Thursday 24 May 2012

Marriage and Ribs


Last night Mrs RJR and I went out for a meal to celebrate our wedding anniversary, because yesterday we celebrated 20 years of marriage. 

Marriage is a wonderful thing, I would like to say we have never had an argument, fell out or disagreed but that is far from the truth. What I can say though, is that we still hold hands when walking and we still say a prayer together every night at bed time. We take turns, I say prayers on odd dates she does even dates, we remember whose day it is because she says that I'm "odd". Yes we are a church going pair, its no secret.

Back to our meal, I had a rack of ribs, they were excellent. I had looked forward to them all day and they didn't disappoint ! I think part of the reason for choosing the ribs was I had been thinking about ribs in the morning, but not the pork variety...

Ribs and marriage fit together well. The first married couple were Adam and Eve. The symbolism in the bible is that God created Eve from a rib taken from Adam side. this is beautiful on many levels. First off, its very fitting that God saved his greatest creation, woman, till the very last. Secondly why use the rib?

“woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.” (Matthew Henry)

There are some folk that think of this as a literal surgical removal of a rib, but for me its very much symbolism and men don't have 1 less rib than women, we all have the same ! There are however some medical symbols to be drawn.

"The function of ribs is threefold. First, they provide protection for the lungs and heart. The ribs more or less form a “cage” around these very important organs. Second, they are one of the few bones that continue to make red marrow (and thus blood cells) in the adult. Third, they serve as attachment points for chest muscles involved in respiration."(online dictionary)

So God chose to use something that protected Adams heart and lungs, the most vital of organs and also bones that produced Adams "life blood" Likewise Mrs RJR protects my heart I have entrusted her with its key, she has also become the air that I breath and the life in my blood.

But the symbolism goes deeper, explore with me Adam and Eves relationship

There is a perfect unity between these two mortals; they are “one flesh.”  The word rib expresses the ultimate in proximity, intimacy, and identity. When Jeremiah speaks of “keepers of my tsela (rib)” he means bosom friends, inseparable companions. Such things are to be taken figuratively, when we are told not that the woman was made out of the rib or from the rib, but that she was the rib, a powerful metaphor. So likewise “bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh”, “and they shall cleave together as one flesh”—the condition is that of total identity. “Woman, because she was taken out of man” (Hugh Nibley)

In the case above the word cleave is to cling together not the alternate meaning of splitting apart. Splitting however does fit into the story too. In some translations, the word rib is taken to mean side, or half. suggesting that God used half of man not just a rib to make women... this would mean that man and wife are only whole, when united together.

So although marriage may be on the decline I am happy to report mine isn't, here is to the next 20 years !!


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Monday 14 May 2012

MCFC Victory Parade


I have to be honest I'm not a massive football fan but Mrs RJR and our youngest, Ruth, both are BIG Manchester City fans. So if you know anything about the events of Sunday and the nail biting League Final you will know that after a full season of games it was all decided by the final goal in the 5th minute of stoppage time. It was a tense 95 minutes in Teal Towers, followed by a lot of screaming.

Mrs RJRs team had won the league... She has only waited ALL her life to see this happen.

Tonight we joined 100,000 people in the centre of Manchester to watch the victory parade. Ruth made a banner for her team favourite, Jo Hart the Goalkeeper.


You can image her face when he looked down from the open top bus, starred at her banner and then blew her a kiss !!!
 

We took loads of pictures, of thousands of happy people !!! So here is what we saw...



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Sunday 6 May 2012

A-Z 2012 Reflections

It doesn't seem five minutes since I was posting on A-Z Eve and here we are now at the end of the challenge. Thoughts.. Well I have a few.

As a 2011 participant I was really excited by the prospect of being involved in a bigger and better connected version of the challenge this year. I thought the inclusion of Twitter and a Facebook page was a great addition and this added to the enjoyment. I tried hard in March to ReTweet and promote the challenge via Twitter in general.

I did however feel that the increased number of participants diminished the experience for me. Perhaps my posts were not as good as last year but I found I had fewer visitors and comments than last time. This is probably to do with me not visiting as many blogs as I did previously. In 2011 I visited them all, this time I only managed about 600. My lower visit rate was due to three things, less time, being overwhelmed by the number and the similarity of so many.

On the last point of participant similarity, this time I was more selective of the blogs I have added to my following list, I wanted to follow those I would make an effort to revisit and interact with. If I am being honest I did find with so many authors blogging I tended to visit very briefly and move on. My preferred blog reading material is lifestyle/humour and general thoughts rather than writing and publishing tips.

Having said the negatives, I did enjoy the challenge and would like to offer a big thanks to the organisers for all the hard work and how often they were around. THANKS !! 

So as a summary, here are my 26 posts


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Wednesday 2 May 2012

Miniature Wunderland

Today I have spent far too long on YouTube marvelling at videos of Miniature Wunderland in Hamburg Germany. It is absolutely amazing. This premier attraction is the product of a 150 man team spending hours building models. Add in some top spec computer control and trickery and here is the result. You don't have to be a model maker to appreciate the work and skill involved.






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