Category Archives: Feast

Lake George from the Porch

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view of lake george in summer from the porch

I’ve been visiting a 100 year old house on the shore of Lake George, New York.  It reminds me of the lodges you find in National Parks out west, mainly because of its stacked stone pillars and the design cut into the balusters of the porch railings.  Built out of solid materials and with an appreciation for beauty, it’s gracious the way I imagine some future house of mine will be whenever I read something like Southern Living or This Old House….

Click here to read more over at We Said Go Travel, where my entry in their Gratitude Travel Writing Contest is published today.

Tip of the Iceberg

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Sometimes I wish we still wore mourning armbands.  The kind Jimmy Stewart wears in It’s a Wonderful Life at the board meeting after his father dies.  That simple black band around the upper arm signaled to everyone else something was up.  Maybe you wouldn’t have known who had died when you saw a teacher at the school wearing one, but that signal would have prompted you to say, at least, “I’m sorry for your loss.”  iceberg

One of the strangest sensations for a mourner is the sense that the rest of the world can somehow keep turning and bustling while time stands still for her.  Absorbed by grief, routine questions like “Would you like room for cream in that?” can suddenly seem out of place and too normal to fit the terrain of her new world.  I wonder if having the stranger, the barista, say “I’m sorry for your loss…Would you like room for cream?” would help.  I wonder if that outward signal to others to make some room for mourning made those interactions less bizarre.

Death has come near several times this fall.  Not to my innermost circle but close enough – too close for comfort.  Three people cut down well before we expected.  I learned about two of the deaths online.  Distance and screens didn’t make them easier.  I’ve found it difficult to mourn, to know how to express feelings and connections not readily apparent to those in my daily, physical community.

Meanwhile the calendar turns.  Advent arrives.  Trees and decorations go up.  Special playlists serve as the seasonal soundtrack.  We cook dishes reserved for this time of year.  All those physical, sensual triggers that this is a different time now.

Like the mourning armband, reminding others – and the wearer herself – to make room for grief.  This is a different time now.

We rely on rituals to cue our behavior and mindset.  Sleep experts advise establishing and maintaining certain rituals, signals to your mind and body that it’s time to slow down and sleep.  Dark, quiet, cool room.  No screens for an hour before bed.  Same time every night…  Eventually your mind and body recognize the signals sent by the rituals so that brushing your teeth and turning off the screens starts you yawning.  Similar to the way listening to Christmas music while baking helps you get in the spirit of things.

What did we lose when we lost the mourning armbands?  Grief – an iceberg whose puny tip showed up as an armband for a few months – became even more hidden, less able to be shared.  More private, less communal.

Put yourself back in the coffee shop, in a hurry, preoccupied by your own agenda.  When the man in front of you fumbles for his wallet, appears spacey, takes too much time, and doesn’t know how to answer the cream question, how exasperated are you?  What if that man were wearing a simple black armband?  Would that give you the signal to go easy, make room, and let it be?  I suspect it would.  I imagine the odd relief the band would give its wearer, not having to explain anything out of the ordinary but also wearing a sign of his emotional and spiritual journey – literally – on his sleeve.  Exposed and protected by the same signal.

Advent and the incarnation it heralds proclaim the bold, unnerving story:  God lives here, too.  It’s not “out there” or “later” or “in spite of” this world and the bodies we inhabit.  The place of God’s revelation is in the midst of our lives and there is no place to hide but every place to be holy.  Exposed and protected by the same sign. 

Most of the year bodies are just bodies and time is just time.  Death reminds us that bodies are the only way we know one another, the only medium we have for encounter.  Advent proclaims time is not “just” anything.  It’s holy.  Permeated with the presence of God.  All those gingerbread-Baby-It’s Cold-Outside-fir-scented-purple-candles-lessons-and-carols-once-a-year signals to wait a minute.  Take it in, sense by sense, ritual by ritual.  Can’t you see?  Feel?  Taste?  Hear?  Real, sensual, physical signals – just the tip of the iceberg – reminding us to make room for the One who came into time, into a human body, and filled it with holiness.

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photo credit: Sunset Iceberg 2, CC / Free Cultural Works

Words for a Rainy Writer Friday

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“I’m a teacher at Syracuse University, I write short stories, and that’s pretty much it.” 

It’s a refreshing statement from writer George Saunders, made to sound simple because of its brevity, but wider and deeper than it appears at first.  Teaching and writing are more than enough for a full, deep, wide, soul-satisfying life.  Regardless of the standing-in-front-of-a-class-of-students aspect of teaching, neither of these occupations is showy.  But they are both lifelong practices that will take you where you need to go – all you have to give over is time, consistent effort, and a willingness to be taken somewhere.

What would your deceptively simple sentence be?  What’s the practice carrying you through life, deeper into life?

The whole video is charming but here’s another winner of a quote:  “But actually, the deeper goal is to be more loving, more courageous, more accepting, more patient.  But also less full of shit.  So, in other words, to be able to really step up to the beauties of life and the horrors of it, without any kind of flinching…If some of that could get into your work, that would be a plus.”

Here it is at The New Yorker.

Dakota Cranberries

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I come from Southern pie folk.  Pecan, chocolate meringue, lemon meringue, coconut.  Pumpkin.  Chess.  Apple.  Cherry.  When I see my family this week I will be making a chocolate meringue pie.   That was a specialty of my paternal grandmother, who always had one waiting when my dad visited – or she’d whip one up on the spot once he arrived.  I’m in charge of keeping my dad in chocolate meringue now.  handwritten recipe for cranberries

But he requests other things, too.  He likes the way I do mashed potatoes.  Skins on, lumps of butter, plenty of salt and pepper.  He’ll even have a generous helping of my vegetable-nut roast, my go-to vegetarian feast day main course.

And he asks for cranberries.  These cranberries were a late addition to our family feasts but they are as anticipated and expected now as the longstanding pies.

The cranberries came by way of South Dakota.  My maternal grandfather married a woman many years after my grandmother’s death, when I was a young teenager.  She came from Scandinavian Midwestern stock and she brought with her to our family’s Virginia tables Norwegian Krumkaka and the cranberries.  Before this, I thought canned gelatinous, ridges-still-imprinted cranberry “sauce” was normal.  I always loved cranberries, the tartness and the pucker.  I was entertained by the comic wiggle from the can onto the serving dish.  But I didn’t know what else cranberries could be.

The first time I had Sylvia’s cranberries, the world became wider.  When everyone else went back late in the day for an extra piece of pie, I would choose a bowl of her cranberries instead.  She used real cranberries, oranges, and walnuts, chopped but still recognizable and formed into a decorative mold.  For many years, I eagerly anticipated this new staple of our Thanksgiving and Christmas meals.  I’m sure I complimented the cranberries each and every time – probably each and every serving.

One year in early January following a Christmas visit, I received a note in the mail from Sylvia, offering me her cranberry recipe.  I don’t know why she decided to give it to me that year.  I don’t remember if I ever asked for it.  Our relationship with her always bore the markers of a tense politeness, as it seemed to us that though she loved my grandfather, she wasn’t ever really sure about the rest of us.

So it was a little surprising to receive the recipe.  And strange to think something so universally beloved and expected on our feast tables came from my step-grandmother.  But it’s our recipe now, too, given and received with her blessing, made (mostly) according to her instructions, which I still read in her handwriting on a worn and yellowed piece of stationary. 

Virginia pecan pie meets Dakotan cranberries.  Strangers become family.  The table is wide enough for us all.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Sylvia’s Cranberries

Sylvia called this “cranberry salad.”  One taste has convinced former cranberry-haters that they do, indeed, like them.  We make this at Thanksgiving and Christmas and look forward to it the rest of the year.  Enjoy!

2, 12 oz. packages of fresh cranberries, ground

2 oranges, ground

2 cups sugar (I sometimes use less – adjust to your desired sweetness or tartness.)

1 cup boiling water

1 cup walnuts, ground

Optional:  2 packages plain gelatin mixed with ¼ cup boiling water.  I used to substitute agar (a vegetarian alternative to gelatin) but realized a couple of years ago it doesn’t really need the gelling agent.  I usually pour this into a serving bowl to chill.  If you are using a decorative mold and will be flipping it out later onto a plate, you may want the gelling agent.

Rinse cranberries and discard any that are mushy or bad.  Chop them into a small-medium dice in the food processor.  Dump them into a pot. 

Remove orange rind, seeds, and thick pith then pulverize the oranges in the food processor.  Add them to the pot with the cranberries.

Add the sugar and the water and mix well.  Boil for 2 minutes then remove from heat.  When cool, add the ground walnuts.  Pour into either a greased mold or a serving bowl and refrigerate overnight or for at least 3-4 hours.

This is a breeze with a food processor but I have also made it several times, chopping it all by hand.  It’s worth it either way.

Thanksgiving in 272 Words

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(An introduction and a sermon preached at the Wesley Foundation at UVA during today’s Thanksgiving  celebration.  Our scripture was Psalm 100.)

Lincoln Memorial statue

Four score and seventy years ago President Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address.  It’s one of the most remembered and quoted speeches.  Clocking in at a concise 272 words, it’s also one of the shortest.  Lincoln was half wrong when he said, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.”  We remember his powerful words at least as well as we do the event of the battlefield at which he spoke. 

For the 150th anniversary of his monumental and brief speech, the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Foundation issued a challenge to write something to remember Lincoln or merely in the spirit of his Address, by writing it in 272 words.  Internet pastor circles picked this up and took it as a challenge to write sermons the same length.  This is why tonight I bring you the 272-word sermon…

Giving thanks is the first prayer most of us learn.  I’m so glad these are my parents…I love going to the park, thank you for this place…God is great, God is good, Let us thank God for our food.  Giving thanks is a gateway prayer for all others.

Some days we forget, too busy for thank you.  Some days our hearts are too broken to recognize what’s worth our gratitude. 

That first prayer, so easily arrived on our lips, takes more work as we age.   

So we gather at this table each week and pray together The Great Thanksgiving, reminding ourselves of the taste and texture of God’s good gifts.  With open outstretched hands, we receive.  We come as thankful guests, nourished by what we cannot provide for ourselves. 

This is the context for all other gifts, tables, feasts.  Jesus gathered with friends, took bread and wine, gave thanks to God, and fed them.  Do this in remembrance of me, he said.

At this table and the one on Thursday.  But also at O-Hill and even when there is no table.  What we do here helps us to recognize where, when, and how to do it other places. 

Until our thanksgiving is closer to those spontaneous childhood prayers – joyful, immediate, unedited.

I hope your feast is tasty and your family offers prayers and words of thanks together this week.  I hope you recognize at that table, an image of this one.  And I hope our feasting here helps you in every day to practice forming the words on your lips and in the deepest part of your heart:  Thanks be to God!

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photo credit:  © 2008 Tony Fischer, CC BY 2.0

October Song

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When I lived in Appalachia and took daily walks to the church up the road, I noticed the slow, steady changes that come in the fall.  I would circle the church with its two huge maples, ablaze in October color, and drink it in – the bright orange-red, the crispness in the air, the sinking sun reflecting into the clouds.  It was glorious.  One day I couldn’t contain the beauty of my walk so I wrote a poem called “October Song.”  For a long time I loved this poem.  I still love the title.  october trees and field with cloudy blue sky

Today I discovered it really wasn’t a very good poem.  After searching my many old journals and computer files, I finally came across it.  I thought I was going to set it out here, proudly, for the first day of October, my favorite month.  There were still some phrases I loved.  I described the moon rising before the sun had set:  “so huge and almost surreal, superimposed onto this landscape of Appalachian homes attached to tendrils of smoke.”  That’s not bad but I’m not writing in the line breaks because they were, in a word, ridiculous.  I also still liked this phrase:  “gold-dipped trees, shimmering with light and a beauty that comes only at the height of maturity.”  But I realized that I mainly remembered and loved the experience of those daily walks and the exuberance and delight I felt in writing about it. 

October is a song, one last eloquence before the quiet of winter, and worthy of a poem.  Just not the one I wrote back then. 

So I’m keeping the title and offering up a couple more recent and – I hope – better poems to celebrate this first day of this lovely month.  I hope you like them but if you don’t, the best poem of all is outside.

You Take It Ripe

You take it ripe
that tardy epiphany
like the pear already falling from the tree
when you reach for it
giving itself over to juice
as you bite.
You had given up on hunger
but you remember
watching, staring,
when all you saw
were hard green orbs
stubbornly
clinging to their branches.
The taste is sweet
and
reminds you
why you persist in waiting
attending to hope
ready for grace.

No Snow Fell

In Appalachia I observed snowfall in a secluded wood

and wrote about the one I craved.

Like the place where I was sitting,

no snow fell

where he was present in my life.

I loved the metaphor and him.

Two decades later

in the gentler Blue Ridge

in the heat of summer

where I began to love my husband,

I realized I had known snow in every season

but this one,

my heart transformed by his presence.

But Wait, There’s More: Butternut Squash Soup, Standby Recipe for Fall

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fall leaves, fall color

I know I said we were finished with our Standby Recipes series, but when a couple of cool late August-early September days came along, I started to crave this soup.  Once you’ve had it you’ll know what I mean.  Simple and deeply satisfying (and vegan and gluten-free if you want it to be).

My friend Alison first made it for me when I landed in England, barely awake and hungry after a long night of travel.  It revived me and felt so much more nourishing than any of the easy-grab things I would have eaten, left to my own devices.  When I’m feeling lazy or tired and debating whether or not I want to get involved with a butternut squash, I remember how bone-deep-wonderful this tasted on that early English morning and how it only took her half an hour. 

Butternut Squash Soup

1 small-medium onion, diced

1 T butter or vegetable/olive oil

2-3 sprigs of fresh rosemary, chopped

1 small-medium butternut squash, peeled, seeds discarded, chopped into 1” pieces

1 quart vegetable stock

1 can white beans (like cannellini), rinsed and drained

Salt and pepper, to taste

Melt butter (or warm oil) in large pot or Dutch oven.  Add onion and sauté for several minutes until soft and translucent.  Add rosemary and continue sautéing for another minute or two.

Be careful peeling and chopping the squash.  (I use a good vegetable peeler (not a knife) to peel and then work on small sections at a time – it will be slippery.)  When you’ve tackled it, add it to the pot and pour in the vegetable stock.  Turn it up to a boil and cook, stirring occasionally, until squash is tender and easily pierced with a fork.

When the squash is getting close to done, add the beans and some fresh black pepper. 

Before I had a blender, I used a food processor for this next part and it’s perfectly yummy and acceptable to do so.  But if you have a blender, I recommend using it.  The soft, velvety purée you can achieve with the blender is perfection.  So, get whichever device you are going to use and, in small batches, purée the soup.  It is very easy to have it explode out of the blender when it’s hot and you put too much in, so be conservative.  I keep a bowl handy and pour out the blended soup into it, while continuing to blend the soup from the pot in batches.

When you have it all blended (a few stray beans left in the bottom of the pot is fine and adds a nice random texture to the final product, so don’t stress about those), pour the soup back into the pot.  Turn it down to warm and taste.  Adjust with salt and more pepper, if desired.

That’s it.  Homemade soup in half an hour.  Bliss.  Yum.  Go, make and enjoy!

Epiphany on the Shore

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When I got married at 40 I also became stepmom to a 19 year-old with autism.  By the time we became a family, I had finally started feeling proud of my single self for putting some money into my retirement account each month.  That’s where I was with planning for the future – and I thought it was pretty good, all things considered.  Then I became one of the autism parenting team. 

In the time I’ve been his stepmom, he has graduated from the school he attended and – as with many times before – paved the way for those behind him, this time as one of the first in the fledgling adult day care program.  It’s a wonderful program and he’s contented there. 

surfers healing at va beach

Click the picture for a great short video about Surfers Healing.

And we still don’t know what’s next.  I spend more time than I probably should worried about it.  My meager retirement-savings-for-one – even when coupled with my husband’s – are even more meager when expected to last another lifetime for someone who will never work or live on his own.  And that’s just the money.  I also worry about how and where he will live and who will take care of him.

I’ve known for a while now the worry is not good and does no good.  But it’s hard to stop. 

Then we went to the beach for the day.

We had one of those coveted spots at a Surfers Healing camp this summer.  Surfers Healing is a non-profit founded by Izzy and Danielle Paskowitz after discovering the calming effects of surfing on their son who has autism.  A former competitive surfer, Izzy recruits other pro surfers to take children – hundreds at each camp – surfing.  They are expert surfers and amazing people who interact so beautifully with the kids and adults with autism. 

My stepson loves the beach so he didn’t take any convincing to go.  I wasn’t sure what his reaction to surfing would be, though we rehearsed the story with him the whole day before and on the long ride there.  He can swim and they put everyone in life jackets before they get anywhere near the ocean’s edge.  So I wasn’t worried about him.  I was happy we could take the time and make the trip.  I wanted him to have the experience and I thought he’d be the one gaining healing and calm that day.  The only one.

I was wrong.

The surfers walked with him down to the shoreline and demonstrated how to lay stomach-down on the board.  Three of them steadied the surf board and accompanied him out to sea.  As they bobbed their way out, away from us, I was overcome with emotion and tears.  I was not expecting this.  I stood there in the wind, watching these kind surfers take him some place I couldn’t go and yet I knew he was still completely safe.

It was relief I felt.  And it flooded me with tears.  Standing there, I felt the weight of the worry I have been carrying since I came into his life.  I recognized my biggest worry by far is who will take care of him after we are all gone. 

I know it won’t be those surfers we met that day.  But the gift of watching them surround him on the board and go with him into the waves was the gut-level certainty that someone could and would.  It was like a trial run, handing him over to others who can take care of him and handle his quirks and his beauty.  It was the most unexpected gift and relief-drenched glimpse of what can come next.

I didn’t go to the beach for my own healing that day.  I never even got in the water, but I’m ready to go back next year and stand on the shore again.  Rehearse the relief.  Receive the gift of community.  Allow healing.  Look ahead into the choppy waters with hope.

Bartering like it’s 1899

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stoneware pottery yarn bowl

This swoopy cut delights me.

Last Advent I was captivated by a friend’s picture post of her newly knitted Advent calendar.  She made 24 little red, green, and winter white mittens and hung them on a garland.  Inside each one was a slip of paper describing that day’s special Advent treat or excursion.  My friend is also a fantastic photographer, so the picture itself was gorgeous.

I kept going back to click on it again and drink in the colors and coziness of her creation.  When I finally asked if I could commission her to create one for me for Advent this year, she said, “Why don’t we barter?”

So I’ve been working on my first yarn bowls in pottery class this year.  They’re designed to hold a ball of yarn, so that when you pull on the end (fed through cool cutaway patterns in the bowl) the ball doesn’t roll away.

Unexpectedly, bartering my pottery for her knitting made me feel more like a “real artist” than selling a piece or two.  I love the exchange of art for art, work for work.  When I went to the pack and ship store yesterday to send the yarn bowl off to my friend, I paid attention to the cool weight of that blue bowl with the gorgeous swoopy cutaway.  And then I handed it over to make its way to another state and another home, where mittens are taking shape to eventually make their way to me.

Of course, in the barter age they didn’t have pack and ship stores or the internet. 

(Click on over to my potter page to see what else came out of the kiln this month.  I also tried making lamps for the first time!)

Arches, Aspens, and Another Pause

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I didn’t plan ahead.  Thank God.  Grand Lake Colorado

I didn’t mean to leave you hanging without any posts or set-to-publish pieces ready to go, but I just took a break.  I followed my own last post and took a sacred pause.  A long one. 

sunset near Windows, Arches National Park, Utah

Rosy clouds, red arches, pewter blue sky

 

 

Balanced Rock and others at Arches National Park, Utah

If these keep silent, even the stones will cry out. (Luke 19: 40)

I wrote in my journal a lot during our sojourn through Colorado and Utah.  I reveled in the aspen trees and walked among the arches but I’m still mulling and reflecting and not quite ready to write for public consumption.  So I’m just popping in to say “hi” and share a few words and images.

beneath sand dune arch

Cool in the shadows, Sand Dune Arch

I hope these can be a sacred pause for you today.

aspen trees against orange building

Aspens, my favorite tree.