Category Archives: Prayer

Tears and Fears

26 Saturday Dec 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care

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I had no plan to write about this morning’s biblical readings when I sat down at the keyboard this afternoon.  But that’s often how writing is with me.  I sit down to write one thing and out comes another.   I guess the stronger words reign victorious in their fight for life.

Of course, the Bible is full of strong words, many which make for disturbing thoughts.  Sometimes I’m desolate after my morning quiet time, as I see that people across time haven’t changed much — and that the changes for good within myself are painfully slow.  Perhaps, in some ways, we are all slow learners, especially when it comes to learning the lessons that matter most in life.

This morning’s reading from Psalms was a variation on the old “eye-for-an-eye” theme.  Most would agree that there is nothing wrong in expecting value for value;  to settle for anything less than what we are due is to be taken advantage of — and God knows, I feel stupid when I’ve let someone get the best of me.

Yet, in my favorite prayer chair this morning, I felt more disturbed than stupid, as I listened to the psalmist’s heart-wrenching prayer.  Distilling through all the rhetoric, I heard the psalmist’s pray boil down to this:  “We scratched your back and now God, it’s your turn to scratch ours.   Don’t let us down, man.”

I wonder how the psalmist prayer sat with God, as I flee for the good news of John.  After the Psalms, I’m in need of a bit of good news.  But it doesn’t take long for my eyes to water as truth splashes me in the face.

I’m now sitting with Jesus, who is pouring out his heart to teach others about his family business.  Jesus it seems, is full of heavenly notions about what it really means to love God and what it really means to love one another.  It’s clear that Jesus is upsetting the apple cart  with lessons that don’t quite mesh with his audience’s way of thinking.  Doesn’t Jesus see that he’s letting his listeners down?

I finally escape to John’s first epistle where I see the old apostle imploring his flock to love.  “All you need is love, folks — heavenly business is simple enough for a baby to do,” John seems to say.  “There’s no need to worry about whose turn it is to do what, forget about keeping tallies, everyone’s a winner when love trumps fear.”

This doddering saint seems to be saying that when we let one another down, we let down God and worse of all — at least in God’s eye — we let down ourselves.  Heavenly business seems to be about stooping down to pick up the ones that are let down by life and making them the apple of our eyes.  Back scratching is just one way to express it.

Tomato Basil Soup

04 Friday Dec 2009

Posted by in In the Kitchen, Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care

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The memories of tasting a new soup can be as wonderful as the soup itself.  And so it is with this particular soup.

I don’t remember the year but I recall it was around Valentines Day when I was first treated to a taste of this simple soup.  My friends Kathy and Litha had conspired to give twelve of their shared girlfriends the best sort of Valentine ever – an invitation to a luncheon, to share and bask in love from their kitchens and in the love of God herself.

These women did all the cooking in advance.  So guests arrived to be welcomed by the hostesses, to tables so prettily set, that we knew ourselves for the special company we were.  We were seated and waited on, one course after another.  The creamy red soup came first, served with dainty cheese wafers, all home-made.  Then the sweet ending was some type of raspberry and chocolate confection that was almost too pretty to eat.  And I don’t recall what came in between, nor do I remember what was said by any one at the table, though I recall that later we circled up in Litha’s living room to share our favorite biblical passage about God’s love.

But I’ll never forget how it felt to have a seat at the table amidst such fine company.  I felt that this is how the world should be…everyday, not just on special occasions. I felt love all around me.  And the love made me feel infinitely precious.

And how rare this feeling is, that I should still be warmed by the memory of that day, seven or eight years later.  That this should be so tells me that we don’t love each other nearly as well as we could, even those in our closest knit circle of friends and family, forgetting for a moment the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the lonely, the grieving that are strangers in our midst that so desperately need a sign of our love and God’s.

Our knowledge of love grows out of a place of belonging, a place where we feel at home, a place where we are loved and accepted no matter what.  And it hits me hard that I could do this more myself.  And should do this more myself.  And though I try to create a place of belonging within that monthly contemplative prayer class I facilitate, I wonder how the experience would differ if I were to  host the group in my home, at least on occasion, instead of meeting at the church.

It’s food for thought.  And in the meantime, I think I’ll carry Kathy’s soup to next Thursday’s pot-luck supper.  Maybe a taste of it will warm their hearts as much as mine… and maybe it will warm your heart too.  From my life to yours.

Tomato Basil Soup

(Original Recipe — 10 cups of Soup) (My adaption of Kathy’s recipe follows)

1 28 oz can and 1 14 oz can crushed tomatoes
4 cups of tomato juice or chicken broth

Simmer together in a large sauce pan over medium heat for 30 minutes.

14 basil leaves

Adding basil, puree in small batches in blender or food process (note:  small batches are important as hot liquid is very explosive when being processed or blended).  Alternatively, use an immersion blender and leave the soup in the sauce pan as I do.

Return to the sauce pan.  Add remaining ingredients; heat through, careful not to boil.

1 cup of heavy cream
1/4 pound butter
salt & pepper to taste.

Alternative Ingredient List – Makes about 7 cups

I reduced the fat content and changed the ingredient list for staples I keep on hand.

Using same recipe process described above…

2 14.5 oz cans of petite diced tomatoes, briefly processed in a blender or food processor
1 8 oz can tomato sauce
1 14 oz can chicken broth
7 – 10 basil leaves
2 Tbsp butter
1/2 cup light cream
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper

A Thanksgiving Toast

25 Wednesday Nov 2009

Posted by in Life at Home, Prayer, Soul Care

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Jon and Dad -- November 24, 2009

This year I”m thankful in all the usual ways.

But it’s the unusual that  has me writing in the midst of tomorrow’s meal preparations.   The work can wait but this urge to grow still cannot.  I feel the need to sit down and gather my thoughts and name my feelings that tug at my heart,  to write words that will become a prayer of thanksgiving to God for my brother Jon.

It is a crazy sort of grace that the year’s Thanksgiving toast goes to Jon, who has been in and out of drug addiction for more years than I wish to count, but who is now in recovery.  Two years and counting.  To no longer associate Jon with drug addiction through  Pavlovian response makes me shake my head in wonder.  It is pure gift to not worry about Jon working his recovery program, though I know Jon has no such luxury.  Jon can never let down his guard, Jon can never believe he’s healed from his drug addiction, if he wishes to do  “good” and be “good”‘.

So what does “good” look like?  Do good acts cause a person to become good  when others say so — when a person has jumped through enough hoops or spoken all the right words?  Or does goodness arise in the heart of one doing good, as if the good acts themselves are some sort of mysterious medicine to heal whatever is broken.  Perhaps it is both; I know it would be hard for me to believe in my own goodness if others did not.

Like all of us, even the biblical saints like Paul, Jon did not do the good he wanted to do, and instead did the evil he did not want to do.  This is the human condition.  I don’t acknowledge this truth to excuse  or sugar-coat Jon’s bad choices.  But it would be evil to not confess that we all slide up and down the good and bad continuum, that we are all broken in some form or fashion, that we are all a mixed bag of good and evil.

Jon is not the same Jon as before.  That would be impossible; the Jon before drug addiction is buried under the  new face Jon wears, the one who has learned and helped us learn about the power of drugs to destroy and disintegrate relationships and businesses and credit ratings and good reputation and hope.  The one who had to learn how to survive life in prison.

Yet there is a part of Jon that has survived all the drugs and destruction.  Maybe this is the part of Jon that is eternal and real, I don’t know.  But if I can call it this, then the real and eternal part of Jon is the one who can still make me laugh.  The one who is generous with self, possessions and forgiveness.  The one who takes our father to the potty with Daddy’s dignity still intact.  The one who, since being released from prison, faithfully calls his two daughters twice a week and who is now paying monthly child support payments.  The one who is even making child support payments for an illegitimate son he has never met, conceived on one of his many stints in a drug recovery program.  Maybe someday Jon will be able to meet George.

Last Thanksgiving, well actually it was the day after since the prison unit was locked down on Thursday, I brought Jon a paper plate  loaded with Thanksgiving goodies.  This year Jon and I will spend Thanksgiving the way it’s suppose to be spent in all the best stories with happy endings.  We will spend it surrounded by family and friends in a home filled with lovely smells of roasted turkey and dressing and yeast rolls and the click-clack of silverware and the five different snippets of conversation all going on at once.

A new day breaks in my brother’s life and I pray, oh Lord, I don’t know what to pray.  But tomorrow is Thanksgiving.   And I am thankful that my brother Jon and I will break bread and celebrate our brokenness together.