Recipes of Home #8 - HEART

 

HEART

Why Bethlehem? Is there symbolic significance in the meaning of the name Bethlehem, which in Hebrew means “house of bread”? The Great Provider declared Himself to be the “bread of life.” (Jn. 6:48) How appropriate it was that He, the “bread of life,” was to come from the “house of bread.” – Russell M. Nelson

 

Claire Pelerine shares with us another recipe. She writes, “This recipe is a family favourite and delicious with peanut butter. I have been making this for years and friends like receiving it as a gift.”

The heart of Christmas is about gift. God became incarnate to live among us, to be at home among us. The heart of the Christmas story is God’s love and the length to which God goes to Be love. This love is incarnate and surprisingly is at home in our brokenness and the brokenness of the world. Love that finds us in our vulnerability and suffering, is a Love that changes hearts. Love feeds brokenness to nourish hearts to act with the love (redemption) received.

In a post-communion prayer from the Evangelical Lutheran Book of Worship, we pray, that we have the strength “to give ourselves away as bread for the hungry.” As we reflect on Bethlehem, the House of Bread, let us consider Jesus, the Bread of Life, and how it is that we can give ourselves away as bread for the hungry.

 

Shredded Wheat Bread

3          shredded wheat buns mixed with

3 cups  hot water

1 tsp.   salt

¾ cups     molasses

2 Tbsp.    shortening

Let cool.

 

Mix together

2 Tbsp     yeast

½ Tbsp    warm water

1 tsp        sugar

Mix together – wheat mixture + yeast mixture

Add 7 cups of flour.

Let rise to double in size, then put in pans.

Bake at 350F for 20-30 minutes

 

 

PRAYER- O God, we give you thanks that you have set before us the gift of Jesus, the bread of life. By your Spirit nourish us with your love so that we freely give ourselves away as bread for the hungry. Amen.

.

God Is Home

 

It is a snow day and school is cancelled. It is the kind of snowstorm that it is unsuitable to play outside. By mid-day kids are bored and restless. It is the kind of day perfect for the building a blanket fort. For those unfamiliar, a blanket fort is constructed using blankets and couch cushions, with chairs or other furniture being used as a frame for the fabric. The homemade fort is a temporary tent where a child can crawl inside and hide from the world. It is a place of reprieve: to read a book, play with dolls, have a snack, daydream or take a nap. The child imagines a home and for a moment disappears into the safety of their cozy created space.

The storm raging outside is forgotten. Other siblings, if not part of the build, are not seen, neither are the adults in the house. Whatever is going on outside the blankets and sheets, for a few moments, doesn’t penetrate the fort. Whether a real or imagined safety, the occupant experiences (however briefly) a cozy peace, - home- and a renewed hope that peace exists no matter the chaos around. I love ‘the home’ of blanket forts.

 

Through Advent the congregation has reflected on the theme of home. We reflected through a devotion series titled, “Recipes of Home.” and as we lit the candle for the four Sundays of Advent considered: Heart as home. Earth as home. Kindom as home. Love as home.

 

Christmas Eve service, in this space, feels like I have stepped into a blanket fort. It is cozy and warm. I can momentarily forget hassles, stresses, fears, and be wrapped in hope-filled scripture, joyful singing, loving companionship, peaceful blessing. Everything outside fades away for a moment.

This evening the holy family steps into a created safe space, hidden from whatever monstrosities push from beyond. The stable is like a blanket fort, cocooning Jesus, Joseph, and Mary – along with a few others. It is a miracle moment where hope is renewed that God has chosen this moment to remind the people they are not alone, the promised kindom will come, and has come… it has come, but not and never as expected.

 

Inside the stable, insulated with hay and warmed by the body heat of animals, a precious moment is experienced.  God’s purposeful-action comes to fruition, making HOME for God-self in human flesh. Choosing to be incarnate - born in the innocence and vulnerability of a baby, God’s first moments are enfolded in the arms of family and the hope-filled, in a created cozy space in a stable. The reality is the stable, like a blanket fort, is a temporary hiding place, sheltering a baby who is born into upheaval.

Outside, the stable sits in the midst of occupied territory. The ruler of the occupied territory, Herod the Great, is a tyrant and bloodthirsty ruler who with treasonous allegiance to the occupying empire rules his people fueled by an unsatiated ambition. The occupied territory is one of violence and corruption, servitude and exploitation, along with taxes, displacement, unjust systems, and marginalization.

As tonight breaks into the dawn of tomorrow, the holy family leaves the stable becoming refugees as they flee the tyranny of Herod, to go to a foreign land, seeking safe-haven in Egypt. Years later upon return to Judea they are displaced people settling in a village a long way from the family’s original home.

 

Earlier today the sun rose over the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank; a place where for the past few years no public Christian Christmas celebrations have taken place. As people read the news this am in Aljazeera, they read an opinion piece by theologian Rev. Dr. Munther Isaac, Palestinian pastor of Hope Evangelical Lutheran Church in Ramallah, West Bank. He wrote, “Christmas is not a Western story – it is a Palestinian one. Christmas is a story of empire, injustice and the vulnerability of ordinary people caught in its path.” Later in the article he continues, “Western Christians forget that Bethlehem is real, they disconnect from their spiritual roots. And when they forget that Bethlehem is real, they also forget the story of Christmas is real.”… “To remember Bethlehem is to remember that God stands with the oppressed – and that the followers of Jesus are called to do the same.”

 

The Christmas story, a stable in Bethlehem, is a not a cozy story but a lived experience, repeated over and over again. The Christmas story – God’s incarnation- is a story lived by generations of Levantine people who have and do long for justice and believe that God was and is not distant but among them. For centuries people who proclaim with steadfastness, with sumud, the radical statement about where God chooses to dwell- God makes God’s home in vulnerability, suffering, upheaval, in poverty, and most assuredly “among those with no power but to hope.”

 

Tonight, there are those in occupied territory, displaced, refugees, constrained by check-points, mothers about to give birth, who are creating a fort made of blankets, a stable so to speak – a place to temporarily step aside and hide for a moment, to be embraced and filled once more with an experience of hope, joy, love, and peace that the world can not give.

 

Perhaps for a moment we can open our hearts and rest in these temporary stables. Sending prayers and intentions of peace and love, with those gathering in temporary homes – living the very real Christmas story gathered around the manager of God incarnate. We hold faith in a radical God who chooses to dwell at home in human flesh, experiencing the incarnate with our siblings in the warmth of Hope Lutheran church in Ramallah, West Bank Palestine; embracing the incarnate with siblings in Christmas Lutheran Church, Bethlehem; encountering the incarnate with siblings in the Evangelical Lutheran church of St. Catherine in Dnipro, Ukraine; and exalting the incarnate with siblings gathered in Kenya’s Turkana Kalobeyel settlement and Ethiopia’s Tigray Shimelba Refugee Camp.

 

‘Internet Monk,’ Michael Spencer once said, “without the incarnation, Christianity isn’t even a very good story, and most sadly, it means nothing. ‘Be nice to one another’ is not a message that can give my life meaning, assure me of love beyond brokenness, and break open the dark doors of death with the key of hope.”  

The beauty of tonight is the receiving of a ‘blanket fort moment.’ In a created cozy space, made with the resources at hand, a miraculous moment happens, together we remember Bethlehem – a very real and experienced story- where God chooses to make God’s home in human flesh; incarnate. God is birthed in a moment in the middle of the world’s brokenness and upheaval. But in that one moment are the hopes and dreams of all the years.

 

Heart as home. Earth as home. Kindom as home. Love as home.

In our ‘blanket fort’ this evening, we are cozy, but we do not deceive ourselves that all is calm, merry, and bright. Outside these walls, in our daily lives, in our human bodies, in our broken relationships, in broken systems, and the upheaval of tariffs, wars, climate change, … in all our vulnerabilities, in suffering, in oppression the world over, it would be easy enough to throw up our hands and give up – but we haven’t. We have chosen to show up for each other tonight, and in solidarity with siblings around the world and with creation to celebrate a genesis of something new and yet older than the beginning of time. We lay our hopes and dreams in a moment in a stable, in blanket forts, where Emmanuel – God-with-us, is being birthed.

I can’t explain it or understand it –

In my heart I experience this incarnation when I step aside, in a moment when the world’s noise is hushed,

… like this moment… with you … with the Christ child … for a moment I am completely and unexpectedly surprised, overwhelmed, all is right with the world.  

 Among us, God is home.

Recipes of Home #7 - INHERITANCE

 

INHERITANCE

 

Good food and a warm kitchen are what make a house a home. – Racheal Ray

 

The Gospel of Matthew begins, “An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” (Mt. 1:1) The family tree is presented in three groups of fourteen generations each (to achieve this a few generations were left out). Four women are included -Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Bethsheba – two are non-Jews, one played harlot to right an injustice, one was a prostitute, with another King David committed adultery.

The Gospel writer uses the genealogy to indicate who Jesus is and how God is bringing God’s kingdom. The inclusion of the women signifies to the reader that God’s redemptive plan includes gentiles and the ‘unrighteous.’ Jesus’ inheritance is explained, presenting him as an authentic Jew and a legitimate king.

Another consideration in the opening verse is the idea of ‘genealogy’ and the translation of that word. The original text (Greek) has the word genesis. The beginning of the Gospel of Matthew reads much like the Greek text of the Book of Genesis, the book of the genesis of human beings (Gen.5:1), and the book of the genesis of heaven and earth (Gen.2:4). Here in Matthew, the book of the genesis of Jesus Christ. To be drawn back to the beginning where the Word was with God, tells us more about Jesus’ inheritance, who Jesus is, and how God is coming into the world.

 

Carol Grantham shares with us the following recipe. I choose ‘inheritance’ as the word to go along with the recipe. The recipe is a heritage recipe passed through generations of German peoples. It is full of a great assortment of ingredients, differing a little from recipe to recipe. When eaten the cookie-cake is rich and filling. Just like Jesus’ genealogy there is a lot to chew-on.

 

Lebkuchen

½ cup     honey

½ cup      molasses

¾ cup      brown sugar

1                egg

1 Tbsp.     lemon juice

1 tsp        grated lemon rind

2 ¾ cups  sifted flour

½ tsp        baking soda

1 tsp          cinnamon

1 tsp          cloves

1tsp           allspice

1 tsp          nutmeg

1/3 cup     cut-up citron

1/3 cup     chopped nuts

Glazing icing (recipe at end of recipe)

1.Mix together honey and molasses and bring to a boil. Cool thoroughly.

2.stir in sugar, egg, lemon juice, and rind. Sift together flour, soda, spices and stir in. Mix in citron and nuts. Chill dough overnight.

3.Roll small amount at t a time, leaving rest chilled. Roll out ¼ inch thick and cut into oblongs about 1 ½ x 2 ½ inches. Place one inch apart on a greased cookie sheet. Decorate with cherries and or sliced almonds.

4.Bake 400F about 10-12 mins. Until no imprint remains when lightly touched. While cookies bake, make glazing icing.  Brush over cookies the minute they are out of the over, then quickly remove from oven and from baking sheets. Cool and store to mellow in airtight containers with a cut piece of orange or apple, about 2 weeks.

Fruit molds, so change it often.

Yields about 6 dozen.

 

Glazing Icing

1 cup   white sugar

½ cup  water

¼ cup  icing sugar

Boil sugar and water together until first indication of thread appears (230F). Remove from heat.

Stir in ¼ cup icing sugar and brush hot icing thinly over cookies. When icing gets sugary, reheat slightly adding a little water until clear again.

 

PRAYER- Stir up in us a spirit of curiosity to study and devour the Word. Ground us in scripture that we might expand our minds and our hearts to the fullness of your inclusion and grace. Amen.

Recipes of Home #6 - TRADITION

 

TRADITION

 

Home is where you feel at home and are treated well. – Dalai Lama

 

Sandra Holloway shares, “This is a Danish dish served on Christmas Eve in our house.”

 

Rice Cooked in Milk

1 cup   rice

3 cups  scalded milk (just boiling)

1 tsp    salt (or less)

 Wash rice thoroughly in cold water.

Place rice, salt, and milk in top of double boiler and cook over boing water about 40 mins. (3.5 hrs. for me), or until rice is soft and all milk absorbed. This method of cooking rice is especially desirable for small children.

This makes 5 servings.

Pg. 169 The Modern Family Cookbook, Meta Given, 1961

 

Sandra continues, “In our house we sprinkle the top of the rice with a mix of half and half cinnamon and sugar. We hide an almond in one dish. Whoever finds the almond gets a small gift.”

 

I know this tradition. The families of my first parish in New Denmark, NB practiced this tradition. My introduction was at a Christmas Eve dinner where 20 family members (Bedstemor  and bedstefar grandparents, their three adult kids, and their kids), plus my husband, brother and his two kids, gathered for Danish Christmas dinner. At the end of dinner, and just before dancing around the Christmas tree and singing carols, out of the kitchen came rice pudding for everyone. Us not knowing the tradition of the almond in the pudding were somewhat aghast when the young people took their spoons and quickly sliced it through their pudding dishes. They had no interest in eating the pudding, only in finding the almond and receiving the prize.

The adults took their time and enjoyed the pudding which was accompanied by a homemade raspberry sauce.

 

All the excitement was completed in time to get the pastor off to open the church doors for 11pm service. The family and most of the other families in the community arrived for church to mark the highlight of the night, marking Jesus' birth. Then it was back to their homes for gift opening, some staying up through to early breakfast.

 

Tradition was home. It did not matter if you were living in the Danish community or had moved away --- rice pudding, dancing around the Christmas tree, Danish decorations like the one in the accompanying picture--- traditions reminded you of home and made you feel at home.

 

Consider the traditions that you practice. How does the practice of the tradition make you feel? Do you feel at home?

 

PRAYER- Stir up in us disciplines that create a feeling of home and traditions that bind us to one another. Grant us spirits that embrace a wide variety of traditions that draw us closer to you. Amen.

Recipes of Home #5 - NOSTALGIA

NOSTALGIA

You can have more than one home. You can carry your roots with you and decide where they grow.  – Henning Mankell

 

Anna Adams shares this story and recipe:

“My Dad would have turned 100 in June of this year. He passed in 2009, Dec. 22. His mom used to make and steam this “pudding” (cake) in an empty 5 pound lard bucket, they were metal and had a handle. It kept for months and the family would have it for a treat throughout the winter. My Mom used to make it for him every fall, and helped me make a batch when I was in my thirties. It is a hard mix, not all wooden spoons survive. After the chosen vessels are filled with batter, they are covered with foil and tied below the rims to keep the moisture from turning it to liquid. When coffee used to come in metal tins, I would use them, but now I use stainless steel bowls.  

When the kettle is stacked with puddings and simmering away, one must keep an eye on the water level in the kettle and add more boiling water as it evaporates.  

I do not particularly care for the end product, but my brother Philip occasionally asks for some. It’s been a few years since I made this, I hope he is not still sawing pieces of the old batch off with his jack knife to snack on when he stokes his furnace.  

No one has asked to be schooled in this process, nor am I eager to create interest in the chore of gathering ingredients and vessels to make another batch. My steaming kettle has been passed on to another brother, the task shall be his, should there be a call for more plum pudding.”

 

Anna’s story and accompanying recipe give me a sense of nostalgia. Nostalgia is a sentimental longing or wistful affection for the past, typically a period or place with happy memories. In this case, it is a happy memories shared over generations in a family.

Take a close look at the picture of the recipe. There are notes added by different hands over the years, including “Mom didn’t use much because dad doesn’t like it.” The recipe is a picture of home shared from one generation to the next. It gives me pause to appreciate my ancestors and what has been passed on to me. I wonder what I am to pass on from the ancestors to the next generation?

 

Gramma’s Plumb Pudding

2 cups  suet

Or ¾ cups shortening + ½ cup butter

 

1 cup               molasses

1 ½ cups          brown sugar

2 or 3               eggs

2 large spoons of each: cinnamon, cloves, allspice

½ tsp   salt

½ tsp   soda

¼ cup  milk

2 lbs     raisins

2 lbs     currants

1 cup   mixed peel

5 cups flour

Steam covered pudding in a large pot over boiling water 3-4 hours

 

PRAYER- Stir up is us a spirit of discernment, to attune to what we have received from our Ancestors and determine what to share with future generations. May we add our own wisdom to that which we have received. Amen.

Advent 3: Kindom as Home

 Kindom as home.

Others in Christian tradition would say, “Kingdom is home.”

Perhaps you can not hear the nuance in the word when said aloud. Perhaps you have questioned my spelling when reading emails or writing on my blog. Instead of kingdom, I prefer to use Kindom – K.I.N. … D.O.M

In Advent, through the words of the prophets and in Advent hymns we hear of the kingdom of God, specifically the coming of the kingdom. We sing of justice, redemption, and freedom. We are hope filled with

Isaiah’s description, to an exiled people, of the return from Babylon, where the returnees participate in a joyous procession to a land once again filled with milk and honey; where freedom is a renewal of creation wherein health and wholeness are restored. The text speaks of no need for fear. The description is of creatures – once enemies – grazing together and lying side-by-side. Harsh wilderness is restored with blossoms and life.  The continuation of the prophet’s description of kingdom comes from Jesus’ words sent to John the Baptist to take note of the signs of healing and restoration, where the blind see, the lame walk. Jesus expresses to John that God’s reign was being fulfilled presently in his time and place.

 

Through Jesus, God’s reign was being fulfilled, kingdom was present as kindom blossomed, from one person to the next, from one group of disciples to the next; from one healed, seen, welcomed, or encouraged to the next. The kindom spread with each confrontation with leaders, each parable upending the operable economics of the day, each action supporting the marginalized, and each instance addressing power by advocating for mercy.

Emmanuel, God-with-us, changes the hopes of a kingdom to come, to a kindom present.

Reflecting on the work of N.T. Wright, Will Horn, writes: “God comes to dwell with us, and Jesus’ resurrection launches a new creation that’s already underway. Ephesians shows that God’s plan has always been to unite all things in Christ—and the Church is supposed to be a preview of that new creation right now. … True spiritual warfare, he says, isn’t about blaming people or seeing demons everywhere. It’s about living faithfully as a united, Spirit-filled community that reflects God’s future in the present.”

 

We read this morning from the book of James. This is the early years following Jesus’ death and resurrection. The community is living with memory of Jesus and people who knew Jesus or someone who knew someone who knew Jesus. The scriptures are the Torah (the Law) and the prophets. There is an understanding that Jesus is returning soon, very soon. They are figuring out how to be kindom in the intervening time. James encourages his community to cultivate patience instead of discontent. It is no mistake the James talks about kindom using farm imagery. The community has a precious crop, a precious story to share through the planting of seeds. The precious crop requires early rain for growing and a late rain for harvesting. Just as a crop does not grow overnight, neither does kindom. It takes furrowing, planting, re-seeding, hoeing, weed pulling, watering, tending, the removing of pests, all this before harvesting … to do it all again the following season. This many centuries later James’ words are for us too, cultivate patience, strengthen your hearts – meaning do not loss heart. God’s kingdom is already present through Christ, so now reflect God’s future in the present by cultivating and being kindom, just as Jesus taught.  

 

Let us go back in time. Imagine it is 30 years ago and we are in Los Angeles, California, (or any large city over 2 million people). The city has areas -ghettos- where poverty is a matter of course, education is basic, and job opportunities are few. Every day life is filled with serious crime, fear of violence, gang fights and turf wars. Public housing projects are trafficking hubs and unsafe for the families trying to survive. Law enforcement is sporadic and unjust when it does arrive on the scene. Mass incarceration is the prevailing tactic to clean up the streets. With no options the cycle of poverty, to gang participation, to incarceration, to release back to the ghetto, is repeated over and over again. There is no way out and the rest of the city and country do not care.

 

To this actual area there comes a Catholic priest filled with hope and believing in the promises of kingdom as described by Isaiah. He looks over the streets and the wilderness and sees the possibility of kinship. He gets to work with a patience and strength of heart, to cultivate kindom. Over the years, individuals, volunteers, parishioners, faith groups, neighbourhood members, organizations grow a community of kinship. Thirty years later – today-  kindom is present and flourishing.

The farmer, as James identified those working in God’s reign, is Catholic priest Greg Boyle, the founder of Homeboy Ministries. In the wilderness, the neighbourhood blossomed with the planting of substance abuse courses and addiction support groups, an 18-month employment and re-entry program post-prison sentence with focus on healing and developing work readiness skills, additional education services, tattoo removal, anger management classes, parenting classes, and free wrap-around services with the help of case managers and navigators. Healing included family reintegration and social connection hubs. Thirty years and presently Homeboy Industries is the world’s largest gang intervention and rehabilitation program. Talk about kindom!

 

Father Greg once said, “you stand with the least likely to succeed until success is succeeded by something more valuable: kinship. You stand with the belligerent, the surly, and the badly behaved until bad behaviour is recognized for the language it is: the vocabulary of the deeply wounded and of those whose burdens are more than they can bear.”

 

Kindom as home.

Every generation, every community, has had a prophet, a teacher, an activist, a reformer, a poet, a critic--- a someone or someones who describe God’s future in the present. People who with strengthened hearts spend their lives cultivating kindom: rooting out indifference, digging in new perspective, rehoming discarded plants, weeding out that which is not serving the garden, pruning judgements and boundaries, and fertilizing all that is grace and mercy filled.

 

The ancient words of Isaiah the prophet present a beautiful image of the kingdom of God. One that has been waited upon for millennia. Through biblical story we encounter places and times where the kingdom of God comes near. Through Jesus, God becomes present – incarnate- in all future time and place. We live in that future time and place. Kingdom comes as kindom. Kindom bursts forth in and from communities and neighbourhoods that cultivate patience and strengthen hearts. This is not just a past event or one that will come in a distant future, Homeboys Ministry is an example of kindom presently happening, right now! What is happening here, right now?!

Advent is a reminder to us and this community that we are called to be living kindom, with patience to keep on being a community that lives God’s future in the present. This is the heart of Advent. The heart of Christmas. The heart of living as a people of faith.

 

 Kindom is home.

Recipes of Home #4 - COMFORT

 

COMFORT

The home should be the treasure chest of living. – Le Corbusier

This recipe I received from a friend whose cottage was in Cartigan, PEI. Her name was Addie Boyce and she and her husband spent the summers there. Cecil, my first late husband, and I used to visit them every summer with our daughters. I enjoy making these rolls and giving them, as gifts, to family and good friends at Christmas. Hope you enjoy making them as much as I do. “Merry Christmas” Love, Claire

 

Claire has blessed church gatherings with these rolls. At one event the rolls accompanied bowls of warm soup. For me this is the quintessential combination for comfort.

 

As Christmas potluck is soon to happen, I wonder about the foods people choose to bring. Are the foods ones of comfort? A favourite recipe? The simplest to make and transport? This year, you are invited to share stories with your tablemates of the food you bring to potluck or stories of foods present that bring up memories for you. The community has enjoyed Claire’s rolls without knowing the story that goes along with them. Knowing the story adds comfort to the pleasure of eating them and we know Claire a little bit more.

 

Stories are moments of listening where we connect with another person. There is comfort to be found in the sharing and receiving of a story. There are many stories this time of year for us to receive, give, and share. Let us take time to snuggle in to listen to the stories of others, the story of Jesus’ birth, and to comfort others with the sharing of our own stories.

 

New Glasgow Rolls 

Large Recipe

3 T       dry yeast

1 cup   sugar

1 cup   oil

2 ½ tsp salt

6 eggs

5 cups  warm water

 

Small Recipe

1 ½ T   yeast

½ cup sugar

½ cup  oil

1 ¼ tsp salt

3 eggs

2 ½ cups warm water

 

7-10 cups        flour

Cook 350F for 15 mins.

 

PRAYER- Stir up in us the desire to receive and give the gift of stories. Comfort our spirits with the story of Jesus’ birth and stories that speak of love, promise, and belonging. Amen.

 

Recipes of Home #3 - EMBRACE

 

EMBRACE

The power of finding beauty in the humblest things makes home happy and life lovely. – Louisa May Alcott

 

Type into Google search, “warm embrace meaning,” and the AI overview says: “A warm embrace means a physically or emotionally comforting, affectionate hug that conveys love, support, acceptance, and security, like being welcomed home or feeling God’s love: it’s about closeness and positive connection, a tangible expression of care. It signifies belonging…”

 

The accompanying oatmeal turnover recipe comes from Mary Mueller. She writes, “My favourite cookies at Christmas time because they are not all sugar and butter but are nutritious and filling. Oatmeal and dates what could be better!

They also remind me of God’s mercy and grace. How He wraps us in His love and keeps us, looking after all our needs in every way.”

The shape of turnover is like a hug. We are each embraced in God’s loving care and welcomed home. This is a beautiful image for the season of Advent. Much time is spent preparing our homes and churches for Christmas. Sometimes in the busy-ness we fail to experience God-with-us, Emmanuel, already present, embracing us and a troubled world.

Pause for a moment and give thanks for God’s presence. Be filled with warmth – this is God’s embrace.

 

Oatmeal Turnover

 1 cup               brown sugar

1 ¾ cups          oatmeal

1 ½ cups          flour

1 tsp                soda

1 tsp                salt

¾ cup              soft butter

 

Add cold water by Tbsp until nice to roll after chilled.

Cut with a round cutter.

Bake at 350 for 8-10 mins.

Very nice with date filling.

*Before baking: date filling can be placed on the cookie dough. Fold over dough to make a half circle. Bake until cookies golden.

 

Date Filling

1 lb.     dates (pitted and chopped)

1 cup   white sugar or brown

1 cup   boiling water

Boil and cook until like jam

 

PRAYER- Stir up your power of love in our hearts. Thank you for your embrace and our belonging. May we warmly embrace neighbours, all people and creatures. Amen.

 

 

Advent 2: Earth as Home

“Trees offer us the solution to nearly every problem facing humanity today, from defending against drug resistance to halting global temperature rise, and they are eager to share those answers. They do so even when we can’t or won’t hear them. We once knew how to listen. It is a skill we must remember.”

I encountered these words of botanist and medical biochemist Diana Beresford-Kroeger in the introduction to her book, “To Speak for the Lives of Trees.”

 

There is no prophet who spoke as much about trees as Isaiah. Isaiah uses a variety of trees and other natural elements to describe the kindom of God, to explore faithfulness and wholeness, and to symbolize and articulate spiritual concepts. Isaiah’s tree imagery, along with other examples from creation, invites listeners to hear and receive the prophetic message. Every Advent we hear the words from Isaiah. Today it is the word a shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots (Is. 11: 1)

In a world where human activity causes harm, where areas have been deforested and turned to desert, where animal habitats have declined and species have become extinct, and where war has scarred and poisoned the earth, words of shoots growing is an image of welcome relief – a spark of hope.

Isaiah, with words connecting us to remembrances of earth and its creatures, presents God’s kindom as a garden – returning humanity to its roots: In the beginning, God…  through Advent a coming, in the future, where the wolf shall live with the lamb; the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the lion will feed together…

the cow and the bear shall graze … they will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. (Is. 11: 6-9)

 

As quoted earlier, Diana Beresford-Kroeger writes, “We once knew how to listen. It is a skill we must remember.” The season of Advent is one of waiting and preparing. Last week we heard of the ancient Gregorian Advent prayers beginning ‘Stir up.’ Is it possible that our ancestors – those living in closer relationship with the earth- set up Advent as a pause for listening? Listening for prophetic word. Listening for the coming of the Lord. Listening for hope, peace, joy, and love. And in listening to be stirred up, to work on our relationships with God and with earth and its creatures?

 

The psalmist pauses to listen. With a stirred up spirit the psalmist poetically describes connection between the mountains and God’s coming. May the mountains yield prosperity for the people, and the hills, in righteousness. An ancient understanding where human relationship with the earth is necessary for God’s kindom to come. While the sun endures, as long as the moon… like rain that falls on the mown grass, like showers that water the earth …  then will righteousness flourish and peace abound.

The Apostle Paul’s theology is rich with an understanding that the earth groans as if in labour pains, until humanity lives in right relationship with God and creation. Paul could have chosen any number of passages to confirm Jesus’ identity, yet in today’s reading, specifically chooses to quote Isaiah’s from the root of Jesse. Paul chooses Isaiah’s image of a stump – a once tree- and declares Jesus as the sprouting shoot. In this choice of image, Paul captures humanity’s deep desire to move from that which is dead to new life and growth. The sprouting shoot image produces instant emotion and a sense of steadfastness, encouragement, hope. Stirring up memory of trees and forest has the affect of us wanting to live in harmony with one another – and this in turn grows joy and peace with an abundance of hope.

 

Ancient wisdom, biblical and otherwise, reveres trees and the forest. Forests were planted long before human beings. Trees have appeared in human stories from the beginning; remember the stories from the Garden of Eden, the tree of knowledge and the tree of life. Walking among trees has been found in writings from Roman antiquity, from the Middle Ages, and practiced in Japanese culture as forest-bathing. This is with mindfulness and gratitude walking in forests. Scientific studies show that such a practice reduces stress, improves physical and mental health, and increases oxygen in the brain. A more philosophical view is that one becomes aware of beauty, relationships in the ecosystem, and a lived experience of grace found in imperfection and impermanence. In the forest humans experience awe, a coming close of God, a connection with the Divine Mystery.

 

I wonder how much forest-bathing the Sadducees and Pharisees practiced in the time of John the Baptist?  I wonder if they took time to pause and walk through groves of olive trees or pray under the shade of sycamores? Did they gently pick figs from low hanging branches? Tree and creation imagery from the Gospel of Matthew gives me the opposite feeling from the prophecy of Isaiah. Matthew’s imagery is crass and hard to hear. Matthew writes of the wilderness, locusts, and camel’s hair. He speaks of a brood of vipers, threshing floors, and axes ready at the root of trees. These last images pointedly describe a human failure in living God’s covenant, moving away from connection with and for others, and a lack of responsibility for their own actions. Matthew returns to an ancient motif, encouraging the bearing of good fruit, fruit worthy of repentance, and wheat that has been separated from chaff.

Matthew, along with the other readings for the second Sunday of Advent, are directing our attention - and hopefully a following of our hearts and wills- to our deep rootedness and connection to all things.  

 

As I thought about Matthew’s brood of viper language, I thought about how the Gospels describe the supposed righteous and their disconnectedness with the actual people around them. I considered the pointing of fingers at those failing to live God’s Law or rather living the letter of the Law and not living into the actual loving of one’s neighbour, and stranger, and enemy. And then I thought, am I in the brood of viper camp and the imagery of Matthew or am I in the coming of Isaiah’s prophecy where they will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

 

On this second Sunday of Advent we focus on the theme of ‘Earth as Home.’

When it comes to trees and forests, my bones, heart, and will, are grounded in the beginning when God created. I feel rooted – and in this season, as deciduous trees are shaking off remaining leaves and evergreens are lush and tall, in their quiet time, I am drawn to them to listen. Trees are connected, always have been to the Creator- the one coming who makes all things new.

 

There is tension for me, perhaps you feel it too, as Christmas draws near. The season is filled with humanity at its best and at its worst, much like the peaceful images of Isaiah and the crass images of Matthew. In our actions God’s kindom comes near or brokenness expands.

Professor Robin Kimmerer wrote, “Though the Earth provides us with all that we need, we have created a consumption-driven economy that asks, ‘What more can we take from the Earth?’ and almost never ‘What does the Earth ask us in return?’”

Kimmerer in the same article writes, “in the teachings of my Potawatomi ancestors, responsibilities and gifts are understood as two sides of the same coin. The possession of a gift is coupled with a duty to use if for the benefit of all. A thrush is given the gift of song – and so has a responsibility to greet the day with music. Salmon have the gift of travel, so they accept the duty of carrying food upriver. So when we ask ourselves, what is our responsibility to the Earth, we are also asking, “What is our gift?”

-Question What Does Earth Ask of Us: Returning the Gift, Robin Kimmerer: www.Centerhumansandnature.org

What is our gift?

As we prepare for Christmas what is our gift? For the Christ-child? For our neighbours, the stranger, our enemies? For trees? For creation? For earth? For our home?

 

The trees are entering a quiet time and in their action signal to us that we need to quiet ourselves too.

In the quiet we are able to listen …and by the grace of God reconnect with life.

 So that with the psalmist we sing, may God’s glory fill the whole earth. Amen and amen.