Comfort Food

My 19 year old son is sick. Paul is a guy who loves motors and motorcycles and dirt bikes. For the first time in his life he is attending a school that he loves. The Motorcycle Mechanics' Institute schedules classes so people with full time jobs can study at night. He attends class from about 6pm to 11:30. That's when his brain works the best. The classes are taught in short (2-3 week) segments. There is lots of hands-on lab work on real motorcycle engines. The work is practical and the theory parts of the courses are closely tied to real-time application. Paul is usually in his element. But this week he's come home dragging from his job at Sears repairing small engines for yard machines. His throat is so sore that he doesn't want to swallow, his nose is plugged, his ears have fluid in them. Finally this afternoon(Friday) he cried "Uncle" and had us schedule him in for a doctor appointment at the clinic at a nearby hospital where you get seen on time and the front office staff are as good and competent at their work as the physicians are at theirs. Paul was so tired that I drove him. He was seen promptly, and tested negative for strep. The doctor wants him to get blood drawn tomorrow to see if he's got mononucleosis. I asked him if he'd mentioned to his doctor that he left home soon after 6 am and returned from class at night just before midnight, with an hour to take a quick nap between work and school. That might explain the exhaustion. Hmmm. (Paul failed to mention it.)

I can hardly begin to say how nice it was to be able to step in and take care of him without having to juggle work responsibilities. When we got home, he climbed into bed and we didn't see him for about 3 hours. I bought his nasal spray, throat lozenges, applesauce, ice cream, popsicles, and ingredients to make him things that would slide smoothly down the throat.

Like this custard that I improvised, that is perhaps the best custard I have ever made.

Ghirardelli White Chocolate Custard

3 1/3 cups milk
2/3 cup heavy cream (nothing sacred about these proportions, but I had 1% milk and wanted something richer)
1 pkg. Ghirardelli white chocolate chips
1/2 tsp vanilla
pinch of salt

3 eggs
2/3 c sugar

Heat first 5 ingredients in a heavy saucepan, whisking vigorously as the white chocolate chips melt.

In a separate bowl, beat eggs vigorously with a whisk. Add the sugar and beat some more.

When the milk mixture is just beginning to boil, turn the heat way down (gas stove) or off (electric stove).

Add the egg-and-sugar mixture in a thin stream, whisking continually. Add heat VERY GENTLY if by now the custard is not coating a spoon and thickening. Quit while you're ahead.

Pour into dish, and cover surface directly with parchment paper or plastic wrap to prevent development of a "skin."

Spoon over fresh sliced strawberries or raspberries.

Paul almost didn't wake up in time to get any because I had some ("just to see if it was okay") and Wayne had two helpings. It is VERY sweet, and really needs some fairly tart fruit for the contrast. When Paul did wake up, he thanked us for getting "all that stuff" for him. I hope he feels better soon, but I admit to having had fun mothering him. Maybe 48 hours of rest will help.

Re-united with Old Friends

Sunday afternoon the movers dropped off all the things from my house and office in Georgia that I thought would be useful or fun to have in the 1000 square foot apartment here in Orlando that I will be sharing for the foreseeable future with my husband and youngest son. About two thirds of the boxes that left Jasper actually went into storage here in a weather-controlled storage unit a couple of miles from the apartment.

Two walls of our bedroom (apart from doors and windows) are lined with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. For the first time in many years, I have nearly all of my "literature" books close at hand. Those who saw my FaceBook post yesterday know that I was struggling to focus on getting all those books on the shelves in some orderly fashion, when what I really wanted to do was to read, to re-acquaint myself with old friends, to make another attempt at making friends with some of the books about which I've had "good intentions" (sometimes for decades!), to make new friends, even to have a good argument with some of the writers with whom I have a bone to pick.

My present unemployed status has given me an amazing opportunity to read widely without having to produce any "work product." No sermons, no adult education class outlines, no formal continuing education, college, or seminary papers. This gives me a degree of freedom which is making my head spin. This is more freedom than I know what to do with! My Hebrew Bible and several grammars and lexica (lexicons??) are on the shelf, as is my side-by-side Greek and Latin New Testament. I could re-establish my former habit of reading the Daily Office lectionary in Hebrew and Greek. Volume 2 of my Oxford edition of War and Peace, which I read on the Schwinn Airdyne one winter when the little ones were napping and the big ones were at school is right there, beckoning. I remember spending EXTRA time on the stationary bike because I got so caught up in Tolstoy. But I lent my father the first volume. I think Volume 1 is in the boxes of books from my parents' home that I put into storage. If we're talking Big Projects, Anthony Powell's series, Dance to the Music of Time is on the shelves, too, as is Proust.

At the other end of the spectrum, there are some small books that I loved and that are worthy of further attention. Marguerite Yourcenar's novellas are surely worth a second read. And all that poetry! Mary Oliver, Wendell Berry, R.S. Thomas, Billy Collins, Emily Dickenson, Walt Whitman (whose work I've barely spent any time with!). And a bunch of Shakespeare plays I'd love to read again.

I'd like to spend some more time with Augustine's City of God and On the Trinity. I remember once discovering in Trinity a passage in which Augustine is listing the amazing things in the world, including a friend of his who can fart tunes. I've never been able to find it again. (Did I dream it??)

I'm ready to re-consider the works of some of the feminist theologians I discovered over the years and put aside to read "when I had time." In particular, in light of my growing interest in Mary, the Mother of Jesus, I'm looking forward to sitting with these sisters, arguing with them, being instructed by them, being disturbed by them, growing and stretching as I consider their work.

Something a couple of days ago sent me to C.S. Lewis's Great Divorce. It is short, brilliant, stylized, with all the virtues and flaws of Lewis. I found my heart rejoicing as Lewis writes of the possibility of the most ordinary human beings, basking in God's love and goodness, yielding to God's grace. Of non-Orthodox writers I've read, he perhaps comes closest to being an exponent of the Orthodox notion of "divinization." Lewis is also at his best in his trenchant capturing of the banality of evil in domestic dialogues between "well-meaning" spouses and old friends who cling to old hurts, who elevate "mother love" or romantic love to idolatrous heights. He's spot on, and though his dialogues are dated and very regional, one can easily recognize the types in 21st century America. His image of heaven as infinitely more "real" than Hell is marvelous, as is his way of summarizing the limitations both of the doctrines of free will, choice, and predestination in light of the perspectival problems of time and eternity. Lewis puts into the mouth of his Guide for his tour of Heaven, George MacDonald, these magnificent words:

"Ye cannot in your present state understand eternity...But ye can get some likeness of it if ye say that both good and evil, when they are full grown, become retrospective. Not only this valley but all their earthly past will have been Heaven to those who are saved. Not only the twilight in that town, but all their life on Earth too, will then be seen by the damned to have been hell. That is what mortals misunderstand. They say of some temporal suffering, "N future bliss can make up for it," not knowing that Heaven, once attained, will work backwards and turn even that agony into a glory. And of some sinful pleasure they say "Let me have but this and I'll take the consequences": little dreaming how damnation will spread back and back into their past and contaminate the pleasure of the sin. Both processes begin even before death. The good man's past begins to change so that his forgiven sins and remembered sorrows take on the quality of Heaven: the bad man's past already conforms to his badness and is filled only with dreariness. and that is why, at the end of all things, when the sun rises here and the twilight turns to blackness down there, the Blessed will say "We have never lived anywhere except in Heaven," and the Lost, "We were always in Hell." And both will speak truly.
...There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. To those who knock it is opened."

I, like George MacDonald himself, hope that salvation is universal, and that nobody ultimately chooses Hell. But I see Lewis's point. The choice must be there, truly offered.

Anyhow, reading this short work by Lewis makes me think I need to add Dante's Divine Comedy to my "read soon" list. I have Robert Pinsky's translation of Inferno.

The Orlando Chapter(s)

This beautiful Sunday morning, having arrived late last night "permanently" in Orlando, I walked to the Cathedral, almost on time for the 8 am Eucharist. The lector was reading the passage from Revelation appointed for this 5th Sunday of Easter. The psalm, Psalm 100, always brings me back to my childhood chorister days, when we sang "O be joyful, joyful in the Lord, all ye lands!" Then, reading a shorter portion from the same passage of John's Gospel that we hear on Maundy Thursday, the Deacon proclaimed the words of Jesus: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." The preacher quoted the late 2nd Century Father of the Church, Tertullian, who, in his Apology, remarked that it was observed in the Roman Empire that the Christians loved one another, and shared all things in common-- except their wives. (The feminist listener in me wondered about the language that simply assumed that those engaged in this apologetic conversation were males.) He commented that these Christians were living in this community-building way at a time when the Roman Empire was beginning to crumble, when the fabric of all the formerly strong institutions was starting to fray.

I was almost beginning to let down my guard and think that I might hear a sermon in this cathedral that didn't derive its primary energy from being against liberals, gays, or abortion. I should have seen it coming....

The Canon continued. We are in an age that is much like the end of the Roman Empire. The institutions of our day and age are also crumbling. The Church tends to grow and thrive when it is persecuted. The institutions of the family, of marriage, and of Nationhood are being assailed, and the Church has the responsibility for living differently, lovingly, showing a "better way."

I agree--almost. But I deplore this use of insider code-language. I am pretty sure that the Canon really believes that what threatens marriage is any definition of such a union that could extend it to committed and faithful life partners of the same sex. I am pretty sure that the Canon really believes that what threatens the family today is any definition of family that could extend to configurations other than husband-wife-children. About our nation--I don't know what he thinks, but I might venture to guess that he thinks that a concept of us as anything other than a Christian Nation, a Light Set upon a Hill, would threaten a true understanding of American Nationhood.

I am excited about the possibility of the Church showing the world a Different Way to love one another in our marriages and families, and in how we live as citizens of the United States while owing a higher allegiance to the Reign of God, the Kingdom of Heaven.
What if we turned away from the values of a Consumer Culture?
What if we were to strive for a balance between work and family that allows time for conversation, laughter, the sharing of dreams for the future, and stories of our past--regardless of whether there are two mommies, two daddies, or a mommy and a daddy in the family?
What if we were to turn off the TV, to refuse to let advertisers dictate to us what kinds of bodies are attractive, to remember, as the Beatles famously said, that "money can't buy love"?
What if we elect and support government officials that don't assume that the American Way is the only way, and that our nation's self-interest is not the final arbiter of what is right and good in the world, that the United States must have an endless and easy supply of consumer goods and oil at all costs?

So....I'm starting to develop a hypothesis about preaching. Most of us who preach, even those of us who are in traditions that preach from a lectionary, find in the texts confirmation of the things we already believe. I walked in too late to notice whether the Cathedral used the Revised Common Lectionary reading from Acts this morning or the Book of Common Prayer Lectionary. The RCL reading is a passage about Peter's encounter with Cornelius, the Gentile. If ever there was a passage that shows a person's beliefs blown wide open and re-oriented by an encounter with God, it is this story of Peter and Cornelius. This encounter radically changed how Peter read and interpreted his Bible. A whole category of people: Gentiles, who had once seemed to be beyond his concern, beyond God's love and care, designated ritually "unclean"--now were on the same side of the clean/unclean divide that had loomed so large in his religious landscape.

When I read these passages, I see how God calls us as Christians, by virtue of his radically different kind of love, to function as agents of transformation. I would prayerfully consider whether we may be called to lead the way in recognizing that the blessings of marriage and family might now be extended in Christ's name to couples without regard for the gender of the partners.

But, I confess, I brought these ideas to the lectionary readings, too.

How do we clergy prayerfully prepare to preach in such a way that we are as open to the Spirit of God teaching us new ways to love, leading us to see whole new categories of people whom God calls us to walk with as sisters and brothers? How do we remain open to the possibility that, in addressing our sinfulness and our own darkened minds, God may turn our hearts and minds in a whole new direction? And, having let these texts speak to our hearts, how do we craft a sermon or homily that invites our hearers to meet God by "chewing" on those same texts? How do we do this while humbly leaving open a place for God's Spirit to be at work in our hearers' lives? Every preacher has had the experience of having someone mention at the back of the church that they thought the sermon was just for them, that it blessed and encouraged them--but the sermon that the parishioner heard was not the one the preacher remembers preaching.