Flowers Needed

Ok, how in the world did it get to be the 26th of January?  Seriously?  On the other hand, walking to work in the cold today, and seeing little buds on the trees and daffodils shooting their stems out of the earth (yes, spring comes early in Manchester), I thought, yes.  Yes, I am ready for spring.  Ready for sunshine, and flowers, flowers, and more flowers.  So, I've preempted this flower hunger with a new background for the 'ol bloggeroo.  

That's all.  Nothing profound today, I'm afraid.  Haven't had enough caffeine to be thinking profoundly yet today.  I hope your day is great!

Blessed with . . .

I was going to call this post Blessed with Boredom.  But then, that doesn't exactly fit, because I've actually been working quite a bit on my laptop, finishing grades for my online course, working on my thesis chapter, writing an essay for publication, etc.

And in the midst of all that boredom-forestalling work, I've also been able to enjoy the celebration of Christmas with Big Man and Little Man (featured as the most adorable shepherd ever in his school Nativity play the week before Christmas, on the right there), and the delightful addition of Momma and Daddy, who've come to stay for a month from the other side of The Pond.  We've had a truly lovely visit so far, except for this stupid chest/sinus infection, which has taken out Daddy as well as me, and left me weak and in bed quite a bit!.  (I can't wait to move to a different climate.  I love Manchester, but have been ill here much more frequently and much more intensely than ever before in my life.)

The week before Christmas, we had a fantastic 3 days in front of a toasty, roaring fire in an idyllic cottage in Hay-on-Wye, Wales, a booklovers' paradise (40+ bookshops full of goodies!!!).   That's the cottage kitchen on the left.

We had a delicious Christmas dinner, with all the traditional English trimmings, courtesy of Chef Big Man, with our dear friends the Ermakovs and fellow PhD-expat Mr. Stark.  We had a beautiful Service of Carols and Lessons at church on Christmas Eve, and I was honoured to bring the homily, and terribly thankful to make it through without a major coughing fit.  We even managed to stretch our present-opening over Christmas and Boxing Day!  This is Little Man's new quilt made with love by Grammy - the Poky Little Puppy fabric is adorable, and it came just in time, as his toes have started peeping out from under his baby quilt now.  STOP GROWING!!!

Despite all this activity, I am resting.  Resting by sleeping in.  Resting by observing the cooking by Little Man and Momma (this was taken during the pumpkin pie production) - too ill to join in myself, unfortunately.  Resting even whilst working on the laptop, curled under a blanket with a hot cuppa in my PJs.




So maybe I'm not blessed with boredom, but blessed with time.  For this little while, time to manage as I choose, not dictated by meetings and services and seminars.  Time to rest.  I couldn't ask for a better Christmas present this year!

How can it be so?

How can it be so, that we might have so much sorrow and joy in the same day? In my 'day job' I have the privilege of walking with people through some incredibly difficult life circumstances, in which I can do nothing to solve their problems. Most of the time, as they're crying and talking, I'm praying as I listen.  One of the great mysteries of serving people is that some of their sorrow gets transferred to me. It is a beautiful thing, in a Gethsemane kind of way. So painful, so beautiful, such a privilege.

And then, not even 15 minutes later, I'm running the daily obstacle course with Little Man on the way home from his school: follow the paint squiggles on the sidewalk, walk along the wall, slide down the signpost, climb up and over the tree stump, and back up onto another wall, then piggyback him the rest of the way home. Now we're snuggled on the couch with Little Man, and he literally couldn't be any closer to me without sitting right on my lap. He's pouring over a comic book that he can't quite read (Tiny Titans - a kids version of DC comics, GREAT for getting reluctant readers interested!).  Soft Christmas music is playing, and I have a whole evening with my son ahead of me.  Delight. 

How can such sorrow and joy coexist in one person?  I wonder, as we follow Christ, who knows both to the fullest, does our capacity for this sorrow-and-joy cocktail expand?  What do you think?

'Just Do It'

Growing up in Portland, Oregon, where Nike is headquartered, I knew their slogan "Just Do It" before it ever became a national campaign.  To be perfectly honest, this tagline never really connected with me, because I always, always, always stop and think.  To excess.  I have never been one to jump in without thinking, no matter how much I wanted to be like that.  So, "Just Do It?"  Ah, no thanks, but thanks anyway!

Howwwwever . . .

I follow a blog called The Pioneer Woman.  Many, many, many others do as well.  Ree Drummond, the ranchwoman extraordinaire behind this wonderful site, logs 20 million hits per month!!!  I'll never get there.  I'm just telling you now.  But Ree?  Ree is fascinating and engaging.  In the last two years, her blogging enterprise has resulted in a bestselling cookbook, a book tour, a couple of other book deals, movie rights, and TV appearances on everything from The View to Throwdown with Bobby Flay!  The woman is awesome.  Now, not living in the States means I have to watch these appearances on good 'ol YouTube.  :)

And wouldn't you just know it?  A clip from Ree's Q&A at the 2010 National Book Festival in Washington, D.C. smacked my overthinking, hesitating self right in the kisser!  Three different questions came up along the lines of 'How did you learn...'  (How did you learn to blog every day/take such great pictures/cook so well, if you're curious.)  And Ree's answer to all those questions was basically a paraphrase of Nike's slogan, "You just have to do it."  She went on to say that after you've done it for a while, regularly, it gets easier and easier, and less and less of a chore.

Now, I know that doesn't sound profound.  But it reminds me once again of something I blogged about in my very first blog post (over a year ago now!), from a slightly different angle this time, the fact that we must actually practice faith.  We don't try be a Christian, we practice being a Christian.  That is, we put our faith into practice.  If I want to grow in my faith, I must 'Just Do It'.  I'll try to explain what I mean and what I don't mean.

I don't mean that in matters of faith, it's all on us.  I don't mean that going through the motions is enough to produce a strong faith.  I don't mean that we shouldn't count the cost of following Christ (Jesus himself tells us to do that in Luke 14:25ff).

I do mean that faith requires action, and that most of the time, the balm to our agonizing, the solution to our fretting, the best answer to all our self-centered self-analyzing, is to get off our duff and "Just Do It".  The epistle reading we had in morning prayers yesterday speaks to this, too!  (Isn't it groovy how God uses so many different and unrelated sources to drive home a point to us?  But that's for another post!)  Anyway, we read James 2:14-26, in which the main point is, "Faith without works is dead."

Ree said she took a lot of really bad photos when she was first learning.  And she thinks her early blog posts were pretty unsophisticated, and sometimes she couldn't think of anything to write, so she just posted something she'd written for something else.  And her cooking is not the fruit of formal culinary training, but it sure struck a nerve with the American public.  Ree's point is, you will probably be bad when you first start something, but you will get better, and it will get easier.

This same principle applies to our spiritual life and practices, too.  I was really bad at practicing silence when I first started over 8 years ago.  I was fidgety and unfocused, and my body couldn't handle any one posture for more than five minutes.  My first sermons were nothing more than vague pep talks.  When I first started reading the Bible seriously, I interpreted every single verse to be about Little 'Ol Me.  :)

The point is, if I ever want something to come naturally to me, there will come a time when, motivated or not, skilled or not, ready or not, I gotta "Just Do It".  And do it again.  And again.  It's called discipline.

Domestic Goddess I Am Not...

but a girl can keep trying!  So Saturday, we spent the day doing a top-to-bottom cleaning of the house.  I won't say it was a deep clean, because we had to get it done all in one day, and I always seem to miss a spot somewhere.  (This time it was the window sills.  Yipes!)   So anyway, yesterday afternoon, my domestic streak continued.  The only 'pile' left after all our cleaning was a Giant One of clothes that needed mending/hemming/otherwise adjusting.

Now, I have been taught to sew by my dear Momma.  She sewed a great many of my childhood clothes, my favourites being some of the fancy dresses for Easter and Christmas.  Oh, but then there was the Little Red Riding Hood costume that I wore for Halloween about four years in a row.  Or the Christmas plaid dress with crisp white pinafore, and matching outfit for my Cabbage Patch.  Or the prom dress that made me feel like a princess.  Momma is a gifted seamstress.  

This does not mean, however, that I have made the most of her faithful teaching.  I have sewn, in my lifetime, exactly four projects, and all of them with Momma at hand to remind me how to thread the machine and to help me with the pattern cutting and fabric choosing:

1. A pair of shorts in Sewing for Kids class in the community education programme when I was about 8.  They were pink, with white teddy bears on them.  I don't know if I ever wore them.
   
2. A few pairs of curtains for our first house.  They were blue and red plaid for the living room, yellow prairie print for the bathroom, and blue and yellowish plaid for the bedroom (if I remember correctly).  Can anyone say "Country!"  Thankfully, my tastes have evolved (though I still seem to have some plaid chair cushions at the moment, but we'll ignore that since I'm living in England on a student budget and have to take whatever I can get at the cheapest cost!).
   
3. Little Man's nursery set, with major contributions from Momma.  We made matching curtains, bed linens for the crib, pillows, and even a changing table pad cover!  In the sweetest little retro cowboy print you could ever find!
   
4. An unfinished quilt, which Momma and I cut the squares for, and then laid out on the floor and began to sew together in looooooong strips (in her defense, this was before Momma became the quilt mistress that she is today).  We have since ripped the seams from those long strips and pieced them into more sensible 9-blocks.  But they still aren't joined into an actual quilt.

Given this less-than-stellar sewing career, I have been too intimidated to break out the borrowed sewing machine on my own.  It has sat in my dining room for months, while The Pile of mending grew and grew and grew.  I bought a dress in June that would have been perfect for summer, but it needed one little tweak before it was presentable.  I'm wearing it today for the first time because it sat in The Pile all summer long.  Little Man is down to one pair of school uniform trousers that fit him - six other pairs inhabited The Pile, waiting to be hemmed.  The last pair was in the laundry and not going to be ready for school today, so I finally broke down and faced my fears.

I set up the machine, got out all my sewing 'gear', and took a quick browse through the machine's owner's manual to be sure I remembered how to thread the machine and bobbin.  Over the course of Sunday late afternoon and evening, I worked my way through The Whole Pile (almost).  In the process, I broke and replaced the needle, took the machine apart a couple of times and put it back together successfully, and even taught myself a new stitch, the blind hem stitch!  And all without one, single phone call to Momma!!!!  :)

There are still three more pairs of Little Man's trousers in The Pile, but I think we'll just let him grow into them, as we don't really need that many pairs in rotation.  A beastly stack of drapes still needs hemming, but they are lined and I didn't have the strength to face them at 10:30 last night.  Same with Big Man's work trousers, which need 12 buttons sewn on so he can start using braces (suspenders).  TWELVE buttons.  Big Man might have to do them himself.  :)

Nevertheless I am beaming with pride.  I conquered my fear!  I faced The Machine all by myself, and worked it into submission.  I own that machine.  Except it's borrowed, but you know what I mean.  :)

Hot Cocoa Bliss

So, I've had a couple requests for the hot cocoa recipe I blogged about.  It's really very, very simple.  I'll post it here for your use.  I've no idea of its origin, and I will not vouch for its nutritional value.  But it sure is goooo-oood!  The ingredients are in U.S. measurements, but online measurement converters abound.

Momma's Hot Cocoa (ala Charlotte Coleson)

• 1 32-oz. box hot chocolate mix (e.g. Nestlé’s Quick)
• 1 lb. confectioner’s sugar
• 10 2/3 c. powdered milk (enough for 8 qts.)

Sift all ingredients into a LARGE bowl, then stir together (slowly to avoid choking on dust!).  Stored in an airtight container, this will last for months.

To enjoy: add ¼ c. mix to mug; mix with 8-10 oz. boiling water.

Meant to Be

In a previous post, I mentioned that I was meant to have started my rotation of library shifts last Monday night.  But I didn't share why that didn't happen.  It's been a ca-raaaaa-zy week since then, and sitting in the British Airways Business Lounge  at Heathrow, as I am now (more on that in an upcoming post), I'm taking the chance to catch up.

Last Monday night, I'd been home from work for about half an hour, when Boss Man called me.  He is very, very good in this regard, and even though being the college chaplain sometimes means I am sort of 'on call', Boss Man is extremely protective of my time and my 'off-time'.  That is, he doesn't call me at home except in dire emergencies.  Which this turned out to be.

We all meet strangers every day.  Sometimes, like my last 24 hours of hoofing it through four airports, we intersect with thousands of them in a single day.  But rarely do those strangers break down in tears, collapse in our arms, eat at our table, pray with us, and then go on their way.  This time, she did.

Ruth arrived at the college to stay a couple of nights while she did some literary research in the Manchester area.  When Ruth arrived on campus, she found a message waiting to call home  immediately, only to be told that her husband had been killed when his small private jet crashed.  Enter the phone call from Boss Man.

I went back to college to be with Ruth, whom I'd never met before.   I accompanied her to the airport to change her flights so she could get home ASAP.  Then we went back to college to call her son with flight info.  Then I took her to my house, for some dinner and talking and internet access.

It's amazing to me how much strangers can learn of each others' stories in the crucible of crisis.  In the space of a mere 5 hours, we learned about each others' marriages, careers, ministry experiences, children, family history and dynamics, etc.  Of course, Ruth did most of the talking, but she did ask me questions about all of that, I think as a way of trying to gauge the initial effects of the tragedy on her own life.

No one reacts to tragic death in the normal way.  That is to say, there is no 'normal' way of reacting to that kind of news.  Thankfully, Dr. Judi Schwanz had done a phenomenal job of preparing me for this in my seminary's Counselling for Grief and Loss class.  As a result of her good teaching, I was able to be with Ruth in those hours, in what I hope were helpful ways, without feeling I had to be responsible for directing her grief into 'healthy' avenues.  Ruth was mad, and that was ok.

That evening last week was just one of a litany of occurrences since I became a chaplain wherein I was conscious of my own inadequacy, and God's dear abundance.  I don't know for sure if Ruth even remembers my name.  She is now in the throws of picking up the pieces of her life after his death.  But I will always remember Ruth, and give thanks for the privilege of walking with her for a few hours.

I was 'meant to be' in the library that night, but didn't make it.  Ruth's husband did not die because it was 'meant to be.'  But I, and she, and you were 'meant to be' companioned by God, and He was with us on Monday.

Grace and peace.