Although we don’t bring the Yule tree indoors until Christmas Eve, baking and decorating the gingerbread cookies that will adorn its branches can be done days ahead.
PREPARING FOR THE TREE
Tag: Culture
WITH ALL DUE SYMPATHY
Once each week I get more than enough of rush hour, Boston style, which doesn’t rush at all when you consider the traffic’s at a standstill. Don’t know how people do it morning and evening, day after day, week after week.
It’s what I’m calling “crush hour,” even though it’s more than an hour.
Even if it’s where the jobs are, especially the ones that pay.
TEACHING OR PREACHING
One of the criticisms that Evangelical Friends level at quietist Meetings like ours is that we are short on teaching. “Silent worship, for those who are well-instructed in divine truth, has real benefits,” they write, before cautioning: “upon those who have neither read the Bible nor hear it expounded the effect may be very different.” The passage I quote continues: “As a result, the Friends Church became victim to a group of erroneous teachers, among whom Elias Hicks was most prominent.” The section also points to some very deep misunderstandings among Friends, including Job Scott’s decision to remain silent in sessions called on his behalf during his traveling ministry; he sensed too many people had come with “itchy ears” primed for novelty rather than an open heart.
Ideally, vocal ministry arises as a prophetic voice, as William Taber describes in his Pendle Hill pamphlet, The Prophetic Stream. From this perspective, pastoral sermons can be criticized as arising too much as a matter of teaching and too little as an outpouring of the Holy Spirit.
Walter Wangerin Jr.’s novel, Miz Lil and the Chronicles of Grace, also addresses this, though from a different perspective. There, the young Lutheran pastor realizes that in greeting parishioners after the service, he cannot tell whether one woman is telling him he offered good teaching or good preaching on any given morning. One Sunday, however, it becomes quite clear she has been making a distinction: “’Pastor?’ All at once, Miz Lillian Leander. She took my hand and we exchanged a handshake, and I let go, but she did not. … Her voice was both soft and civil. It was the sweetness that pierced me. I think its tones reached me alone, so that it produced a casement of silence around us … there was Miz Lil, gazing up at me. There was her shrewd eye, soft and sorry.
“’You preached today,’ she said, and I thought of our past conversation. ‘God was in this place,’ she said, keeping my hand in hers. I almost smiled for pride at the compliment. But Miz Lil said, ‘He was not smiling.’ Neither was she. Nor would she let me go. … The old woman spoke in velvet and severity, and I began to be afraid.” Then she gently rebukes her pastor for unintentional consequences, after he has prided himself for being frugal by cutting off the water to an outdoor faucet.
“’God was in your preaching,’ she whispered. “Did you hear him, Pastor? It was powerful. Powerful. You preach a mightier stroke than you know. Oh, God was bending his black brow down on our little church today, and yesterday, and many a day before. Watching. ‘Cause brother Jesus – he was in that child Marie, begging a drink of water from my pastor.”
I love the way that passage illustrates how the prophetic voice flowing through an individual can be larger than its vessel. “Did you hear him, Pastor?” I love, too, the way it illustrates an elder laboring with a minister: “Miz Lillian Leander fell silent then. But she did not smile. And she would not let me go. For a lifetime, for a Sunday and a season the woman remained immovable. She held my hand in a steadfast grip, and she did not let it go.”
POTLUCK HITS
Quaker circles seem to be big on potluck dinners, which are humorously called a “meeting for eating” rather than the traditional Meeting for Worship or Meeting for Business. I know we’re not alone in enjoying this kind of gathering – in some locales, they’re called a “covered dish supper,” and I suppose other terms are used elsewhere in the world. And I still have fond memories of the Mennonite versions.
Still, trying to decide what to prepare and take can be baffling, as I found back when I was single. Many people lean toward soups, which I find difficult to handle in any setting that means mingling rather than sitting down at a table. Ditto for salads. There’s also the temptation to present purely showoff dishes, which in reality are usually overlooked in the array on the buffet.
My solution was potato chips, and these were often the first thing to disappear, especially if children were around.
Since then, we (meaning wife and daughters) have found several simple-to-make sure-fire hits, though:
- Deviled eggs: Always the first plate to be emptied. The downside is they must be refrigerated and can be difficult to make if large quantities are required. Still …
- “Tater tots for grownups”: We’ve been playing with several variations on this, essentially savory garlic potatoes that are squished for a flatter shape and then baked or roasted. Google the phrase and you’ll have no shortage of recipes. The one we’re working from is found here. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Potato-Bites-15806
- Lemon squares, cheesecake bars, brownies, or a torte: Desserts like these prove popular, and since they can be delivered in serving-size portions, you avoid the mess of cutting and plating at the event. Nifty.
- Mudslide truffle: My elder daughter proclaims this a guaranteed crowd-stopper. It’s a multilayered sin typically made from Cool Whip (she uses whipped cream), chocolate or vanilla pudding, crushed brownies, and Kahlua or Bailey’s Irish Cream. A Google search will deliver a lot of variations, including almonds. Yes, this one does require both hands for eating, but it also travels well, she says, and looks very impressive when delivered in clear glass showing all the layers. The Kahlua or Bailey’s rules it out for church events, so the search for a suitable substitute is under way.
So that’s for starters. Apart from the tater tots or the torte, though, there’s nothing for vegans. So what would you suggest for the list? It is a potluck, after all, and the table’s open.
TALKING TO MYSELF IN THE MIRROR OF BLOGGING
Me, topical, timely?
Or just lost in another time warp?
~*~
Put another way, you’ve probably noticed the Red Barn rarely comments on current events. We prefer to take a larger perspective. As for all of the posts on gardening, there’s never an actual recipe. Which reminds me about the remaining kale and Brussels sprouts, being sweetened by the frost. There’s always more to do, isn’t there? Now, where was I?
RISING TO ‘COMPANY FOOD’
Even before sweet potatoes became a trendy go-to thing in health-conscious circles, my wife and I were considering them anew. Not the marshmallow-covered side dish I loved at Grandma’s dinners, but in something less Candy Land. You know, as chips or fries, for starters. Let’s not overlook the basics before moving on to international cuisine.
Still, getting those just right can be tricky, but my wife has been tweaking the details. Let me say, though, they’re good. Very good, indeed.
In fact, sampling the last round, I proclaimed, “These could be company food,” meaning something we keep up our sleeves for those times we’re expecting guests.
“It’s something they probably wouldn’t get regularly,” she agreed.
That, in turn, had us pondering traditional French fries, which Americans seem to find on every restaurant menu.
“People just don’t make those at home anymore. And homemade can be glorious when they’re done right.”
Amen.
Well, that had me remembering Grandma again, this time her deep-fat fryer and the hand-cut fries she used to make and then serve with her homemade ketchup.
Thinking of that and how both would be “gourmet” items today, I had to admit, “We really didn’t appreciate those properly at the time.” Back when we were kids.
Back before McDonald’s. Back when “dining out” often meant the “drive-in,” rather than the “drive-thru.” For the uninitiated, the drive in had waitresses who came to your car.
A COSMIC CONNECTION
Question: What do you do when something doesn’t work?
Answer: Fix it.
Q: And what if it still won’t work?
A: You throw it in the trash.
Q: But what if it’s not a thing but a person?
A: You fire ’em.
Q: But what if they’re one of the family?
A: Now the situation gets difficult. Really difficult.
NO NEED TO APOLOGIZE
Whenever I come across a blog that begins as an apology for not posting lately or even being on hiatus for a few months, several thoughts spring to mind.
The first is simply that there’s no need to apologize. We’re not short of reading material here in the WordPress network, for sure. Nobody’s holding you to those deadlines, and we’d certainly rather have you back with something good to report than to have you mindlessly keyboarding.
The second thought, though, has me reflecting on my own approach to blogging. Rather than constantly being fed by current activity, the Red Barn and its sisters draw on my deep files of writing and, more recently, photography. That’s allowed me to plan ahead and schedule their release in a timely manner, sometimes even spiraling pieces from decades ago and now.
But now that has me wondering. Is that cheating?
Or is it just another example of the maxim, “Age and cunning will beat youth and ability every time”?
CATCHING UP DECADES LATER
In moving around over my adult years as I have, I’ll probably never know the destinies of many of the individuals who’ve shared my life at crucial points. In many cases, even their last names slip away.
But I’ve recently learned of how things turned out for one small circle. It produced two women attorneys (one a federal prosecutor), an OBGYN female doctor, a food wholesale executive now turned United Way director, a technical support field manager, a retired six-figure systems analyst … for starters.
Looking at the service club logo behind one of them in a news story photo, it’s difficult to explain how far we’ve come in the decades since the early ’70s. Hippie, eh?
But from what I hear, some of them still like to party.
THE CAMPUS CONNECTION
A misunderstanding of the “turn on, tune in, drop out” motto popularized by Timothy Leary in 1966 likely blinded most of us to the extent to which the hippie movement was rooted in college campuses. That is, the “drop out” part was assumed to mean quitting one’s studies, even though Leary later insisted he meant it as a discovery of one’s unique nature and self-reliance, a mission that should have been central to the college experience itself.
Revisiting the era as it blossomed in the late ’60s and early ’70s, I see how much of its energy came from college students and the circles they supported – musicians, artisans and craftspeople, small-scale entrepreneurs of all stripes, social activists, dealers. Not just students, either, but hip young faculty and their families – all overlapping.
Essentially, it meant dropping a lot of old assumptions and embracing new experiences and values.
The reality, then, is that relatively few hippies dropped out of college, at least over the long haul. Talk all you want about Gypsies or vagabonds, few hippies stayed out on the road for long. Most remained grounded right in the center of the action.
Jnana's Red Barn 