{"id":4610,"date":"2013-04-19T10:37:37","date_gmt":"2013-04-19T14:37:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/?p=4610"},"modified":"2015-07-14T11:43:04","modified_gmt":"2015-07-14T15:43:04","slug":"flocanrib-a-parable","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/flocanrib-a-parable\/","title":{"rendered":"Flocanrib – a parable"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Flower<\/a>Irene<\/strong> was the only little girl in her whole extended family, and everyone loved giving her girly gifts. Three of her uncles<\/strong> liked to give her certain gifts every birthday. Uncle John always gave her a flower, uncle Jack always gave her a box of candy, and uncle Jerry always gave her a hair ribbon. They always gave together, and in secret. The night before her birthday, the three would meet together in the dead of night with their presents, and together leave them on her doorstep. Irene would awake each birthday morning to find such presents, much to her delight. But she didn\u2019t know who they were from and naturally assumed that it was one giver, not three.<\/p>\n

As they coordinated the drop off each year, the conspirators would communicate, and they took to referring to themselves as \u201cFlocanrib<\/strong>.\u201d They would say things like \u201cWhen is Flocanrib meeting next Tuesday?\u201d and \u201cCan Flocanrib do it again this year?\u201d<\/p>\n

When she was little, Irene thought of the source of her yearly presents as her birthday fairy \u201cPresenty<\/strong>.\u201d But later, she thought it must be a single human being \u2013 she imagined, a relative \u2013 still called, in her mind, \u201cPresenty.\u201d One day, when she was in high school, her birthday came, but the presents did not. They never resumed, and Irene still wondered who Presenty was; she was eager to thank this person.<\/p>\n

Her uncles had all passed away, so they would never confess to their kind deeds. But one of their wives, looking through her deceased husband\u2019s correspondence, found mentions of \u201cFlocanrib\u201d which seemed to imply that this had been the source of Irene\u2019s doorstep presents. \u201cIrene,\u201d she said, \u201cI know who gave you those gifts! In your uncle John\u2019s correspondence, I found his or her name – \u2018Flocanrib.\u2019 Odd name, isn\u2019t it? Anyway, it must\u2019ve been someone your uncle knew… I wish I could help more. I\u2019ve never heard of him or her.\u201d\"Candy<\/p>\n

Irene was delighted. \u201cI know who Presenty is \u2013 a Mr. or Ms. Flocanrib!<\/strong>\u201d Aided by family members, she searched high and low, but found no evidence of any such person. All she knew \u2013 or thought she knew – that her three deceased uncles had known and probably helped him or her. She still wanted to know who Presenty was, but now she was also puzzled as to why her uncles knew this person, but never said anything to her about it.<\/p>\n

Finally, Irene cracked the case<\/strong>. One of her aunts sent her an old email from uncle Jerry, which he\u2019d sent to both John and Jack. It said,<\/p>\n

\u00a0Flo\u2019s bringing a carnation. What is Can bringing \u2013 chocolates? I\u2019m bringing a pink ribbon. Sincerely, Rib.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now she saw that there was no such person<\/strong> as \u201cFlocanrib\u201d or \u201cPresenty.\u201d \u201cFlocanrib\u201d was just name for three persons \u2013 for her uncles John, Jack, and Jerry, as birthday present conspirators.<\/p>\n

She visited their graves, leaving an appropriate gift at each one.<\/p>\n

Next time: Irene’s mistake explained.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Irene was the only little girl in her whole extended family, and everyone loved giving her girly gifts. Three of her uncles liked to give her certain gifts every birthday. Uncle John always gave her a flower, uncle Jack always gave her a box of candy, and uncle Jerry always gave her a hair ribbon.… Read More »Flocanrib – a parable<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4617,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,14,9,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-heresy-orthodoxy","category-history","category-philosophy","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35676,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4610\/revisions\/35676"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/trinities.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}