Bread Pudding Redux

So, it was just this past Thanksgiving that I wrote about a certain bread pudding experience in which my family was less than impressed with my culinary efforts.

I won't relive the pain here today.

However, I was thrilled on Monday when I made the perfect cinnamon raisin bread pudding that even my sister, Sierra, loved, the very same sister who had turned up her nose on a certain Thanksgiving day a few years back. (Oh wait, I wasn't going to go there.)

There and Back Again: Freedom

“I’m not doing anything specific. God asked me to put aside my ministry," Robin's friend told her. It was her friend's answer to what she had been doing lately.

Robin was understandably concerned; after all, her friend had apparently been very active in serving and involved with others. When her friend explained the freedom she felt from Jesus to let go of doing and try being for a while, Robin felt a little ache in her heart.

My soul longed for that kind of refreshing. The new year brought lots of fresh starts, resolutions and back to school routines that busied my schedule. Why do we feel that we have to be doing something to have value?

Slow-Down Solutions for Singles: How We Got Here

How did we get here? Ann Kroeker asks in the third chapter of Not So Fast: Slow-Down Solutions for Frenzied Families. In other words, what led us to think that busy is better?

I've asked myself that a lot over the years. There was one particular stretch when I was working at a church and was so busy that I actually found myself running to get to meetings and to do errands. Literally running down the halls of the church, running to my car, running through the store.

During certain seasons, I have slowed down, found a better rhythm. Those times usually followed a major illness or personal crisis, when I was forced to slow down. Ann talks about a similar season in her family's life after her husband had an unexpected heart surgery.

Those months of extreme simplicity were spiritually rich, emotionally rejuvenating, and creatively full. We were able to evaluate our schedule in light of our values--of what we felt really mattered--and fought for a new reality. . . . That postsurgery simplicity paved the way for a joyful family culture and more deliberate pursuit of knowing the Lord.

But inevitably, after each period of mandatory of slowing down, the pace speeds back up and I find myself chasing my tale again. But why? How do I get there each time?

Food Values

When my younger sister, Sierra, moved in with me a few weeks ago while she does an internship in my city, she brought all of the usual things with her. Clothes, toiletries, books, slippers. 

But we laughed about all of the preservatives she also brought with her. I shop at farmers' markets and have organic vegetables and groceries delivered to my home every other week. She bought frozen dinners and canned ravioli from Wal-Mart.

I haven't always had the same food values as I do now. When I first graduated from college and was making $13,000 a year, my primary food value was frugality. I needed to buy as much food as possible for as few dollars from my pocket.

In this way, my food journey began similarly to Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma's, who writes about hers in "Choice Cuisine," one of 34 essays in The Spirit of Food. "I took pride my sophomore year of college in coordinating a grocery list for eight housemates on a budget less than a quarter of what the cafeteria meal plan cost," she recounts.

There and Back Again: Bread

"Mama, I loooooove this bread. I want more! I want to eat it all 'til its all gone!" Lydia Will's daughter told her, sitting at the table one day.

"You can't just eat bread," was Lydia's response as she watched crumbs flying and butter being licked.

Lydia wrote about this story of the bread and the crumbs because even as she was telling her daughter that no one can live on bread alone, she realized she needed to tell it to herself. Again.

"Ah, but there it is, isn't it? Always the key to discontent, selfishness, irritation. The reason I justify my attitude. I haven't been eating right."

I felt the pang of those words myself, because I haven't been eating right either.

Empty {a training technique}

The blue-cold quiet of the snow had settled over my neighborhood, and the usual noises of dogs barking and cars passing on the road in front of my house was muted by the 4-inch layer of crystalline insulation.

My new puppy was calmer outside than in, so even though it was only 26 degrees and I didn't have a coat on, I was feeling more peaceful than I have for several days watching her calmly sniff around the fenced-in part of my back yard.

I've been chasing Tilly around the house all week, employing every technique in the book to try to get her to stop biting and chewing. I've sprayed her with a water bottle, stomped my foot really loud, squealed like a puppy when she sunk her teeth in deep, and removed my hand from mouth and replaced it with a toy.

Eventually, however, my sister, Sierra, who is staying with me for three months while she does an internship, showed me how a firm "no" is the best method. She's had puppies before. I've only had a dog.

I've come to realize that having a dog prepares one for a puppy about as well as a roommate prepares one for a baby. Not at all, really.

Slow-Down Solutions for Singles: Alone but Not Lonely

When I stopped at the art museum for a couple of hours on New Year's Eve day, I had chapter 1 from Ann Kroeker's book, Not So Fast, in mind. I remembered her story from "What Are We Missing out On?" of her family's hurried tour through the Louvre in Paris so they could see all of the great art. When they rushed passed several other da Vinci paintings just to be in the same crowded room as the Mona Lisa, her kids were less than impressed. "That's it?" they asked.

So, I when I visited the Indianapolis Museum of Art that afternoon, I decided to look at just one painting well, rather than rush through the whole museum. Since I had been there several times before, I chose one that had caught my eye earlier, "The Flageolet Player on the Cliff" by Paul Gauguin.

I sat there looking at the painting for a very long time, the flageolet music playing through the museum sound system in the room just off to my right.

I jotted down the details of the date and location of the painting. I reflected on the colors and the composition. I noted the movement of the cliff and the wall and the village in the back ground. I meditated on the themes of immanence and transcendence in the near and far objects.

And then I got in trouble for using a pen in the museum. So the security guard loaned me a pencil.

What the Recipe Doesn't Say

I've mentioned it before, my mom's gravy, how it was a sign I had arrived, culinarily speaking, when at last I mastered it.

But the gravy was more than just a skill to acquire, more than just a rural roux. Knowing how to make gravy meant I could run a household; I could be resourceful. It also meant I would never go hungry.

Ideally, my mom's white gravy was made with country sausage and served over biscuits. We loved it that way for breakfast on weekends. But more often than not, we would make it with a less expensive meat - like bologna or dried beef in the 29 cent package - and eat it for dinner over bread. It was tasty and filling.

And if there were leftovers . . . well, there just weren't leftovers.

Growth

I like it when things are growing in my house.

Well, I don't like all of the things that grow in my house: mold on the cheese, spiders in the corner, frost on the windows. But there are other things that grow, like house plants on the shelf or the bacteria in the compost bucket, that mean my household is contributing, not just consuming, in this world. And I like that.

Just before Christmas, I bought a rosemary bush and a pink poinsettia to bring a little more life and growth into my life. And last week, as I was pining over the seed catalog from Henry Fields, I decided to plant some lettuce and basil in pots. Just to see if this little home in the suburbs could grow more. 

The basil is still iffy; like most herbs, it likes pretty warm soil for germination. And though my home is certainly a warm haven from the great outdoors, it never gets above 68 degrees.

Perhaps the basil should put on a sweater, like I do.

But the lettuce thrives in cool weather, and it germinated quickly sitting next to my living room window. It's now enjoying a sunny spot in the laundry room, just over the washer and dryer. If the seed pack is correct, I'll be eating salad grown in my own home by the end of February.

It's not really the salad I am excited about, though. It's the growth. With snow covering the ground, and the leaves and bushes standing stark naked in the yard, some days it seems nothing will ever grow again. And some days, when the winter outside seems to find a way to blow biting breezes into my insides, deep in my heart, I wonder if anything will ever grow again in there, either.

So, lettuce is not the only thing I am planting in this house. I sow quiet prayers of gratitude and fertilize with rich truths from His word, and I trust that the Lord who makes a tiny lettuce seed die unto life will also continue to produce growth in me.

::

Another thing that is growing in my house this winter is my new puppy, Tilly, who just came to live with me last night and is napping like a little angel on the floor behind me as I type.

When my black Lab, Precious, died last fall, she left a big hole in my life and heart. Until she was gone, I didn't realize just how much a part of my life she had become. In those early days after, I didn't know if I could ever get another dog. Then, when I begin to dream of a pet again, I decided I just couldn't get another Lab. When I dog sat for another Lab over Christmas, I decided maybe I should get another Lab, but not a black one. And not a puppy.

However, when I found out about Tilly, one of eight black Lab puppies, my heart melted, and here we are. Maybe this is also growth.

Meet Tilly, my new black Lab puppy.

There and Back Again: Nothing

 

“For the listener, who listens in the snow, and, nothing himself, beholds nothing that is not there and nothing that is,” she quoted from Wallace Stevens.

Kerri, another High Calling blogger, was considering this verse even as she was considering the snow outside her door. Nothing, nothing, nothing, she noticed. Thrice used in the poem was the word "nothing."

"Nothing" was significant, she realized. She felt insignificant.

It was the snow. Snow that levels off rough edges and smooths over blemishes. Snow that falls equally over the rich and the poor, the good and the evil. Snow falling down without respect for persons was making her feel insignificant.

Sometimes, I feel that way, too, in the haunting, blue quiet of snow. It makes me want to shout out, "I'm here!" into the silence that doesn't seem to care that I am. And like Kerri, I find myself shouting out into lots of silences, trying to make those spaces about me, trying not to be the "nothing" that I am.

::

Several years ago, I was attending a new church, trying to make new friends, and there was one particular woman I found myself connecting with. After a few weeks of attending the same Bible study and socializing with a common group of friends, she pulled me aside and said she needed to talk to me. She asked me to meet her for dinner the following week.

During those days in between, I rehearsed every thing I had said to her, all of the interactions we had had, assuming I must had done something or said something that offended her that she needed to confront me about. When I couldn't come up with anything, I determined that she probably wanted my advice or to ask my opinion.

Somehow, in my extreme egotism, I has assumed she wanted to talk to me about me.

When we actually met, I was relieved to know that I had done nothing wrong. My new friend simply wanted to tell me about a situation in her life that was difficult, that she needed me to pray about.

But I was horrified to realize that I could turn absolutely any situation into an opportunity to think about myself.

::

What started as a snowy day ended with an opportunity for worship for Kerri, as she considered the thrice-holy Someone who died for all the thrice-nothing No ones.

And then the snow started falling here, too. And after reading her words, I understood anew how significant my "nothing" is in the hands of my Savior.

Oh, for a fortnight of snowy days.

Join me for regular jaunts around The High Calling network, randomly visiting fellow bloggers, soaking up their words and ideas, and then coming back here to write about them from my perspective. This is what The High Calling network is all about, after all.

Our site is about casting a vision that is clear enough and inspiring enough that our readers can run with it on their own sites. We then spend the majority of our editorial time listening to them on their sites and helping them shine as writers. We believe in the power of the laity so much that we are relying on them and their audiences to help spread the vision that has been given to us. - Marcus Goodyear, senior editor, thehighcalling.org (from "The Challenge, Strategy, and Execution of Combining Web Properties" by Dan King on churchcrunch.com)

Slow-Down Solutions for Singles

 

Over and over again as I was reading Ann Kroekers's book, Not So Fast: Slow-Down Solutions for Frenzied Families, I would think to myself, if I had children, I would definitely do that. Or, if I were married, I know we would make that a priority.

Things like sitting down at the table for dinner, limiting television and internet surfing, choosing carefully the activities to participate in: these all seem like excellent priorities for a family with children.

But what about for a single person? Is there something better about eating healthy food at a table rather than grabbing a sandwich in front of the television, even if I am eating alone?

When Ann first handed me a copy of her book, she warned me that the book was in a family way. "But I'm sure there are things for singles, too," she offered, hopefully. But she was wrong.

Chapter after chapter I found the book had been written for me. Even as a single person, I needed to think deeply about all of the areas of my life where speed had trumped significance. And Ann had become my tour guide through the recesses of my life, showing me that what's good for families is good for singles.

I wasn't too far into the book when I started dropping the "if I were married" or "if I had children" thoughts, and just simply started making goals for myself.

There were some topics that took creativity to apply: for instance, I am not currently faced with the decision between home schooling or sending my children to a private academy. And the sheer number of people in Ann's house - six - compared to the number of people in my house - one - changes the logistics of living a slowed-down, simplified life.

So, over the next few weeks, I am going to consider "Slow-Down Solutions for Singles," taking the ideas from Ann's book and applying them to a solitary life. Whether you have a family or live alone, if you are looking to simplify, to live an empty{full} life, Ann's book, and my thoughts here, are offered to help you on your journey.

For everyone who yearns for the benefits of a slower life, I want to point to Jesus and say, "Start here. Start with the One who offers true and lasting peace. Look to His Word. Meditate on that. Learn from him, for His yoke is easy and His burden is light." I wish they could see that the root of meaning and peace that we're seeking is found not in a yoga pose or a mind-emptying meditation session, but in a rich relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

::

For more slowing down resources, visit Ann's Not-So-Fast Links. Here, she highlights blogs, books, articles and websites centered on slowing down.

God in the Kitchen

I remember all those days when I would be in the kitchen with my mom. Helping.

Now that I am a cook and I sometimes invite children into the kitchen with me, I wonder how much help I really was. But as long as I didn't talk too much while Mom was trying to measure, and as long as I kept stirring when she would tell me, "Keep stirring," I was allowed to stay.

In her essay, "And She Took Flour: Cooking Lessons from Supper of the Lamb," Denise Frame Harlan recalls being a similar assistant to her grandmother, although rarely was she allowed to touch.

My grandmother tolerated me in her kitchen because I clean well and I eat with deep appreciation.

The difference is I learned to cook from the one I was watching. She did not.

Learning to cook from another is not like learning to tie a shoe. Of course, there is more than one way to tie a shoe, but the lesson is about the tying, not about the shoe.

Cooking is different. It's one thing to show someone how to take a cup of flour and add it to melting butter in a sauce pan to make a roux. It's quite another thing to consider where the flour came from, whether we should even be using flour and butter, or what, after all, is the word "roux." My mom just called it flour and butter.

I knew that I had learned to cook from my mother when my food finally started to taste like hers. It's only been very recently, after more years on my own than under my mom's tutelage now, that I have mastered her white gravy made with crumbled sausage, her green beans made with bacon grease and lots of salt, or her potato soup made very thick and cheesy.

But I realized I had become a cook on my own right when my food finally started tasting like my own. And it was good.

As we've both gotten older, mom and I, our cooking has changed - each in the opposite direction. She increasingly cooks with boxed and canned items, gravitating toward recipes with few ingredients and simple instructions. She's already served a lifetime in front of the stove, and now, she's tired when she comes into the kitchen. Simple is better.

I, on the other hand, have developed a love for food, not just cooking, and so I try to create dishes and meals, some elaborate, some plain, from the purest, basest ingredients. I shop at farmers markets and coops or around the edges of grocery stores. And any time I can, I try to make familiar processed foods from scratch.

Just this weekend, I made tomato soup beginning with tomatoes I grew in my own garden and had frozen last summer. When I told my mom, she said she might like the recipe.

Denise Frame Harlan found a similar departing of ways from the cooking of her grandmother and mother. She describes it like this:

So I did not learn to cook from my grandmother or my mother, who cooked largely from boxes and bags, or from home economics class. Nor did I wish to emulate any of the cooks I knew. They worked too hard. They seemed to be magicians and scientists, mathematicians and economists, all things I was not.

Harlan found her way to cooking, in fact, from a theology professor, one who read tearfully from Robert Farrar Capon's The Supper of the Lamb.

A man read a cookbook, and I met God again, as if I'd never met God at all, as if all my worship had been an attempt to tame a gorgeous world that did not need taming, but adoration.

So her story is the story we all live with food. Our very first experiences are in the homes of our birth, for most of us. But eventually, we find our way to food on our own terms, and sometimes, we even see God staring up at us from the pot or the plate.

And it makes all the difference.

::

I am writing today in community with my friends at thehighcalling.org. Each week , we are working our way through the book, The Spirit of Food: 34 Writers on Feasting and Fasting Toward God, edited by Leslie Leyland Fields. Today, we considered essays six through nine, in a section called "In the Kitchen." Click on the button above to see what others are writing. Then, pick up the book yourself and join us for next Monday's discussion.

There and Back Again: True Love

I love a lot of people.

I love my parents with a love born out of gratitude and blood. I love my siblings with a love born of common roots and shared experiences. I love friends with a love born of mutual interests and indebtedness for being chosen.

I love grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins. I love nieces and nephews, and children I love like nieces and nephews. I love coworkers and women in my Bible study.

I have loved doctors and nurses, teachers and bus drivers. I have loved farmers and factory workers, writers and musicians. I have loved more than one painter, and even a poet or two.

I have loved strangers and enemies, though not with my own love.

But I have never loved a husband.

Today, however, Amy has shown me the true love of a husband, the true love for a husband.

Someday, I might love a husband better because of her words.

Join me for regular jaunts around The High Calling network, randomly visiting fellow bloggers, soaking up their words and ideas, and then coming back here to write about them from my perspective. This is what The High Calling network is all about, after all.

Our site is about casting a vision that is clear enough and inspiring enough that our readers can run with it on their own sites. We then spend the majority of our editorial time listening to them on their sites and helping them shine as writers. We believe in the power of the laity so much that we are relying on them and their audiences to help spread the vision that has been given to us. - Marcus Goodyear, senior editor, thehighcalling.org (from "The Challenge, Strategy, and Execution of Combining Web Properties" by Dan King on churchcrunch.com)

 Photo by Nono Fara, used by permission under the Creative Common License

Empty {an adjective}

My younger sister was coming to stay with me for three months while she does an internship in my city, so I found myself, on New Year's Day, cleaning out drawers and closets for her in the spare bedroom. 

I didn't know all those months ago when she asked me if she could come that I would be considering what it meant to empty my life of all the excess on that day. I didn't realize that emptying those spaces of all my stuff for her would actually be a form of worship.

My closets weren't full of things that I could easily get rid of, either. If all that stuff meant nothing to me, it wouldn't have ended up in my closet. I'm actually not a pack rat.

I am, however, an idolater. And the scraps of paper and photographs and magazines and paint brushes I found had become like a golden calf at the base of Mount Sinai. 

I gathered stale pieces of candy I had diligently carried back from China; I collected all of the Christmas cards I have received since 2004; I found an old poster from my church's missions conference. I dumped all of those things in an old box to carry out to the garbage, emptying myself of the idol of the past.

Then, I tackled shelves full of craft supplies I never use: rubber stamps and stamp pads, scrapbooking paper and stickers, pony beads and rubbing chalks. These were not hobbies I had chosen for myself but ones other people enjoyed. In my effort to connect and please, I accepted and bought boxes of supplies, but not more than a handful of times have I ever sat down by myself to use these things. I prefer painting and drawing and writing. 

So I gathered these things in a box, too. I will offer them freely to the people who will use them. As for me, I am slowly being emptied of the idol of other people's expectations.

The room was becoming more cluttered than clean as I hunted and sorted. No longer was this about making room for my sister. 

I handpicked three boxes of books from the shelves, some I had enjoyed and was hopeful to pass along to another who would love them. Those would be donated to a patient library at the Rehabilitation Hospital where my sister was doing her internship, and where I had once been a patient. Another bag of books consisted of gifts or garage sale finds that I just never got interested in. They would be donated to Goodwill. The other books I snatched off the shelves just needed to be thrown out. And so as each box was packed and sealed, I was tearing down the idol of the appearance of knowledge.

And then I dug deeper into the closets. In one, I found a box completely full of the cards I had received during my cancer treatment. At the time, each card I received had breathed life and brought hope. Now, I was just holding on to them out of fear. The same was true of the bags of medicine I found hidden away in the upper shelf of my bedroom closet. The drugs that filled those pill bottles and syringes was long past its time of helpfulness; all of it had expired, actually. But I had continued to hold on to it because I just didn't know what was going to happen next.

That's when I remembered the dog food.

When Precious died, I had just recently bought a new 40-pound bag of dog food. In my grief, I couldn't sort through the details of how to donate it to the animal shelter just around the corner from my house. So instead, I held on to it. Held on to the sadness of it, the pain of it, the unfairness. Held on to it as it became stale and moldy and was no longer good for eating.

So those cards and pills and dog food all were thrown out, even as a part of my heart went with them. But I needed to be free, free from the idol of unfair suffering that I both resented and hid behind. I needed to empty myself of those things.

Not all of the bags and boxes of things I collected have found their final home. I am trying to donate and recycle and carefully dispose of things, and how to do that is not always so obvious. But they are no longer filling the space where I live, no longer taking the place where Jesus should be.

So this word that I chose for myself, this word that I have assigned to 2011, already I am feeling its weight and seeing its light.

I feel empty. 

And it is good.

::

Today, I am writing in community with Bonnie Gray for her Faith Barista Jam. Today, we are writing about one word that God is putting on our hearts for 2011. I had chosen the word "empty" last week as my word for 2011, so today's post is a follow up to what that word has meant so far. To see what words others are choosing, and what Bonnie herself is claiming for 2011, click on the button above to visit her site.

Rescued

I didn't even know I needed to be rescued when I left the house that evening.

It was a couple of days before Christmas, and since my family was visiting from out of town for the afternoon, I hadn't had time to respond to a last minute invitation from my friend Bess to attend a piano concert that night with her and her mother in downtown Indianapolis. But after a drive into the city to look at lights and sip hot cocoa, my family decided to begin making their way home. It was 6:53 p.m.

Looking at the time, I remembered the invitation and decided it was possible that the concert might not start until 7. I might just make it. I quickly called Bess's cell phone. No answer. Then I called her home phone, hoping to catch her husband, Baher. After a quick explanation on my part and some fast internet searching on his part, we determined I was not too late. The concert was starting in just 4 minutes now, but I was just a minute or two away from the venue.

I turned the car around as Baher gave me directions and called his mother-in-law on the other phone. He found out where they seated and explained to them that I was on my way, then resumed our call, reading the details of the concert to me, including the part about the $25 tickets.

Since I hadn't planned on going, I hadn't even considered bringing cash with me for tickets. And I never have that much cash on me "just because." I considered scrapping the idea, but now Bess and her mother were waiting for me.

"Do you suppose they take credit cards?" I asked my Baher over the phone, just blocks from the recital hall.

"Oh, I don't know," he said. "Maybe?"

Once in the parking lot, Bess called to confirm where they were sitting. They had a seat for me, she said. And the concert hadn't started yet, she reassured me, even though now it was 7:02.

I raced into the lobby of the building, deserted except for the man selling tickets and another man I caught only in my periphery.

"I'm here for the concert!" I announced, breathless.

"Great!" he said. "Tickets are $25."

"Do you take credit cards?" I asked.

"Ooohhh," he said, as though I had just asked him if he would barter the tickets for a goat. "We operate on cash only."

"That's a bummer," I said, reverting to 80s slang in my moment of great disappointment. "I decided to come unexpectedly, and I don't have any cash, and my friends are waiting for me."

"You could write a check!" he announced, apparently scrapping his earlier policy of cash only.

"I don't have my check book with me, either," I said, desperately trying to remember if I had passed any ATMs on the way.

Just then, the other man emerged from the shadows, apparently having heard our conversation.

"You can put her ticket on my tab," he told the man selling the tickets. "It's on me," he said, looking at me.

"Oh no," I said. "You don't have to do that. My friends are just inside; they can give me the cash."

"Really, it's no problem," he said.

"Yeah, the ticket will at least get you in the door," the ticket-man chimed in.

"You can be my date," the man with the tab said.

"Well, ok," I conceded. By now, the concert would be starting and my friends were no doubt wondering what was taking me so long. After getting two tickets from the ticket man, my new friend handed me one. "Thank you so much," I said. "You saved me."

"It's my pleasure," he said. I followed him into the concert hall, quickly located my friends, and enjoyed two hours of exhilarating piano music by Chopin and Schumann.

I didn't know I would need to be rescued that night, but people who need to be rescued rarely do.

Loving the Land

When the thermometer reached up into the 60s on Friday, unseasonably warm for late December in Indiana, the last of the snow melted from my yard.

Though the temperatures have sunk back below freezing, with the snow now gone, I am once again greeted each day by the leaves still lying on the ground, the leaves I didn't rake up last fall. The space between my yard and the road, which is nothing more than a storm sewer, was full of other people's garbage that had been thrown from car windows just before the snow. I picked up most of it in time for trash day. And the little patch of wilted lettuce in the garden, planted too late in the hot summer and then bolted in the warm late fall, becomes now, again, a symbol of my inability to subdue the land.

Over the last four and a half years of living on this parcel, I have slowly been training and caring for this land. I painstakingly pry out the bits of metal and stone she expels, remnants of other tenants in other times. I feed her with natural amendments and resist using chemicals to change her looks. With gloved hands and wheelbarrow, I have hauled off hundreds of sticks and dandelions and fallen leaves that seek to damage or destroy her - that's how I see it anyway. Instead, I help her to yield and produce.

I regularly scoop up handfuls of her, gently breaking apart her hardened clods. I hold her, care for her, train her, and eat from her. I can even love her, this land I live on. But really, she isn't mine.

::

"How much do I love land?" Ann Voskamp asks in her essay, "The Land that is Us," in the book The Spirit of Food. She recounts a season when she and her farmer husband considered more than doubling the land they owned, a decision so obviously wrapped up in the future they had to consider whether their children would carry on the calling of farmer, passed down from multiple generations.

I come from farmer stock, too, though not so clearly delineated. I've often wondered what it would have meant to choose a farming life for myself on the land of my family. But since that's not the path I chose back then, I find myself doing the next best thing. Seeking to love the land I have now.

::

Farmer isn't a name I call myself, working up just a few small beds each year on a lot less than half an acre. Gardener is my name, and slowly, I am developing a history here of what works (tomatoes) and what doesn't (strawberries), of just how much the land is willing to yield.

I live in an old suburban area that feels more and more urban as people move further and further out. I am just blocks from the city bus route, though we still don't have sidewalks in front of our homes or city sewers for our waste. The area is changing, maybe for the worse, even as I am trying to change this land for the better. Most likely, I will feel the need to move from here, eventually, leaving behind the land I will have worked so hard for.

But that is the story written for all of us, isn't it? We leave the dirt to become dirt. Isn't that, finally, why we all must love the land?

::

I am writing today in community with my friends at thehighcalling.org. Beginning today, we are working our way through the book, The Spirit of Food, edited by Leslie Leyland Fields. Today, we considered the first five essays in a section called "On the Way to the Table." Click on the button above to see what others are writing. Then, pick up the book yourself and join us for next Monday's discussion.

Mega Memory Month: Psalm 18

I'm not very good at memorizing.

At least that's what I tell myself when I am not working on memorizing Bible verses or poetry or creeds or speeches. I tell myself I am not very good at memorizing, and then I don't feel so bad for not trying.

But if I try, I'm actually not so bad at memorizing. The truth is, I'm actually just lazy.

So when Ann posted her annual Mega Memory Month challenge, I decided to give it a try. But what to memorize?

When I heard someone quote a verse from Psalm 18 over the weekend, a Psalm I have returned to over and over in the past few years, I knew this had to be my goal. 

So, over the next 29 days (I'm two days behind already!), I will memorize all 50 verses of Psalm 18.

But I also want to live them and breathe them; I want to live a Psalm 18 life over the next 30 days and beyond.

What are you hiding in your heart and meditating on? What are you seeking to live?

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For Mega Memory Month, I'll post updates on my memorization progress each Monday. Stop back by and see how I'm doing. And let me know how you are doing on your goal, too!