Monthly Archives: January 2012

Taking Leaves from Books

29 Sunday Jan 2012

Posted by in Good Reads, Soul Care

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Yesterday, with barely a pause between finishing my second of two books by Barbara Brown Taylor, I picked up my first of three Ernest Hemingway novels — and read my way through a third of its pages.

But now it’s Sunday.  And since it’s another Sunday in a string of Sundays where I’ve felt no desire to attend church — I feel an unexplainable urge to put aside words of Ernest (for today) to spend more time with Barbara’s — in part, because she was once a practicing priest — in part, because she is, at present, a professor of world religion at some small liberal arts school in Georgia, and in largest part, because the titles of her books —  Leaving Church and An Altar in the World — happen to mesh so well with the flavor of my Sundays at the moment. 

Having just finished these books one after another, it’s hard to decide what to offer up. I know I can’t write a review, per se, since the experience these books provide is not from a reading of words as much as from a reading of the reader.  These are living works — that is, while we could easily read the same words, different readers will notice different phrases as being meaningful, and the same reader might pick up on different meaningful phrases with each new reading.  What felt important to me this time, may not be for you and may not for me  — next time.  (And I hope there will be a next time.)  And yet, even if I were to jot down every word from these books that caught my eye and tugged at my heart (this time)– to do so would serve neither them nor us, as all that cutting and pasting would only chop the books to shreds.

So, after a careful re-reading of my many underlined words, I’ve decided the best I can do is leave two Sunday offerings — by taking a single leaf from each to share as a  sacred souvenir of my January wanderings with Barbara:

 “…The good news of God in Christ is, “You have everything you need to be human.” There is nothing outside of you that you still need — no approval from the authorities, no attendance at temple, no key truth hidden in the tenth chapter of some sacred book.  In your life right now, God has given you everything that you need to be human.’”   — from Leaving Church [page 219]

“Popular religion focuses so hard on spiritual success that most of us do not know the first thing about the spiritual fruits of failure.  When we fall ill, lose our jobs, wreck our marriages, or alienate our children, most of us are left alone to pick up the pieces.  Even those of us who are ministered to by brave friends can find it hard to shake the shame of getting lost in our lives.  And yet if someone asked us to pinpoint the times in our lives that changed us for the better, a lot of those times would be wilderness times.” — from An Altar in the World [page 78]

These words spoke to me and speak to me still.  They beg certain questions, questions like — What does it mean to be human?  — And what does the wilderness teach me about being human?  Why even the way I’ve framed these questions shows I believe the offerings may not be two but one — and if not one, that at least somehow connected.  Even if only flip sides of the same coin.

Hope no one feels cheated.

Afterwords

27 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by in Life at Home, Soul Care

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Huddled around the table were men close to my mother-in-law’s heart — my husband, two sons and Janice’s husband Ray —  with Amy and I making six.  It was our first dinner without her.  So I kept numbers small — in hope of making conversation easier.

The dinner menu was less important that the diners, though I did spend hours in the kitchen trying to make the most mouth-watering meal I could.  Not only did I make Ray’s favorite Zucchini Squash Casserole but I made sure to avoid any dish that would remind too much of Janice.  It was way too early to serve any of Janice’s favorite foods, like the chicken-fried steak she heavily favored.

Our dinner conversation wasn’t memorable.  Just the usual mish-mash of words spoken in response to questions about how work was going or something or other about the weather or how Kyle’s truck Betsy was running.  Followed up, of course, by the standard fare of favorite topics like how the Pokes were doing or how the Sooners were doing or how the Thunder was doing.

We failed to talk of how we were doing.

After dinner, conversation was much the same.  Until Ray began talking about new routines at home.  Until I responded by saying something about Janice.

Wait.  Did I just say ‘Janice’ aloud?

Yes. And though I said it as natural as breathing, I don’t recall what words preceded Janice’s name and what words followed after.  I only remember saying, “Janice.”  And then the silence that swallowed up her name.

But I also remember what happened after the silence: I remember how Ray’s surprise softened into something like relief, and that he began to share a few stories about Janice that were important to him.

It was good, I think, for Ray to talk of Janice.  And it felt good to hear Ray’s talk of Janice.  To speak and hear of her was the best we could do.  Why it out-shined everything else about the evening — even that squash casserole I troubled myself over.

Ray’s Zucchini Squash Casserole

Total baking time:   9o minutes at 350.

2 large tomatoes or a 14.5 oz can of petite diced tomatoes (if canned, drain well)
1/4 cup brown sugar
Salt (to taste)
2/3 cup of chopped onion
2 medium zucchini squash – sliced
Grated Velveeta Cheese — 2 cups
Home-made croutons (see recipe below)
Grated Parmesan Cheese

Slice tomatoes over bottom of an ungreased 9×9 casserole dish.  Sprinkle brown sugar and salt over tomatoes.  Add 1/2 of onion and 1/2 of zucchini.  Cover with 1/2 of grated Velveeta cheese.  Repeat layers.  Cover with foil or casserole lid and cook for 1 hour at 350.  After one hour of baking, remove foil, drain off excess water in casserole (leaving some liquid), add croutons and Parmesan cheese to top of casserole.  Return to oven (uncovered) for final 1/2 hour of baking.

Home-made Croutons:

4 slices of bread, cubed
Approx. 1/3 cup butter
garlic salt to taste

Sauté bread cubes in butter and garlic salt in a skillet over medium heat until toasted.

Wilderness Sayings

20 Friday Jan 2012

Posted by in The Great Outdoors

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

Perhaps it’s coincidence.  Or nothing but tunnel vision that causes me to filter out what is not uppermost in my mind; when I have “X” on the brain I see  “X.”  And I see ‘X” everywhere. Sometimes to the exclusion of all else.  No “Y.”  No “Z.”  No whatever else — as it flies past my line of vision.

But whether coincidence or tunnel vision, over and over I find myself thinking along a certain path — to encounter another on my blog roll further down that particular thinking trail.  The connection feels important — not hokey, as with those sometimes, seemingly ‘spot-on’ sayings rising out of broken fortune cookies, that get read aloud by tables full of wisdom seekers.

Here’s one for instance — that comes out of a blog comment I wrote several days ago:

How strange to find you baptizing today’s post with the phrase “question without an answer” — on the day I should wake up realizing that unanswered questions are one of the many things to inspire me.  Maybe it’s Rilke’s urging – “Live the questions now.” — to that young poet of old that causes me to find life most meaningful and real in the face of unanswered questions… [Questions like:]

Is my youngest daughter’s growth on her thyroid benign..?
What comes after death?  [in thinking about my mother-in-law…]
What’s for supper?

No matter their weight, the questions themselves inspire me to live. Inch by inch. Day by day. Until I catch the glimmer of an answer…

Upon writing that list, I thought it an odd mix of questions — the first two hovering at the quick of life with the last feeling a bit frivolous and flighty.  But rather than play editor, I decided to leave the questions be, keeping the list just as it came to me.

It was just as well.  By the next day, I began seeing the questions as more connected than I’d first imagined.  And it came about as all reinterpretations of the past happen — by looking at the same “X” through a different set of lens.  In this case, it was more than one pair of lenses — for I looked at that list through the lens of a new event; and then the lens of a new experience, and finally, through the lens of one other than myself.

That the last came from a flock of birds who had just dropped in for supper — lending me their proverbial bird’s-eye view — well, this did throw me off-balance — enough to confess that even now, I can’t say whether these birds were Red-breasted Black Birds or Robins.  All I know is they were ravenous and noisy and feasting on the fruit of the Cherry Laurel outside my kitchen window.  It seemed every seat in my new bird cafe was filled.  As fast as a ‘table’ came open, a new bird came to takes its place.  No need to ask, “What’s for supper?  These birds had the good fortune to find my tree, so supper became ripe black cherries.

Of course, whatever food they happened upon that day — fitting their own particular bird’s palate — could have become a fine supper:  worms, birdseed or insects, perhaps.   From the bird’s perspective, any answer would have been a good answer — a life-giving answer — as long as the birds themselves didn’t become another creature’s supper — like some bird-watching fat cat, per chance.

As I watched them eat, I saw that life for these birds, as it is for any creature living in the wilderness, is a meal-by-meal affair.  It’s not a question of bird seed or worms.  It’s birdseed.  Or worms.  Or fruit.  Whatever they find.  These live an eat or be eaten sort of existence.  Everyday.  From the birds perspective, living into the answer of ‘what’s for supper’ is not a light-weight question at all — why it very much belonged to that quick of life list of questions left in my blog comment.

Still, the strange thing about yesterday, one I still need to think about, is this:  As I watched that bird-laden tree being picked over clean, I remember thinking how I’d never seen that tree look so alive before.  It shook.  And pulsed.  As birds came and went.  And while ravished by the wilderness, the tree lived on. Empty of fruit, the tree lives to bear again.  The tree lives and the birds live.  And I like how both the giver and the takers have happy endings.

And though I can’t say how — somehow, when I looked at that tree eaten yet not consumed, I imagined the tree being me.  And that instead of birds feasting on my fruit, it became unanswered questions which pecked away my fruitfulness.  Yes, it’s crazy, crazy, these thoughts of mine.  But then, I’ve always had a wild imagination. Perhaps these loose connections I’m making are nothing but tunnel vision at play. Yes.  Let’s just say that me being that tree — and my flock of questions being those birds — is nothing more than one of those odd life coincidences.