Stars in Still Water, Jonsi

Put your clothes now out to dry
It's early morning
The day is unfolding, ever so softly

I will always be, oh, aloud within
It's a never ending song that I sing alone
I am, awake, the only one awake

I see the sun, break out, it slows, no clouds
No crows, no one out, too - Only that you

Don't stop in still water
Don't stop in still water

Now the sun's in your eyes
It dries away your tears
As you and I are the only ones
To move in search of other feet

I will always be, oh, aloud within
It's a never ending song that I sing alone
I am, awake, the only one awake

I see the sun, glow fade, it's late, in shades
Letting the past start, good - Only that you

Dew stars in still water
Don't stop in still water

Don't you know that fires
Eat all the lost sorrows in the morning

I should say that I'm not really sure what this song is about, but I love it. Seems like a nice place to begin on a Monday morning.

Toast and Grape Juice

A friend of mine lost her dad to cancer last week. I know that's not really the best way to begin any sort of post, but at least it tells you, invisible reader, that this post will in some way be about death. My friend's dad died of liver cancer, same as my dad. Different kind of liver cancer, but liver cancer. Because her dad got sick before my dad did (he'd been sick for about six years by the time he passed last week), we have had this sort of tandem-like movement over the last few years.

Somewhere in the space between writing a post about living bread and my friend's dad dying, I was reminded of an event I shared with my dad about a month before he died. During the last two months of his life, we saw him go down a pretty steep decline, and even though I'd been preparing for the inevitability of his passing for quite some time, I don't know that I was ready for the reality of it once it arrived--at least, not the INEVITABILITY of it. That's really a story for another time, though; tonight I want to talk about the last and only time I served my dad communion.

As he got sicker and sicker, my dad's appetite slacked off more and more. As my mom tried to find different ways of getting enough protein into him, he lost his taste for one food after another. Toward the end he primarily ate yogurt, popsicles, toast, and grape juice. I've no idea why those foods, but that's where he was. So, anyway, I was in the kitchen of their house, and he kind of hobbled into the room and headed for his favorite recliner. I helped him sit down and cover up with a blanket, and he asked me if I might make him some toast and get him some juice.

As I was toasting the bread, I thought about a story my church history professor told us as she was explaining her understanding of the incarnation. The way she told her story, a few years after relocating to Richmond to begin teaching at seminary, she relocated her parents to Richmond as well. Within a few weeks of the move her father suffered a massive stroke. While sitting next to her father in the hospital room, my professor was thinking of what it meant for Christ to have taken on the "form" of flesh, to have assumed the pattern of what it means to be an embodied human being in addition to having his own physical form, and she had the sudden understanding that if God in Christ has taken on the pattern and form of humanity, he resides in our flesh as well as in his own. I guess it makes sense that it is during these pregnant moments that we get some clarity of our understanding of God and the world, and our relation to both; but during that moment and those shortly after, when I helped my dad sip his grape juice, and served him dry toast, I understood communion in a way that I never did before, and I don't know when in the future I will share communion with people and not think back to that moment with him.

To add to my professor's experience: it became clear to me at some point that not only does Christ share our flesh, but that the spirit of God is shared among us--all of us. In those moments of breaking bread and drinking wine, if we allow ourselves to look at one another, and to see the indwelling divinity we share, we become tapped into that divinity, transcending our own self and space and time while remaining exactly who and where and when we are. There may be something metaphysical about it, I don't know, but I do know that in that moment of being open to my dad, of seeing him as he was dying, I was able to see him as I never had before. The bread and grape juice became something more; we became something more. Ordinary food, ordinary room, ordinary people, sharing an extraordinary experience.

Getting back into it

I baked bread tonight for the first time in a long time. Correction: tonight I kneaded bread tonight for the first time in a long time. A couple of years ago, I was baking bread almost daily - it was part of my routine, and I managed to work it in basically anywhere. Gosh, I don't even know when or how the routine started to change, but bread baking slowly slipped out of the scene. I've tried to get back into it a few times, and have done so with some regularity here and there, but I found that if I started using a food processor, instead of kneading by hand, I could work faster. But tonight, as I was mulling over the details of a final project I've got due for a class, I went downstairs and started baking bread. Just a simple whole wheat bread--easy to do if you've got a few hours for the rising, no need for a food processor. It was when I was kneading the bread that I remembered why I love baking bread so much. I like to eat it, sure, but the part I really love is that experience of kneading the bread--of taking a mush of flour, yeast, salt, water, and oil, and seeing it firm up. As I kneaded, the goopy mess started to get a bit of...umpf...to it, and as I felt the warmth of it beneath my hands, I started to think about it as a living thing.

I know I've been in seminary too long when I start to think about the living bread I'm kneading into a ball, but the more I think about the power of sharing a meal with someone, the more powerful I realize it is to share a meal with someone. I read a book last week called Mighty Stories, Dangerous Rituals, and was struck by one passage:

"Jesus literally ate his way through the Gospels. And, as remembered over and over again in the Gospels, they killed him because of the way he ate; that is, because he ate and drank with sinners. Apart from the many table tales, the Gospels also remember that Jesus spoke in table metaphors. When he wasn't at a banquet he was telling a story about a banquet. When he wasn't teaching that bread can be a vehicle of God's presence, he was talking about bread as a way to discipleship for those who wished to live as his body in the world."

Since I last posted on this blog, life has kind of been on high speed. I said goodbye to my dad, who died in June, and to my grandpa a month before him. We got married, and are talking kids. In the fall, I started working with LGBTQ youth, and have found a certain fire in my belly over the lack of care given to these youth. We have also planted a garden, and I'm learning how to ask for help, and to trust and forgive myself more (ever a process). Our church started a Supper Church service, where we gathered together to make a meal and worship around the table. I guess I say all of that because in a lot of ways for me, it keeps coming back to food. I could rant all day about the need for more active conversations in the church about the needs of LGBTQ people, or racism, or poverty, but there is something that happens if you can actually sit down at a table with someone whom you perceive as different--break bread with them, talk to them, give yourself the opportunity to really see them.

In thinking about my "living bread" moment earlier this evening, I think about this thing which is so very simple, and still relatively inexpensive to make. And yet, when shared (and especially when shared between people who allow themselves to be present to the act of sharing), it has the potential to be so rich and so full and, dare I say it, so alive.

beet soup

6 roasted beets

1 onion, diced

butter/olive oil, about a tablespoon

2 star anise

1 bay leaf

3 c broth (any kind)

2 t cider vinegar (I use Braggs)

1/2t cardamom





So I had roasted beets in the refrigerator which I cut into quarters. In a soup pot I heat olive oil and butter (about 1T total) and cooked a chopped onion. I tossed in the anise and cardamom and cooked the onion until it was soft. Then I added broth, vinegar,  and a bay leaf and let it cook for about 10 minutes. Added the beets and cooked another 10 minutes. Removed the bay leaf and anise. Blended the soup until it was smooth

Triple C Bisque

bring these items to a simmer in a pot until the carrots are tender:
4c broth
6c chopped carrots
3 cloves garlic
1 thumbs worth of ginger

add:
1/4c cashew butter
1 can coconut milk

blend everything together, season with salt, and garnish with thai basil and chopped cashews

YUMMY!

oohey, gooey brownies

An oh so awesome team effort in the kitchen (adapted from this recipe)

1 stick (1/2c) butter, melted

1 c sugar (you could easily get away with 3/4 c)

1 t vanilla extract

2 eggs

1/2 c flour

1/3 c unsweetened cocoa powder

1/4 t baking powder

1/4 t salt

1/3 c chocolate chips
8 caramel candies (We used Celtic sea salt caramels... Oh MY!)

1/4 t coarse sea salt for garnish

  1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). 

  2. Grease a square baking pan.(I think ours was 8"x8")

  3. Cut caramel candies into chocolate chip sized pieces.

  4. Whisk together the butter, sugar, and vanilla. Whisk in eggs. 

  5. Combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, chocolate chips and salt in a separate bowl.

  6. Gradually stir dry ingredients into wet ingredients until well blended.

  7. Spread half the batter into the pan. 

  8. Sprinkle the caramels evenly across the pan and cover with the remaining batter, spreading it evenly.

  9. Sprinkle the brownie mix with coarse sea salt.

10. Bake for 25ish minutes. (The brownies will begin to pull away from the edge of pan.) 

11. Let cool on a wire rack for 15 minutes and then in the refrigerator at least 30 minutes before cutting into squares.

These will be gooey like fudge, not at all cakey, but oh so delicious! (served with ice cream, of course!) If you have any leftovers, store them in the refrigerator.

Mrs. Noell's Cookies

My favorite cookies growing up were these fantastic refrigerator cookies my grandmother made. They were her mom's recipe. (In case your wondering, my name happens to be my grandmother's maiden name.) Typically she would only make them for big events, like my dad's 60th birthday, or someone's anniversary, or a church reception following a funeral. I loved them and would usually be allowed to eat the ends of the rolls. The dough had to sit in the fridge or freezer for at least 24 hours as a wax paper wrapped log. The rounded ends weren't nearly as attractive as slices from the middle, so I felt it my duty to dispose of the ugly ones.

I remember begging my grandmother for the recipe, but she always said it was a secret. When I was in my early twenties my grandmother started to suffer from the effects of alzheimer's and no longer remembered she wasn't sharing the recipe. She turned it into the church cookbook committee and now I have a copy of it along with a multitude of East Texas who sadly may never make it because chocolate isn't involved. I should also admit to you that I don't make the cookies very often myself. I understand now why they were for special occasions--they're a little more involved than you basic drop cookie. They require early preparation, rolling, cutting, wax paper for storage, and the recipe makes a lot of cookies. When I'm feeling nostalgic and I miss my Nanny, I often opt for the spice blend used in her cookies, but mix it into a drop cookie recipe instead. That's what I did today, so you can call these Ms. Noell's cookies!

blend together:
2 sticks butter
1/2 c white sugar
1/2 c brown sugar

I usually let the mixer run for about 5 minutes until this mixture is really light and fluffy, then add 2 eggs, one at a time, mixing thouroughly

add:
1 t lemon juice
1 t vanilla extract

scrape the sides of the bowl and then mix in:
1 T freshly ground nutmeg
1 T cinnamon
2 c flour (if you scoop straight from the bin, 2 1/2 c flour if you scoop and pour into your measuring cup)
1 c unsweetened coconut shreds
1 c dried cranberries, chopped
1 c chopped nuts (pecans, walnuts, hazelnuts, or pistachios--if you are baking for someone with allergies, leave the nuts out)

Make sure everything is well blended. If you have time, let the dough sit in the fridge for an hour or overnight. preheat oven to 375° Scoop by heaping teaspoons onto a cookie sheet, leaving room between the cookies for them to flatten. Bake for about 11 minutes, or until the edges are brown. Remove from oven and cool on the pan for two minutes. Transfer to a cooling rack. Store in a cookie tin. Cookies will keep in the freezer for several months.