appellation.  Gramps has never once called one of his children by their given name — and his wife has heard him utter her name few times in the decades they’ve been together.

The pair live in an old hotel that’s been converted to a large home in northern-most Washington, part of their property is possibly in Canada in fact.

Married in 1951 the pair had ten children over the course of twenty-three years.  Gramps has always been talented with woodcarving and carpentry, so owned a furniture making shop and did contracting work while the Witch, who had always been immensely fascinated by the various uses of plants, opened an herbalist shop which specialised in beauty supplies and cosmetics.  Both businesses were successful enough that all of their children were able to go to college, though only eight did, and all of them got scholarships — so the education money went to helping each child into their first homes or other similar boosts to starting adulthood.

The Witch was raised in a household that, ostensibly, was Unitarian but was largely agnostic or Deist in specifics.  She and her siblings were encouraged to study philosophy and theology, their father believing it gave a better understanding of the world, people, and morals & ethics.  She is well versed in Judaism, several forms of Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, can quote the Bible in Greek, and has a firm grounding in several forms of Hindu.  When Otter and Morning Glory Zell founded the Church of All Worlds she studied it as avidly leading to her rising within the ranks of its priesthood.  Gramps, on the other hand, continues to attend a small Anglican church near his home any Sunday he can and makes a stubborn point of going on Easter and Christmas, and insisting even more stubbornly that his wife, and any of their sundry children, children-in-laws, and their children join them whenever they’re visiting on those days.

Among their various hippie friends the pair are sometimes seen as oddly old fashioned.  Gramps and the Witch were fairly strict with their children in terms of expectations of their behaviour.  The girls were, at the Witch’s adamant insistence, thoroughly taught etiquette, diction, posture, and just about every other womanly art that would be taught in a finishing school.  Gramps followed her example — every one of their sons was to be a perfect gentleman (he stopped short at actually making them learn to use a sword, given that he couldn’t use one either).  In seemingly stark contrast to this the parents were exceedingly open with their children and the Witch even educated those of her daughters and sons interested in the subject on the contents of her copy of the Kama Sutra and other related works — not practical demonstrations, mind, only theory; practice was up to them to arrange.

Eventually the couple has retired, giving over his business to a friend and hers to one of their children, and are spending their twilight years enjoying their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, spoiling them as much and as often as possible.

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