When I was in 4th grade, I made a discovery.  I found a book of Greek myths that had been my mother’s textbook in highschool.  It was filled with the most wonderful stories about gods and goddesses and heroes galore.  I loved that book and read it cover-to-cover more times than I can count.

One of the myths that I remember the most vividly is the one about Persephone.  Persephone was the young, beautiful daughter of Ceres (the goddess of crops and the harvest).  Hades (god of the underworld) saw her one day and fell in love.  So he stole Persephone and took her to his home; the dark glittering underworld, where he married her.  Two things happened as a result.  Persephone did not like her new home and started a hunger strike.  Her mother mourned the fact that her daughter was missing and wandered the earth leaving it fallow as she walked.  Zeus (king of the gods) got wind of what was happening and he convinced Hades to give Persephone back to her mother.  Hades acquiesced, with the provision that Persephone must have remained on her hunger strike during her entire stay with him.  It turned out that she had eaten 6 pomegranate seeds.  So it was agreed that Persephone would live 6 months of each year with Hades and 6 months above ground with her mother.  Now it is said that each year Ceres mourns the absence of her daughter and we have winter, but each spring Persephone comes back to life from death and Ceres blesses the earth with new life.

Persephone is the immortal visage of spring; young, beautiful, nubile and bursting with life.  I think of her each year when the calendar winds around to April-ish.  She will return to her mother soon and we will have new life in abundance after the cold empty winter months.

I’ve always thought that it’s interesting that Easter falls in April(ish) each year.  The ancient Greeks had Persephone and we have Jesus.  The timeline is different with Jesus.  He only spent 3 days in the underworld.  And because he was fully human, he actually died on the cross bearing the weight of all of our sin.  And His renewal, his resurrection, signifies new life for all of us.

This year in particular I find myself hopeful as the dark days of Lent spin themselves out and we approach Easter.  It’s been a long, dark winter for me as I found myself battling a recurrence of major depressive disorder (complete with increased anxiety and panic).  I’m hoping that as the weather turns and I get my brain focused back in that the new life of spring and Jesus will bring me back to myself.  Here’s to spring.  Here’s to new life.

This post is part of the March 2014 Synchroblog – New Life.  Check out the links below for some great reading on the subject:
Michael Donahoe – New Life
K.W. Leslie – Sin Kills; God Brings New Life
Carol Kuniholm – New Life. Mystery Fruit.
Jeremy Myers – I Get Depressed On Facebook
Glenn Hager – A Personal Resurrection Story
Loveday Anyim – Spring Forth – Ideas That Speak New Life
Loveday Anyim – Inspired By Spring To Create A New Life
Sarah Quezada – Post Winter Delight
Edwin Aldrich – Finding New Life In Our New Home
Doreen A. Mannion – Each Day A New Decision: Choose Life
kathy escobar – new life through nonviolent communication
Anita Coleman New Life, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, and Eternal Living
Mallory Pickering New Life Masterpiece Theater Style
Liz Dyer New Life, Empowerment and Dropping Keys

So … I’m giving up sugar for Lent.

To be absolutely clear … I’m giving up any food which has sugar (or one of it’s counterparts: honey, syrup in all it’s variety, molasses, etc.) as one of the first 5 ingredients listed. There is one exception, dark chocolate. I can have dark (70% coca or greater) chocolate in sparing amounts … 1 oz. per day. But I can’t save that up. If I don’t eat an ounce today, that doesn’t mean I can eat 2 oz. tomorrow. If I have it I can eat it.

Other than that exception, no more sugar for 40 days. I feel as though I am casually wandering into a food desert. No more sugar. Gack!

No Jif peanut butter, no jelly … thus no pb&j sandwiches, which I love. No ice cream. No cake (including LightBoy’s birthday). No pies. No cookies. No brownies. No store bought bread. No Frosted Mini-wheats. No store bought granola.

I am quickly discovering how much of our processed food contains sugar (or one of it’s variants). It’s really quite remarkable … and not in a good way.

On the other hand, I am also looking forward to the adventure of it all. What will I discover as I wander down this road? How will I manage cravings? And (most importantly) will I see any health benefits from this? Will those benefits encourage to me or discourage me?

I have no idea what I will find down this road, but I’m hoping to find my way back to certain places in my heart. That cutting out sugar will force me to face some things and let them go, rather than eating my pain, anger and frustration. That I will learn new and more healthy habits … not just with eating, but with life.

Who knows … I might even find myself darkening the door of a church again.

Don’t hold your breath.

So.  Basically I really hated yesterday’s prompt and had a rebellion.  You’ll be left forever wondering what it was, why I hated it and what I might have responded to it if I’d stopped kicking over the traces long enough to actually think.  My tiny little excuse is a really really bad case of hives that is apparently caused by the sun.  I have turned into a vampire.

Har.  Just kidding.  Some meds I take for seizures are causing sun sensitivity which, in my case, causes hives.  This has happened before in the past 5 or years since I started this new drug, but I’ve never been in the sun as long as I was on Friday (riding a tube down the Shenandoah).  So the hives were mighty and cursed this time.  Prednisone has become my new best friend.  However, I had so much fun on that tubing trip I’d do it all again … I’d just give in and go to the doctor’s sooner

Today’s prompt is this –

What’s the first thing you notice about a man when you meet him? A woman?

The first thing I notice about men and women is their eyes.  Maybe it’s because I was taught to look people in the eyes when being introduced.  Or maybe I just love eyes.  Or whatever.  Who knows … I could spend all day rationalizing, but the bottom line is I dig people’s eyes.  I love eye shapes and sizes and colors.  I love the way a person’s eyes define their face and their mood.  I love the way eyes sparkle and gleam.  I think the most fun I ever had in a class was when I took a class on portraiture and learned how to draw eyes.  I got so much perspective from that experience.

The second thing I notice is their hands.  You can tell a lot about a person from their hands.  You can see how they feel about themselves in the way their hands are carried and used in a conversation.  You can see how they relate to the world in how they take care of their hands and how their hands are used in their line of work.  When they shake hands with you, you can tell a lot about how that person perceives you and your status vis a vis them.  Personally, as a woman, I love it when a man gives me a good firm handshake.  I hate the namby-pamby woman shake that I’m subjected to in the name of chivalry or whatever.  It sucks.  It’s like expecting a great bowl of good chocolate ice cream and you get a tiny dish of half melted soft-serve instead.  Bleh.  I also like good hugs but only from friends.  Stranger-hugging is weird in my book.  And there is entirely too much hugging here in the south (from my northern perspective).  But I digress … as you may have noticed I also love hands.  And lately, I’ve loved watching as my children’s hands are developing from pudgy kid hands into adult hands.  They are beautiful.  The same is happening with their friends and cousins.  It’s like a small marker of passage through time and is enjoyable to watch as they cavort through life together.

What about you?  What do you notice when you first meet people?  Does it differ with the genders?

So … my fingers have been itchy and I want to write again.  I find myself daydreaming about blog posts … again.  It must be time to come back and write.

Thanks to the Holly, I found this site where they are posting a blog prompt every day for a month.  I don’t know if I will be that dedicated … maybe I will manage every OTHER day or something like that.  But at the very least I will be writing regularly again.  Here is today’s prompt:

You’ve just been given a million dollars. You are not allowed to keep it or give it to anyone you know personally. What do you do with it and why?

My first response is that I cannot imagine what a million dollars really is.  Really.  Can you?  What IS a million dollars?  What can you buy with a million dollars?  What can you do with a million dollars?  I simply find myself in the place that I cannot understand the reality of having a million dollars all at the same time.

So I’m trying to daydream about some less concrete.  I’m trying to daydream about simply having piles and piles of money that I cannot keep and I cannot give to anyone I know personally.  Here are some of the things I would like to do with it …

–> Start a micro-finance program for inner city women, especially single moms, here in the States.  I love the idea of Kiva and I think it’s doing huge amounts of good in the world, but I’d like to focus my efforts on women and single mothers, so that they can achieve some level of security and perhaps even raise their level of education, so that the cycle of poverty stops with their generation.

–> Along the same lines, use the money to seed loans and work projects so that those who currently live in inner city projects can participate in regentrifying their own neighborhoods.  I love the idea of renewing our inner-city neighborhoods, but not at the expense of those who already live there.

–> Seed money to educate women and girls.  There are scores of studies right now showing that the more a woman is educated, the less likely she is to ______ … fill in the blank with all of the ills of poverty, particularly those relating to addiction and sexual abuse.

–> Renew art programs for young people in need.  We cannot live by industry alone, children need to exercise their imaginations and creative gifts as well as learn to read, write and ‘rithmetic.

Those are all the things I can think of to do with my million dollars.  What would you do?

Wow … it’s been two months since the last post.  If you’ve come around lately you’ll see a new look here.  I’ve been doing some housekeeping, and finally upgraded my WordPress from 2.3 to 2.9 … a task that’s been on my list since August.  Of 2008!

So I’m working on this space.  It’s not finished yet, but it’s good enough for now.

Some things that have happened in the last two months that are noteworthy –

Our beloved Sam died very unexpectedly one late October afternoon.  He’d had some gum surgery about 10 days prior and the wound did not seem to be healing quite right.  When I took him to the vet at about 3 that afternoon, he was lethargic and his abdomen was distended.  The vet ran a test or two, took some x-rays, and came back with a diagnosis of hemangiosarcoma (also often called the silent killer).  The only thing our vet had difficulty determining was the size of the tumor and how much it had invaded Sam’s system.  He could only accurately make that determination with surgery.  So, after a very emotional and troubled two hours, Sam went into surgery.  BlazingEwe and her three LambChildren were with all four of us.  The vet came out within 20 minutes (teary-eyed and barely able to speak) and told us the devastating news; Sam would not survive the surgery.

We are still recovering from that.

For Thanksgiving LightHusband’s parents came to visit for about 8 days.  We were very busy during that time and it ended with LightGirl excelling as her team’s goalie at a nearby tournament.  Two days later she was sick and couldn’t eat.  She had severe stomach pain, nausea, dizziness.  We began the process of attempting to discover what the source was.  Ultrasounds, endoscopy, C/T scans all came back normal and/or unremarkable.  Nothing was wrong … physically.  So we’ve made some lifestyle changes and that seems to help.  She finally went back to the rink after a month long absence right after Christmas.  It was a hard pull, but I think we’re on the upswing.

In the midst of LightGirl’s mysterious illness, LightBoy had H1N1 flu.  And there was one day when LightHusband thought he was getting ill as well.  I threatened to run away and that seemed to cure whatever ailed him.  LightBoy is still coughing, but is back to his normal, slightly ornery self.

Christmas was the usual blur and New Year’s hit like a train.  LightGirl turned sixteen this January 1.  So we had to have a party.  A largish party that was amazingly fun and there were lots of young folks there with their sparkly faces and snappy wit. 

So … Happy 2010 to all and I’ll end with this prayer:
May there always be work for your hands to do.
May your purse always hold a coin or two.
May the sun always shine upon your window pane.
May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain.
May the hand of a friend always be near to you and
May God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.

In his own words the Blind Beggar, Rick Meigs is going home!!

Tuesday, August 11, 2009 11:54 AM, PDT

This is Rick sending greetings! Will be going home Thursday and hope to be online more. I’m using a computer at the rehab. center and doing this with left hand, so I’ll keep this short.

Rick Meigs

Two months to the day after his near-death accident, Rick is going home.  He spent weeks in a ICU in Boise, ID.  Two more weeks in a regular ward in a Portland, OR hospital.  Then a little more than a week at nursing home center in Portland and has been in the Rehab center since August 1.

Rick, his wife Fran and sons will continue to need prayer for his continued healing.  That he will continue to be able to carry on his business and that their re-adjustment process will go well.  Most of all that they will be able to lean into the process and rest, just as if they were floating away on Aslan’s breath.

The gloves are off.  Brother Maynard issued a pancake challenge.  Complete with photos.

Never one to shrink away from such things, I’m stepping forward with a recipe of my own.

Now … I do not make cute bears.  Or things like that.  I have been known to experiment with initials branded in mine.  But my kids are devout fans of my blueberry pancakes.  So is anyone else who has ever had them.   This is a result of the first blueberry pancakes I ever had in Machias, Maine.  They were blueberries … held together with pancake … and a taste of heaven that I have been attempting to recreate ever since that moment of serendipity in August of 1977.

This recipe is an amalgam of other recipes and ideas.  I first thought about making my own pancakes from scratch when I encountered the ideas of a writer by the name of Amy Dacyczyn.  She used to write a monthly newsletter called The Tightwad Gazette which had tips for money saving and living more simply.  In one issue she noted that food manufacturers were able to charge exhorbitant prices for the cheapest ingredients in pancakes, notably flour, sugar, baking powder and salt by combining them and calling them pancake mix.

I find that offensive.  So I make my own.  Most of the time.

I begin with oats … because they’re good for you and because they make the pancakes stick your ribs.  A trick my mom learned when I was little and she’d make pancakes for lunch.

Scald 1/2 c. skim milk in the microwave and pour it over
2/3 c. rolled oats

Stir to thoroughly combine in a small bowl and set aside so that oats can absorb the milk.

Dry Ingredients –

1 1/2 c. flour (I often split this and use 1 c. white and 1/2 c. whole wheat or 1/2 c. cornmeal)
3 Tbls. sugar
3 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt

Whisk all dry ingredients together and make sure there are no lumps.

Wet ingredients –

1 egg + 1 egg white
3 Tbls. oil (or melted butter)
1-1/2 c. buttermilk

Whisk together eggs and oil til light and frothy.  Add milk and combine thoroughly.  Add oat mixture and combine thoroughly once again.

Make a well in the dry mixture and add wet ingredients to dry.  Combine wet with dry in several quick strokes.  DO NOT over beat.  Stir just enough to dampen dry ingredients.  Use a light hand when mixing.

Me, I use the Fanny Farmer cookbook for my culinary wisdom.  Mine is so worn that the binding has been replaced with duct tape.  My all time favorite griddle is my mother’s.  And it’s at camp in Vermont.  I believe it’s cast aluminum.  I have never found anything that can cook pancakes better than that griddle.  Good cast iron is a passable second.  Here are the cooking directions from Fanny:

Lightly butter or grease a griddle or frying pan and set over moderate heat until a few drops of cold water sprinkled on the pan form rapidly moving globules.  (Aside – my favorite part of the process)  Measure out about 1/4 c. pancake batter per cake onto the pan.  (I use my large cooking spoon to ladle it out)  Bake on the griddle until the cakes are full of bubbles on the top and the undersides are lightly browned.  Turn with a spatula and brown the other sides.  Place finished griddlecakes on a warm plate in a 200F (95C) oven until you have enough to begin serving.  (Aside – BroM makes a great point here … never turn a pancake more than once or you’ll have shoeleather).

When I add blueberries I use the following method:  If they’re fresh, I rinse and pick them over for leaves and twigs.  If frozen I keep them frozen til the last possible moment.  In either case, I use about 2 c. of blueberries and toss with flour til all berries have a fine coating of flour on them.  Then I stir in with the dry ingredients prior to adding wet ingredients.  Everything else is as usual.

There … now you have two pancake options for 2009.  It’s an inexpensive treat that really brings the family and friends together.  Enjoy!

Feel:  The Power Of Listening To Your Heart by Matthew Elliott

This book was a breath of fresh air for me.  Sort of.  Matthew Elliott wants very badly to believe what he’s writing.  But I never quite got the feeling that he really did.  And I want to believe it too.  Whenever there’s been a dust up in my life, I’ve heard this: “You’re too emotional.  Why can’t you ________?” Fill in the blank with one of the following:

• get a thicker skin
• blow it off
• ignore them/him/her; they’ll get bored and quit
• just calm down
• stop being so irrational/emotional/unreasonable

So it was a huge relief to read a book that was devoted to the idea that emotions are not scary.  Emotions are not bad.  Indeed, emotions are a necessary barometer that help us navigate and negotiate through life.

Mr. Elliott’s premise is that, contrary to popular psychology, ancient Greek philosophy and most modern thought, emotions were and are to be trusted.  They are an inner compass to the dance of the Holy Spirit.  It is when we cease to listen to our emotions that we are most at risk for not hearing from God.   He even laid to rest the horrible train visual that has scourged so many of us for so long:

The promise of God’s Word, the Bible — not our feelings — is our authority. The Christian lives by faith (trust) in the trustworthiness of God Himself and His Word. This train diagram illustrates the relationship among fact (God and His Word), faith (our trust in God and His Word), and feeling (the result of our faith and obedience) (John 14:21).

The train will run with or without a caboose. However, it would be useless to attempt to pull the train by the caboose. In the same way, as Christians we do not depend on feelings or emotions, but we place our faith (trust) in the trustworthiness of God and the promises of His Word.

Thus have thousands been coerced into distrusting their innermost compass.  There is a grain of truth to these statements, but there is also a pound is dishonesty.  Sorting it out takes finesse and maturity.  Neither of which seem to be encouraged in the church of today.

Matthew Elliott takes great pains to prove his premise … but he does so in a very rational, logical manner.  I found this both comforting and paradoxical at the same time.  He makes the fine point that the notion that emotions cannot be trusted dates back to Plato and thus may be traced through Augustine in our church history.  He then traces its path through modern psychology and Darwinian thought to the present.  But the reality in the Bible is that God, His people and our relationship with Her are all rooted in emotion from the very beginning.

For those breaking free of any kind of emotional straight-jacket this is a must read.  Mr. Elliott also has a blog and throughout the book encourages participation on it.   There is also a website with study guide resources for individual and small group study (this book would be fine for both).

I dunno if it’s a cycle of the moon.  Maybe I shouldn’t try to explain it.  But there just seems to be some stuff I need to share with you right now.  So here is some of it … in no particular order.

Rachel Barenblatt of Velveteen Rabbi is studying in Israel this summer.  Her descriptions of life in the Holy Land are not to be missed, but of particular note is this meditation with photos of a day trip to the West Bank and Bethlehem.  She has a remarkable ability to see the humanity in both sides of Israeli-Palestinian dispute that is touching and beautiful.  Here’s a little taste:

Walking around the camp [refugee camp in Bethlehem] was surreal. It didn’t feel like what I imagine when I hear “refugee camp;” it felt like a neighborhood in any one of the developing nations I’ve visited. (It’s easy to forget that once a refugee camp has existed for a few decades, the army-issue canvas tents are replaced with buildings, but it’s still a refugee camp.) We quickly acquired a cadre of small children who followed us shyly saying “hello, what’s your name? Hello, how are you?” I’ve had that exact experience in so many places, so that felt very familiar. The streets of the camp are tiny, and in every window people watched us with curiosity.

But Shadi’s remarks gave us a sense for what some people may be feeling behind the walls. “This is a ghetto,” my friend Tad said to me, sounding stricken. “Is this what our grandparents survived the ghettos of Europe for: to do the same thing to someone else?” I couldn’t answer him.

Doug Jones at Perigrinatio posted this video challenging us in the arena of forgiveness.  What do you think?  Could you forgive?

Kent Leslie is working at a summer camp this summer and has an interesting take on the usual tradition of the altar call.  I think he’s probably onto something.  If you don’t have Kent in your feed reader, I’d recommend him to you as an interesting and provocative read.  He takes his faith, both orthopraxy and orthodoxy very seriously … his writing?  Not as much.

“When you screw up, we’re going to forgive you. When you make mistakes, or break rules, or are mean or do anything wrong, we’re going to forgive you. We’re not gonna hold it against you—although if you plan to take advantage of that forgiveness and just be evil all week, we might have to send you home for our own safety and the safety of the other campers. But for those of you who are trying to do right, this camp is going to be a giant clean slate for you. No worries. No guilt. Just forgiveness.”

Then we invite them to follow Jesus, and get ’em saved from the very beginning, and spend the entire week walking in newness of life, instead of waiting till Sunday and having an altar call to “wrap up” the week.

Who knew you could find such great music at the Smithsonian?  They have blues, African, jazz, Native American … all available for electronic download (to purchase, of course).  And much, much  more.  It’s an amazing collection to prowl through.   You can hear samples of everything before you purchase, but it’s all pretty fabulous if you like folk music and music from our roots.  I highly recommend prowling around there for a while.

Pam Hogeweide is messing around again.  She challenged herself to a 10 day duel.  She’s winning, by the way.  She writing everyday for ten days and finding the supernaturally beautiful in the ordinary … things like a bologna sandwich.  Everyone said it couldn’t be done.  Read Pam and see the God-beauty in the everyday.

Updated, courtesy of BlisteringSh33p, to include (drumroll please) the 7 Hamburgers of the Apocalypse.  Do not, I repeat, do NOT read this post if you are at all queasy, or have the tiniest little bit of an upset tummy.   However, if you want to see the fattiest, gluttoniest ways to eat red meat on the planet … it’s an absolute howl.

Finally … watch this space for book reviews and an e-zine … coming soon.   I’ve got book reviews coming on the following books:  We The Purple, Feel, Hokey Pokey, The New Conspirators, Rapture Ready, The Tangible Kingdom and Oh Shit! It’s Jesus … oh, and one cd, Songs For a Revolution of Hope … oh, and coffee too … I ordered two pounds of Saints coffee.  We’re taking it to Vermont at the end of the week.  I’ll let you know if it’s a good buy.

Select up to 20 friends who deserve blessing. Bless 15 more friends, and advanced blessing options will be available.
I found the above directive in Facebook one day.

I can’t decide … part of me thinks this is absolutely hilarious and giggles uncontrollably when I read it.  Another part of me finds this very, very sad because there are people out there who will believe this tripe.  A third part of me gets angry when I read it because there is something pornographic about that.  It’s using something that is supposed to be pure and holy; turning it into an economic transaction of sorts.

What do you think when you read things like this?