bring a little bread

no hard feelings

2016-12-16T13:44:00.001-06:00

Am I?

Listen to this song.

...hard feelings

Lord knows they haven’t done

much good for anyone

kept me afraid and cold

with so much to have and hold

Under the curving sky

I’m finally learning why

it matters for me and you

to say it mean it too

for life and its loveliness

and all of its ugliness

good as it’s been to me

I have no enemies

Lately I’ve been sharing this with everyone who will listen—posting it on social media, mentioning it in conversation, texting and emailing it to friends, playing it for passengers in my car. And now I'm posting it here. Something about it seems so essential to me, so important for everyone to hear, that I can’t help but talk about it. The way I’m writing, it occurs to me now that this song is like a new gospel to me, is a new gospel for me. Or perhaps it’s just gospel, but bent for my ears to hear.

This song has so affected me that it’s inspired me to pick up my book project, which I started last November, or maybe the November before that. (And by “started” I mean wrote a page and a half and then abandoned it completely.) The only trouble with that is, every time I listen to the song, I dissolve into a puddle of emotion and tears and inarticulateness. It’s not even that I’m sad; it’s all just too much.

Of course, it’s not all the song. 2016 has been…well, too much. Of course there are the big things: the election, the paralyzing ruin of Syria, the death of beloved figures, two horrifying trials happening in Charleston, and more, and more. And my little life, like everyone’s really, filled with so many slight miracles and tragedies. The slightness of them, their particularity, doesn’t make them any less miraculous or tragic.

“Life in its loveliness/and all of its ugliness”—does anything more need to be said?

Perhaps just a few more words. Because this lyric, the whole song, brings up a question for me: so what? I ask myself this a lot, both because I have a tendency to pile on emotion for no particular reason, and because I believe all of this beauty and all of this ugliness is connected. So what? How does it connect? What does it point to?

Of course there’s no one answer for this, or at least I haven’t found one that ties it together for me in any way I can accept.

And yet…

I do think—no, I believe—that stories, and songs, and the relationships that create them, and all of their big and slight miracles and tragedies—these are as close as we can get to the kind of tying-it-all-together truth I so badly want to discover. All of these stories and songs and relationships are disparate, but so is life. And aren’t they all disparate in a maybe-connected way? Oh, please let it be so.

This brings me to Advent, not so obviously. The other line that has been reverberating through my brain (there are a lot of words in my brain, as you may have picked up on) comes from the Gospel of John: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (1:5 NRSV) I wrote about this verse last Advent, and I have a feeling I’ll write about it again, because once you’ve read these words, how could they not stay with you forever?

I don’t want to get too Gnostic on anyone, but this verse reads a lot like a battle between light and darkness. John likes to do that. The light is shining; the darkness tries to overcome it. It hasn’t, yet.

Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard.*

People talk about Advent as a time of waiting: waiting for the birth of Jesus, waiting for deliverance, waiting for the world to be set right by a savior. Or waiting for someone who will at least accompany us through the beauty and the ugliness, and accompany us forever. Waiting for someone who won’t disappoint us, won’t stop loving us, won’t let go of us. Not someone who will remove the darkness, but someone who won’t leave us in it.

That song, the one I opened with—it is gospel to me not because it makes me feel better about the world. Let’s be honest: it’s about death, and uncertainty. But it’s also about life, and about how much more we should love because of its uncertainty. Don’t wait, the song says. Now is the time to give up all that old anger and resentment and hatred and distaste (I have a particularly tough time with that one). Now is the time to live, freely and fully, to take all of the beauty and ugliness in and allow it to affect you, to take others in and let them take you in, to allow ourselves to affect each other.

This does not contradict the lesson of Advent. Advent is not just about waiting; it’s also about preparing. It’s about readying our hearts and ourselves for a love beyond comprehension, a love that does not turn away at the sight of blinding beauty or violent ugliness. It's about preparing so fully that we become that love to each other. It’s about life. It’s all about life.

*These words are from an op-ed called "Death, the Prosperity Gospel and Me" by Kate Bowler.

us vs. them

2016-07-25T09:06:00.001-05:00

(Below is the text of a message I gave at Circular Congregational Church in Charleston, South Carolina, on July 24, 2016. It references the following biblical passage:

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” - Luke 18:9-14)

I remember exactly how I felt. You know when something makes you so angry that tears immediately spring up in the back of your eyes? That's the feeling I’m talking about.

But as I looked around the room, I quickly realized that no one else was as angry as I was. They didn't even seem annoyed. It looked like they were totally unaware that what this woman had just said could offend anyone who was there that night.

A little back story: I was at a Bible study, and we were having a conversation about mission, and what it means to share our faith with other people. This topic alone made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I’m not really the kind of Christian who tells people about Jesus. I’m more likely to evangelize for a new restaurant I really like than to invite someone to come to church with me. So when the conversation drifted towards how we talk about the gospel to quote “nonbelievers”, I was all set to tune out.

Then someone asked the priest leading the study if people of other religions evangelize the way Christians are known to do. He confessed that he really didn’t know, because he hadn’t spent much time studying other religions. Naturally, I felt the urge to chime in, as I had long ago designated myself the voice of the liberals in this conservative group.

“Well,” I said, “my understanding is that Christians definitely do more evangelizing than any other major world religions. You don’t see a whole lot of Jewish groups trying to gain converts, for example. Depending on how you classify Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, they’re really known for their mission work—knocking on doors, going on mission trips, that sort of thing. If you lump those two under Christianity, the next most mission-oriented religion would probably be Islam, although they’re a distant second.”

When I said this, a woman across the circle from me made a joke: “If they come knocking," she said, "I wouldn’t be answering that door!”

Almost everybody laughed. “Oh my God,” I said under my breath.

Yeah, that’s really what I said.

I know she saw the exasperation on my face, and probably heard me, because she apologized to the group a couple minutes later for speaking without thinking. After class, she came up to me individually and told me about how she’s trying to be more accepting of different people. Told me a story about her son marrying a woman of a different race and background. She was mortified by the whole situation. So was I.

This interaction happened a few months ago during a Bible study at a church much more conservative than Circular...although to be fair, that’s not a hard distinction to gain!

I had decided to join this 9-month-long study, called Disciple, because I’m friends with the priest and his wife, and because I wanted to force myself to discuss theology with people different from me.

It was a struggle to make myself go every week. I could tell dozens of other stories like this one, stories about how uncomfortable I felt, stories of how I disagreed with everyone there, stories of how I often wanted to cry or scream or make a sarcastic comment. (Okay, I succumbed to that last urge more often than I’d like to admit).

I have a lot of stories of situations that, frankly, made me feel intellectually and often morally superior to everyone else in the room. Whether I meant to or not, I often saw myself as the educated, enlightened, accepting liberal riding in on my white horse to save these misguided, backwards people from their ignorance.

There’s this great podcast, an interview series, that I like to listen to. It's called The Liturgists. I highly recommend it if you’re something of a seeker and like thinking about theology. In one episode, they talk about how to tell the difference between being prophetic and being a self-righteous jerk. I like to think I walk that line pretty consistently, but honestly I know I err on the jerk side a lot of the time.

One of the hosts of the show calls himself Science Mike, which alludes to his profession as well as his tendency to analyze everything and break it down into systems. In this episode, Science Mike ends by talking about his system for deciding when he should, and when he shouldn’t, share something he thinks is a “prophetic truth” with other people. Here are the questions he asks himself:

Number 1: Am I communicating honestly and without hostility?

Number 2: Am I speaking for someone or against something? At whom or what is this really directed?

Number 3: What will I get out of saying this? Does this bolster me in some way?

And lastly, number 4: Is this driven by social identity? In other words, am I saying this because a group I’m part of would agree with it, or because I really believe it?

These questions all get a bit technical, but the basic point is this: it’s a good idea to ask ourselves if we’re saying or doing something we think is just or good or righteous, out of a desire to love and to help and to change things for the better, or because we want to feel good about ourselves.

This brings me to the parable in Luke 18. The Pharisee in this passage fails Science Mike’s test with flying colors.

I could have a field day with this one. I’m sure we all could. It’s so easy to see and point out everything this guy is doing wrong…because there’s so much he’s doing wrong! He’s like the poster child for Jesus’ collection of bad examples! In other words…well, he's acting a lot like I do sometimes.

That’s what I love and hate about parables...they always surprise me. As soon as we identify with someone, pick a good guy and a bad guy, we miss the point. As soon as I vilify the Pharisee, I become like him...intent on pointing out how much better I would behave in his situation. Just like he did to the tax collector, I make him into an outsider…the one who, unlike me, is doing it wrong. One of them.

Every Sunday at Circular, we say, “Whoever you are, and wherever you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” I believe we mean it. But sometimes welcoming everyone is really, really uncomfortable. This is true no matter what community we’re talking about and no matter how hard we try. This may be especially true in our current political context. There are a lot of directions to point fingers in. The “us vs. them” mentality is difficult to escape.

At the church where I did that Bible study, “they” might be Muslim people, or LGBT people, or people who don’t wear the right clothes or have the right jobs. At Circular, “they” might be people who say "All Lives Matter", or oppose gay marriage, or watch Fox News every night.

We certainly wouldn't make them leave or anything that obvious, but I'm not sure they would feel welcome here either.

This is not to say that we shouldn’t have principles. Circular’s principles, guided by the life of Jesus, require us to work together to create a more just world. This means paying attention to privilege and trying to level the playing field, or to put it in more religious language, bringing about the kingdom of God on earth.

But we have to be careful about how we communicate our principles, and what we imply the consequences are if someone doesn’t agree with them.

Do we have a conversation?

Do we acknowledge our shared humanity?

Do we respond in love?

Or do we, like the Pharisee in the parable, thank God that we are not like them?

Do we, like I did with that woman from the Bible study, roll our eyes and mutter under our breath?

In the wake of the Dallas shootings a couple of weeks ago, I started seeing a quotation pop up all over the internet: “Too often, we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions.”

You know who said that? George W. Bush. Yeah, that George W. Bush.

Reading this quote, and remembering who said it, gets at the heart of the issue for me. We need to have bigger imaginations than we often do. We need to see possibility in each other, to see the image of God, the face of Christ, in everyone...even, or perhaps especially, in people we disagree with.

The good news we profess in this community is that everyone is welcome here, and that everyone deserves love and justice. We proclaim this every Sunday. Each day following, we work to make this proclamation a reality in the wider world.

The question is, are we going to carry out our mission of love and justice in a spirit of self-righteousness, or in a spirit of love and compassion for everyone? Really, truly everyone?

I don’t know about you, but I know that I’ll need a little help and a lot of grace to do that. I trust we’ll receive it, if we ask. Thanks be to God.

what I've learned, or not

2016-05-22T23:57:00.002-05:00

Lately I've been waking up in the middle of the night, around 3 or 4 usually, and just...lying there. Insomnia's not that unusual, I know, but it's unusual for me. Right now, in fact, I'm having a little bit of it--11:58pm and my eyelids haven't even started to droop. It seemed like a good idea to write.

I've been 30 years old for a whole three weeks now, plus a little extra. My friend Sydney and I wrapped up more than a month of celebration last night with her perfect gift to me: dinner at the Wild Olive, a restaurant that's been on my to go list for years and years. It was at least as good as I expected it to be, better. Then today we walked on the beach, made breakfast, lunch, and dinner, drank wine and watched a rom com (somehow the abbreviated version of that term makes it even more apt). A perfect couple of white women days, really. Sunned, sanded, and wiped out, I would expect to go right to sleep. Here I am, though, thinking, writing, lying here again.

Perhaps what has been giving me pause is the strangely anticlimactic feeling accompanying what everyone has assured me is a pivotal birthday. 30. Three decades, each one vastly different from the last, each inhabited by a different person, really.

My sister asked me a couple of weeks ago what I had learned during my twenties. I balked, then responded with an answer I probably shouldn't post publicly. She told me that by the time she turned 30, she had learned not to have more than three drinks in a night. Nope, haven't learned that lesson yet.

Since then the question has lingered in the back of my mind. What have I learned? Anything? Something, surely. Right?

Doubt is so much more a part of my life than ever before. College taught me to doubt, and divinity school imprinted that quality into my identity. Take nothing at face value. Always look again, and again, and again. When I think about what I've learned, doubt is the first thing that comes to mind.

Doubt doesn't seem like the best starting point for a list of lessons, but maybe what I've learned doesn't fit in a list. Lists are too permanent, or they try to make things so. Recently I was telling my mom that big decisions scare me because I've never been certain about anything, at least not for long. Depending on the day, my ambivalence has sometimes led me to embrace change but more often to flee from it. I may not be certain about what I'm already doing, but at least it's comfortable; at least it's already happening. I have inertia going for me, which is nice.

But on a good day, that doubt can take me in the opposite direction. It can remind me that nothing--not my resolve, not my circumstances, not my understanding--is final. Look again, it says. Try again. Reconsider. Change. Grow.

This brings to mind the book of Ecclesiastes, and particularly its oft-repeated claim about life: "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity."

That's an uplifting life lesson, right?

It's important to note that the word used for vanity in Ecclesiastes is the Hebrew hebel, which is often translated as "breath" or "vapor," indicating impermanence, futility, and delusion. But what else does breath point towards? Life.

That's it, really: what I've learned. It's all breath, or breaths, all uncertainty and change, failure followed by triumph followed by despair followed by joy. Mostly all of it wrapped up together, but in some kind of uncontrollable whirlwind rather than a neat package.

Maybe in another ten years I'll have a list. For now, this is about all I've got.

next time

2016-03-26T18:16:00.005-05:00

I’ve thought a lot of grace

on this windy, wintry day (wintry in the Carolina sense

60, maybe, and gray).

Is this resurrection

a dimness we cannot fathom, a mirror reflecting darkly

an overcast spring day?

Perhaps this dimness is

all we can take for now, lit up about as bright as we can stand

grace given with more grace.

I want to believe this:

the world has a life of its own we cannot kill, not completely

despite our best efforts.

It will come back, for good

and next time we’ll want it, greet it with open hearts and brimming eyes

I can see it, almost.

For now, let it all go

all of it; empty yourself, turn back towards that far off spring, and

look, always look again.

Love, and wanting more

2016-02-15T20:54:00.002-06:00

How do we love? How should we?

I remember having a conversation with, oh, someone…maybe a Sunday school teacher, or a friend, or a stranger or all of these. All I remember is that I was young.

“If God loves everyone and we’re supposed to love everyone, does that mean I can’t love my mom and dad more than someone I don’t know? Do I have to love everyone the same, no matter who they are or what they do?”

So many possible answers to this kind of question, and none of them satisfactory. Yes, we should love everyone equally; everyone is our neighbor, and aren’t we supposed to love our neighbors as ourselves? Or, it’s okay to love a few people in a particular, close, favorite kind of way; our families are where we learn to love, and it’s normal to love them more. Or, God pours out love especially on the people who need it, not necessarily the ones who deserve it, so shouldn’t we do the same?

I may not have known the term, but I was asking about agape here. That seems to be the love of choice in most churches, the love we say God shows, impartial love, love for everyone, love without expectation of return, of good behavior, of exclusivity, of any result.

We talked about this some in divinity school; of course we did. Love was always floating in the background of all of our conversations, the guiding principle behind all the theorizing and theologizing and wondering. I never got a good answer though to what the right kind of love is, though. I never heard anything final about anything, including love.

Yesterday was Valentine’s Day. I was with my sister and brother-in-law and niece and nephew, and a friend in the morning. Lots of love, many kinds blended together. And yet, I still felt a sense of being left out, of missing something. I guess you could say I felt desire, a yearning for something more.

This led me to remember a class I took on suffering. (That’s not a punch line, at least not a purposeful one.) We talked a lot about suffering and love, love and suffering, the definite correlation and possible causation between the two. And we talked about desire, or at least I did in my last paper. I quoted Dorothee Soelle, a writer we read, a lot in that paper: “…unconditional love for reality does not in the least defuse passionate desires to change reality...unconditional love can allow itself the more absurd desires—it can pray for them and it can work for them, precisely because it does not make the existence of God depend on the fulfillment of these desires.” We might restate that as: love does not make the existence of love depend on the fulfillment of desire. We can declare our love for the world, for God, for our family and neighbors and lovers, and really, really mean it—and in the next breath proclaim our desire, our deep need, for change, for more and better love.

We don’t often think of God as experiencing desire, of wanting. Look at Jesus, though, and for that matter look at most of the history of Israel. God, Jesus, both cry out to their people, followers, priests, disciples, to strangers even, asking for more and better love. God loves us, and precisely because of that love, God wants us to live in a way that shows love to others; this is the only way forward, the only way we can understand what love is and what it can be.

My desires don’t always align with divine desires. In fact I’d say it’s a good day when a few of them sort of do. But isn’t that why desire is there in the first place—because things are off kilter, unfair, not quite the way they should be?

How do we love? How should we? Maybe I'm supposed to love everyone equally, without expectation, but, well, I'm not sure if that's going to happen anytime soon. All I can say is there is no one way, no right answer, no clear signpost, for love. There’s only us, trying to be for each other, trying to want and do good things for our world, trying to want what we think God, love, might want, and working to make those desires manifest. Let it be so.

Signs of spoilage

2016-02-10T10:13:00.005-06:00

Monday, 5/21

She told me it would be dirty work. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t remember that, as though I believed I would just bake brownies every day. In my interview we talked about how much gleaning I would do and what exactly “gleaning” entailed: sorting through boxes of past-their-prime fruits and vegetables to see what we could use in our meals. I knew what I was getting myself into.

Somehow, though, this recognition does not make the smell of 300 pounds of half-rotten vegetables any easier to tolerate. My car smells like tomato wine, or it would if tomato wine existed. I roll my windows down, but it doesn’t help much; the 90-degree heat holds everything about the rot in my nose, my senses, my consciousness.

What am I doing? I ask myself on the drive back to the office. I know what led me here, at least; I wanted this job because I love food, and I hoped I could translate that love into meaningful work. I am quickly realizing that I actually just love fresh food, the kind I buy from Whole Foods or a farmer’s market, or at this point, any place where the food doesn’t have visible mold on it. I am also realizing that while I love making food for my friends—hosting elaborate dinner parties for a dozen people or so—planning and executing four meals a week for 75-100 people does not hold quite the same charm.

I pull up to the back door of our building. Reflection time is over. My coworkers come out to help me carry everything in from my car, and I sort, weigh, and record my haul. 32 pounds of peaches, 56 of corn, 47 of tomatoes, endless squash and zucchini. About half of everything I picked up is unusable, so into the compost bin it goes.

Ah, the compost bin. From far away it looks almost beautiful, a rainbow of refuse. The closer I get, though, the more I see the signs of spoilage: mold, flies, the occasional small animal casing the joint. I go out there two, three times every day, but I try my best to make those visits as quick as possible. Sometimes I hold my breath for the 15 seconds it takes to dump a boxful into the muck.

Of course, Mondays are the hardest. As soon as I’ve sorted and weighed what I’ve gleaned, recorded it, and composted the bad stuff, volunteers show up to help me process it all. The same group comes every Monday, 10 or 15 young adults with developmental disabilities. Working with them is not my strong point, to say the least. I’m terrible at it. I’m impatient, nervous, unsure of what they can and cannot do and how I should talk to them. I know they know I’m uncomfortable, but I can’t quite figure out how to hide it, or better yet, get over it.

Jack, a thin blonde guy with a crooked nose, has a habit of asking, “Why?” no matter what I tell him to do.

“Jack, take these tomatoes out of this bin and put them on this pallet.” “Why?” “Because they need to go on a pallet.”

“Jack, take the husks off of the corn, then put the husks in here and the corn in here.” “Why?” “Because people can eat the corn but they can’t eat the husks.”

“Jack, sort through these squash and put the hard ones here and the squishy ones there.” “Why?” “Because that’s what I need you to do right now!”

“So sorry,” Jack says, in a swift, instinctive way, a way that makes it clear he’s been apologizing his whole life.

What am I doing?

Almost as soon as Jack and his friends get here, though, they are gone. I walk into our kitchen and take my lunch out of the refrigerator, my lunch. It’s healthy (enough), fresh, and expensive: a beet and arugula salad with sheep’s milk feta, roasted pecans, and a white wine vinaigrette I made myself. Fresh crusty bread, toasted and slathered with butter. As much watermelon as I can fit into an old yogurt container. I eat like this every damn day. And I love it. Do I want everyone to be able to eat like this, to choose what they want, buy it, cook it, and eat it? Yes. Would I compromise my comfort to make that happen? It would appear not.

But I try not to think about this right now. I try to put everything out of my mind except my lunch; I lean against the counter and relax into my meal. This, I think—this is what I love about food.

Anne, my supervisor, comes in just as I swallow my last bite. We go over all of the salvageable produce I gleaned, divide it among industrial-sized blue bins, and store it wherever we can find fridge space. We talk about what we’ll do with all this stuff, all these quickly-decomposing-but-still-usable fruits and vegetables. We talk about potential recipes for the week, we fold aprons and hand towels, and we pull out meat from the freezer. I tell her about the kale salad I made for dinner last night, and she tells me about the lime, basil, and gin cocktail she mixed up on Saturday. When I talk to her, I love this job. In fact, when I talk to anyone I work with I love it. I’m not here for the rotten squash; I’m here hoping I can soak up some of their goodness. But I feel like a fraud.

Friday, 8/10

I love working on Fridays. Normally I don’t come in; Anne usually works alone to plan next week’s meals. But this week—my last week—she’s on vacation, so I’m filling in for her. I chat with the Friday morning cooks, check out the contents of the freezer and the pantry, and piece together menus based on what we have in stock. It’s like a word problem: you have 33 pounds of chicken, 27 pounds of ground beef, 15 pounds of rice, and 3 bins of vegetables. How many people can you feed?

I figure it out, come up with recipes, and email Anne:

Hello! I've outlined some possible menus for next week. I'm not sure what days we have dessert donated, but since we have so many peaches and bananas in the freezer I thought it would make sense to use them. As far as meat goes, we have a lot of chicken and smaller amounts of ground meat, beef, and bacon. I took out the chicken and ground meat so that should be ready to go. We also still have a lot of produce in the fridge, mostly peppers and squash/zucchini (some of which is already chopped), plus tomatoes and potatoes. Here’s what I came up with:

Tuesday:

Parmesan breaded chicken tenders

Roasted squash

Mashed potatoes

Wednesday:

Chili mac with cheddar, tomatoes, and hot peppers

Roasted zucchini

Thursday:

Black beans and rice with peppers (hot/sweet) and onions (and bacon?)

Squash and zucchini with cumin and chili powder

Sliced tomatoes

Friday:

Beef stew with lots of summer veggies, over rice

Cucumber salad

Possible desserts:

Peach cobbler

Banana cake with chocolate/cinnamon chips

See you soon (very soon, I hope)!

xoxo Sarah

I hit send. Why does this list of simple meals feel so important to me? It’s not exactly a stroke of culinary genius to suggest that we use beef to make beef stew. My pride in this work makes me feel silly for a moment, like I’m six years old again and proud of myself for tying my shoes. Everyone else learned that two years ago? Oh.

Anyway, I don’t dwell on it because it’s time for me to go. Or almost anyway—one more trip to the compost bin. A local farmer dropped an unexpected donation at our doorstep last night, and some of the vegetables will not last until Tuesday. The recent heat wave hasn’t made the task of composting any more appealing, but perhaps because it’s my last week, my last day, I almost feel a premature nostalgia for this act. I even start to think that maybe gleaning wasn’t so bad. I know I’m idealizing, but I want to hold onto everything about this summer as long as I can.

I stand outside for a moment, sweating, staring at the compost. Beauty and color and ripeness—it is all slowly dying, decaying into dirt. And for what? To become the ground we walk on, the soil we grow in. I couldn’t do it, I think. These inanimate objects have me beat. But then I realize that like it or not, I am doing it. We’re all doing it—slipping away, day by day, piece by piece, often quite imperceptibly. But does our slow death birth any new life? Do we make our death worth it? I start to think I could learn something from this compost.

Or maybe it’s just compost.

Then again, maybe so are we.

Growing up

2016-01-23T09:52:00.001-06:00

What does it mean to be a grown-up? I haven’t used that word in awhile; somehow it doesn’t seem very grown up to say it. Children call adults grown-ups; grown-ups don’t call themselves that.

But it’s the word I want to use here, because I feel like a kid today. It’s not that I did anything particularly thoughtless or irresponsible, or that I’m experiencing a sense of childlike wonder. No, I don’t feel childish or childlike—I just feel like a kid, a little lost, looking for guidance, in need of someone to tell me what to do. In my experience, this is something grown-ups are loathe to admit—that they (we?) are at a loss, cannot handle things themselves. So, I feel like a kid today.

When I wrote about church, my thoughts turned to why my generation has trouble with it. When I think of “grown-upness,” the same thing happens: the concept calls to mind all that’s been written about how we millennials just can’t seem to grow up in the way the world wants us to, expects us to. Depending on whom you ask, we’re floundering or exploring or procrastinating or freeing ourselves from the status quo. I’m not sure which of these, if any, we’re doing; all I know is it all feels very disorienting.

Every generation thinks they’re the exception, that they’re creating something new. In my experience, when people talk about millennial exceptionalism a mocking tone often creeps in. The term “unique and special snowflake” comes to mind. We’ve been brought up to think we deserve trophies just for showing up, they say. We think that our workplaces should accommodate our schedules rather than the other way around. We’re delaying or disavowing marriage and kids because we’re selfish. We believe the world cares enough about us that they want to see pictures of what we ate for breakfast…they say. And perhaps they’re right. Perhaps many of us do think we’re special snowflakes deserving of trophies and flex time and freedom and perfectly cooked quinoa porridge.

Setting aside that these stereotypes only take into account a very privileged, very white subset of millennials (a subset of which I am, for better or worse, a card-carrying member), they often don’t look at why we feel the need to be unique or what this is doing to us. I said at the beginning of this that I feel like a kid today. A lot of people my age(ish) I talk to feel like this every day, and it’s not because they want to. All of this nonconformity, this throwing off of expectation, betrays our lack of trust in anyone or anything. We’ve watched our parents divorce, our economic system unravel, our politics devolve into deadlock, our institutions become outdated at best and disgraced at worst.

And so we believe we have no choice but to start something new—but we, like everyone else, have no idea what that new thing will be. This uncertainty looks a lot like failure, and we feel that, deeply. Almost everyone I know has experienced depression or anxiety serious enough to feel abnormal and in some cases debilitated. Many of those people, myself included, are ashamed to admit this publicly; we know it plays into millennial stereotypes that we can’t handle ourselves, can’t grow up. And believe it or not, most of want to be grown-ups, want to feel some sense of stability. So we keep trying.

We try, with varying degrees of success. Some of us have gotten good enough at “adulting” that we have convinced everyone but ourselves that we know what we’re doing (and yes, we’ve turned the word “adult” into a verb—those who can’t do, conjugate). I even know a few people with a stable job, partner, multiple children, and a house they bought with their own money. Others are still floating, looking for a way to fit their special snowflake shape into the blizzard coming down around them. Most are in between, kids some days and grown-ups others. All of us, from what I can see, are painfully aware of the tenuous balance life in all its forms requires.

I hoped that by the end of this—and I feel that I am nearing the end of it—I would have some conclusion, something to please millennials and our elders alike. We got this! We’re not as selfish or stunted as you or we think we are! We can function in the current adult society! Sorry, no. All I can say is I am truly hopeful that we’ll make something of ourselves and the world we’re inheriting. Yes, I know a lot of people who are anxious and depressed and feel like they’ll never grow up. But here’s the thing: they’re still dreaming, still creating, still doing some really amazing, love-spreading, life-giving, community-changing things.

We might not know what we’re doing, but we’re showing up. Isn’t that all we can ask of each other?

I'm not going to church today.

2016-01-03T10:16:00.000-06:00

It’s 9:57 on a Sunday morning, and I’m not getting ready for church.

It feels like a confession, writing that. Today is Sunday, so what else should I be doing? I went to divinity school, after all, and the church I go to just gave me some money to do a project I really, really want to do. The minister there gives thought-provoking sermons, the music is consistently good, the people kind.

But I have a lingering cold, and Schuyler’s working all day. I want to go for a walk soon, and there have been so many people around lately. I’m still coming off that holiday rush of crowds, noise, fullness. And the church I go to—well, they wouldn’t want me to come to a service just out of guilt. Right?

Right. So why this persistent, nagging anxiety the idea of church and of choosing not to go to it provokes in me? It’s not new, it’s been here for years, and yet I haven’t wrestled it to the ground yet. I should go to church, I like the idea of church, I even like actual church sometimes…but it’s always a struggle, never quite fits. Is it the millennial in me, some unrealistic expectation that everything I do should bring some kind of authentic personal fulfillment into my life? Am I just being too goddamned self-centered? (The number of times I’ve used the word “I” in this so far does not escape me, and yes, I meant to say “goddamned”.)

Perhaps. There is a tendency to navel-gaze in me, a habit of reflecting things into the ground and coming to no useful conclusions in the process. Still, there seems to be something more here, and it’s not only me who thinks so. As a society we’re forgetting how to “do” religion, in some part willfully. This is no new observation: think about how many times you’ve heard the phrase “spiritual but not religious,” how many people you know who care about other people and ethics and God and stories, but just don’t feel at home in organized religion. Depending on who you are, maybe that doesn’t resonate with you, but in the church (whatever that means anymore) this is a big bewildering full-fledged crisis.

And I’m supposed to be one of the few young faithful (believe me, lots of churches have assured me of this), one of the ones who keeps the church alive. It feels like a responsibility, something I’ve been educated and groomed for, and willingly so. I want to be a part of the church, want to lead in some way even, but walking into a room full of strangers and making myself talk to them sounds like the worst way to spend my morning.

I can’t stress enough that this church, the particular church I’m talking about, is wonderful. The people, I mean. (That’s what church is, right?) They care about the things that I care about, those liberal church values: community, authenticity, social justice, openness. They even care about God! Well, most of them…but let’s not get into that right now.

Here’s the thing: those values are all terrifying. Practicing them requires work, discomfort, vulnerability, risk, failure. Just like talking to strangers, which, as I have already noted, is something I hate. (Unfortunately, that’s kind of all Jesus ever did: talk to strangers. How inconvenient. Again, we won’t get into that right now.)

I read an article yesterday that offered some advice that seems to fit here: to live a good life, rather than asking ourselves what we want, we have to ask ourselves what we are willing to struggle for. I guess that’s what I’m trying to figure out here: am I willing to struggle for community, to work to get to know people who will care for and disappoint me, who will make me feel awkward and loved and judged and forgiven? Because that’s what the church does. That’s what people do.

Everyone doesn’t find that community in church. The church hasn’t done a particularly good job of providing it, which probably has a lot to do with that crisis I mentioned earlier. What brings me so much hope and anguish is that I know it can, and can abundantly. And I can play a part in inviting people into that community, welcoming them into the imperfection and the grace.

The only problem is, I have to make myself, let myself go in first. I guess there’s always next Sunday.

It's a miracle.

2015-12-24T09:36:00.000-06:00

Do you believe in miracles?

Christmas deals in miracles, in the unexpected, the implausible, the incredible. This is true whether we're talking about "religious" or "secular" Christmas (I put those words in quotes because, let's be honest, who can separate them at this point?). On the religious side, the idea is that a baby was born in the middle of nowhere to a couple with few prospects (supposedly by some kind of divine insemination), and that baby grew up to be...the savior of the world? Oh, and he died but came back to life, and hundreds of millions of people still follow and worship him today. The secular story isn't much better: a man who lives in the Arctic Circle with a factory full of elves packs up a flying sleigh once a year and manages to deliver toys to every child in the world in one night. And he tracks them all year to see who wants and deserves what.

Of course, the difference between these two is that we adults (the Christian ones among us, anyway) are supposed to believe the first story, but the second is pretty much limited to children under the age of, say, 12 (I was a late believer, but that's another story). So, can we? Do we believe in this miracle?

On my best days, I do. It's such a beautiful and creative and riveting story that I want it to be true, hope it can be true, maybe need it to be true. But this credulity, this readiness to believe the stuff of dreams can happen, doesn't often extend to the rest of my life. I doubt. This is a defining aspect of my personality: I am a doubter.

I'm not talking about doubting the kind of fantastical miracles we see in the Bible--seas parting down the middle, people coming back from the dead, water turning into wine. To be honest, I'm not too worried about those. I identify strongly with the sentiment of one of my favorite fictional characters, Father Emilio Sandoz from the novel The Sparrow: "He found the life of Jesus profoundly moving; the miracles, on the other hand, seemed a barrier to faith, and he tended to explain them to himself in rational terms. It was as though there were only seven loaves and seven fishes. Maybe the miracle was that people shared what they had with strangers, he thought in the darkness."

Here's the thing, though: sometimes I can't believe in the kinds of miracles Emilio is thinking about here either, those personal human miracles like welcoming strangers we might find a bit suspicious or off-putting, not snapping at people when they've said that one thing that pushes our buttons, repairing tears in relationships that seem irreparable. Those miracles require some work from us, not unilateral divine action.

Then I think about the grace I've received from people who managed to muster up love for me when I didn't deserve it...and believe me, that's happened a lot. When I focus on my own individual ability to love others as I want to be loved, I'm skeptical. When I call to mind how others have loved me, though, that's when I start to believe in miracles again.

We're not always faithful or loving or trusting, we humans--we're human! But when we embody those good (dare I say divine?) qualities, we reveal that we are also imprinted with the image of a good, creative, beautifully mysterious God. If that's not a miracle, I don't know what is.

Merry Christmas.

A promise

2015-12-17T16:00:00.003-06:00

"The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, 'Know the Lord,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more." (Jeremiah 31.33-34, NRSV)

Covenant: one of those words you only hear in church. Perhaps the closest we get to the word "covenant" in our everyday lives might be "contract" or maybe "agreement," but one of these is too calculating, the other too casual. I don't fully understand what it means establish a covenant because I haven't ever done it, not formally anyway. I'm not married, and I don't live in ancient Israel. These are the only two contexts in which I can imagine entering into a covenant. It seems like a somewhat antiquated concept, something we bring up when we feel like getting biblical.

In Jeremiah, though, God is promising a future covenant more than remembering an ancient one. "The days are surely coming," God says--not, "Remember those days?" God acknowledges that the people had broken the original covenant God made with them, but this is almost an afterthought. Sure, Israel broke their promise, but God has promise to spare. God doesn't withhold love when Israel doesn't do what God wants. If anything, God responds to their disobedience by loving them more intimately: "I will write [my law] on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people." What a beautiful and overwhelming image: the divine approaching us, marking us, embracing us from the inside out. All this in spite of, or maybe even because of, our waywardness and our disbelief, our fear and our imperfection.

Can we imagine this kind of extravagant love? I don't ask this question because I think we humans are all bad, undeserving of love or commitment. I don't ask it to emphasize our sin in contrast to God's perfection. I ask it because so many of us, myself included, cannot imagine that someone, anyone, could respond to our faults and mistakes with more love. Love me at my best? Sure, I can be pretty impressive or funny or attractive sometimes. But love me at my worst? I don't think so.

Nevertheless, this is precisely the message we hear from Jeremiah, and from Jesus, and really from the Bible as a whole. You're not perfect? Good. If you can admit that, you're exactly who God came for. "I will forgive their iniquity and remember their sin no more," God says here. And later from Jesus: "I have come to call not the righteous but sinners" (Mark 2:17b). We see God do this over and over again, continuing to call humans to account but loving them--loving us--no matter what we have done.

This message is difficult for me to hear because I bounce back and forth so wildly from being certain that there is something deeply wrong with me to thinking I'm doing pretty damn well on my own, thank you very much. I alternate between outsize pride and profound self-doubt. I can't fathom the kind of constant, unwavering love God proclaims.

Perhaps that's why I need this whole covenant thing in the first place: to anchor me in promise, quiet my anxiety and level my pride, still me. When I can accept God's assurance that God will write on my heart, forgive me over and over and over again, love me without stipulations or limits--only then can I share any kind of covenantal life with other people. This doesn't mean I will start loving everyone perfectly, but it does mean I can promise to see them and love them for who they truly are, and for all they are. The day of a new, perfect covenant is coming, God says. While we wait, can we promise to love and forgive each other in all our beauty and ugliness, triumph and failure, hope and fear?

A breaking point

2015-12-17T15:59:00.002-06:00

“And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High;
for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon* us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.” (Luke 1.76-79, NRSV)

* “Other ancient authorities read has broken upon,” my Bible (okay, biblegateway.com) notes. So which is it? Will the dawn from on high break upon us, or has it already? Perhaps the logical response to this question is that no matter the translation, it’s already happened. In this passage Zechariah is talking about John the Baptist, who will prepare the way for Jesus…who is the light, right?

Well, yeah. I guess that is what I believe, now that I think about it. So why does it still tug at me? I suppose it’s the collision of certainty and uncertainty we witness in Zechariah, a collision that takes place in all of us. For months before he delivers this prophecy, Zechariah is, must be, silent. He did not immediately believe that his elderly wife could become pregnant, and because of his doubt Gabriel literally silenced him. He had a good eight or nine months to come up with what he was going to say. Do you think he, a priest, a leader in the community, a “righteous” and “blameless” man, would screw up his first chance to speak in almost a year? I don’t think so.

This is not to say Zechariah wasn’t sincere in his exclamation. I believe the joy, amazement, and hope he expresses are completely genuine…but he had a lot of time to consider how he would express himself. He was forced to wait, to watch, to listen. How many of us do those things when we don’t have to? I know I don’t, at least not often, and certainly not for months at a time. It almost makes me jealous of him, that he cannot betray his doubt, doesn’t have the option to say something skeptical in the face of an incredible promise. When seen in this light, Gabriel’s silencing of Zechariah is a gift, not a punishment.

Back to that “dawn from on high”: does Zechariah see its presence, or its coming? No one knows for sure. We do know, though, that he has been waiting for a long, long time, longer than his silence, for many things: a child, peace, that dawn. That—that long, quiet, turbulent watch—is Advent. It is much of our life. This waiting can be almost too much to bear, too long to believe it will end. So, too, can the joy that we must hope follows the waiting: too much to bear, too wonderful to believe it can come. Both are gifts, but gifts that we cannot help but doubt. We can but wait, and watch, and hope. Thanks be to God.

A common thread

2015-12-17T15:58:00.005-06:00

I spent all of Sunday afternoon in my car, mostly in silence, save the occasional comment from my dad about traffic, or the weather, or how cute my sisters’ one-year-old twins looked at their birthday party the day before. My mom sat in the back doing Sudoku or looking at her iPad, editing pictures of said twins. It was a good weekend away, and I dreaded going home.

I couldn’t place why, exactly, except for the contrast between my certain place in the family I had spent the last few days with and the fogginess of my present life and future. The past has this settledness to it, a grounding quality that holds us to the earth, like spiritual gravity of a sort. Even when people you’ve known your whole life hurt your feelings or make you want to pull out your hair, they’re still yours somehow. They are simply not going anywhere, or at least our ties to them aren’t. I struggle to put this feeling to words, but I am thinking of the word home and all that comes with it: comfort and nostalgia, and also grief, intractability.

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” I heard these words from T. S. Eliot for the first time in a college class, 10 years ago now. I continue to think of them often; you might say they roam around my mind, a kind of exploration in themselves. They bring up so many questions, doubts: How long does this exploring go on? Can we know that place, the place that started us, in the midst of our exploration, or only at the end? Are we going in the right direction? Is there a right direction?

People wander. I like to think if we have a purpose in our wandering, something to aim for, it means more. If all of it–every time we laugh, cry, scream, love, touch, hurt–has a single thread running through it, a thread that wraps around us and back to our beginning, that must mean something, right?
I want to spin that thread, to control it, and to have a sense that things are happening as they should. But the older I get, the more uncertain I become. Am I doing the right things in the right place with the right people? I am too unsure, too prone to mistakes and deliberate waywardness, to control or often even see the thread that ties my life together.

I am reminded here of the words of a hymn (and amazed at how often this happens):

You bring my wand’ring spirit back.
when I forsake your ways;
you lead me, for your mercy’s sake,
in paths of truth and grace.
…
Your sure provisions gracious God
attend me all my days;
oh, may your house be my abode,
and all my work be praise.
Here would I find a settled rest,
while others go and come;
no more a stranger, nor a guest,
but like a child at home.

Perhaps it turns out that we do not, cannot lead ourselves. We may follow a thread and even twist it, but it is spun for us.

This thought does not comfort me, but it does give me hope. It does not make the fog before me dissipate or the questions disappear, but it does provide a sense of connection between the beginning and the end. We will always be pulled back from the brink. We will again become like a child at home. In the meantime, we wander, hoping we do not become too lost before we are found again, and again, and again.

The problem of praise

2015-12-17T15:57:00.001-06:00

I will extol you, my God and King,
and bless your name for ever and ever.
Every day I will bless you,
and praise your name for ever and ever.
Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised;
his greatness is unsearchable.
One generation shall laud your works to another,
and shall declare your mighty acts.
On the glorious splendor of your majesty,
and on your wondrous works, I will meditate.
The might of your awesome deeds shall be proclaimed,
and I will declare your greatness.
They shall celebrate the fame of your abundant goodness,
and shall sing aloud of your righteousness. (Psalm 145:1-7, NRSV)

I’ve always had a problem with praise. Passages like the one above take me back to conversations about heaven in the small Southern Baptist church I grew up in, where people talked about an eternity of singing to God like it was something to look forward to. What kind of god, I wondered, would make that the climax of his creation–people shouting and singing about how wonderful he is? It made God sound like some kind of egomaniac, or worse, a being so insecure that he literally requires constant encouragement.

Plus, doesn’t that sound boring? I like singing (almost) as much as the next person, but my voice gets tired after awhile, and songs get old. When we had to sing an extra few verses of a hymn during a particularly popular invitational, all I could think was, “All right, let’s wrap it up.” So an eternity of this activity sounds like my own version of hell rather than heaven.

This is all starting to sound more than a bit heretical, and probably not as pithy as I hoped it would. This sentiment of mine doesn’t sit particularly well with me either, perhaps even less so than it sits with you. There are dozens of psalms of praise in the book of Psalms–if I’m not mistaken, that’s the most popular kind of psalm. Plus there are countless other expressions of praise throughout the Bible. And I do believe God deserves praise–for creating us and the world, for sustaining us when things get hard and then harder, for wanting to be with us and understand us and save us from ourselves so badly that he became one of us and died because we couldn’t take that level of love and solidarity.

So this is why I’m uncomfortable with my discomfort with praise: I get it and I want to practice it…just not so much with eternal hymn singing. Luckily (blessedly?) that’s not how praise has to look, not even how it does look throughout the Bible or in the lives of the most holy people I’ve known. Praise often looks very different and much more creative than the popular image of a bunch of people in white choir robes singing “I’ll Fly Away” in the clouds (although I do like that song). Praise looks like speaking and acting with love towards people you don’t feel particularly loving towards. Praise looks like creating something beautiful and true–a song, a story, a picture, an idea–with the hands God created for you. Praise looks like thanking God for one more day of being alive on this earth, the earth that is moving ever towards the kingdom Jesus told us such strange and wonderful stories about. Praise looks like getting up and trying to create that kingdom every lovely, painful, confusing day.

Singing hymns forever is starting to look a little more appealing.

Here’s the key, I think, that I often miss: we don’t praise God because God demands it. We praise God because God deserves it, and because praise looks a lot like creation and creativity, which we were made through and for. Praise is continuing that creation, living out our God-image.

So, my question about praise changes. It’s not, why must we praise God? Rather, how might we praise God in such a way that honors God and brings to life the fullness of creation? That’s the kind of question we can spend our lives, and eternity, answering. It will never get boring.

What's in a name?

2015-12-17T15:55:00.002-06:00

I've always wished I used my middle name more. Maybe it would calm me down, I think, if the world called me Grace, if I heard the word every day, every few minutes even. Perhaps it would make me slow my pace, treat people more graciously, treat myself more graciously.

Then again, perhaps the word would lose its meaning in the repetition, its mystery and its ability to jar. As it stands, I think about the concept of grace rarely enough that it entangles me each time, befuddles me, unsettles me. Grace never adds up. It doesn't even operate as elegantly as it sounds like it would. "Grace" is such a lovely word, so simple and, though it pains me to say it, pure. When we talk about grace, many other things of beauty tend to come up--love, compassion, forgiveness, peace. "There but for the grace of God go I" (how lucky I am!). "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound" (no longer a lost wretch!). "Fall from grace" (uh-oh).

We talk a lot about what grace delivers us from: sin, bad decisions, ourselves. But what does grace deliver us to?

At church on Sunday, we sang "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing." I like this song, but it usually doesn't hit me with any punch of emotion. This week the third, last verse did.

O to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be!
Let thy goodness like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee.
Prone to wander Lord I feel it, prone to leave the God I love;
Here's my heart, O take and seal it, seal it for thy courts above.

Debt, fetters, binding, sealing--what kind of grace is this? It doesn't sound like something I'd pray for. Another, more modern lyric, comes to mind, this time from Mumford and Sons:

It seems that all my bridges have been burnt
But you say that's exactly how this grace thing works.

Well, isn't it? Grace requires something of us, something hard. This is not to say it's not freely given because it is, at least I believe divine grace is. But it's not quite free to receive if we want to receive it fully. Grace changes us, transforms us even, and we have to welcome that change, that transformation.

What does this mean? I don't think I've ever fully welcomed grace so I'm not entirely sure, but I've caught glimpses in stories, in songs, in the occasional encounter with strangers or with God (perhaps the strangest stranger). Based on these I think that accepting grace and its effects means letting go of self-importance, of the need to control, of the illusion of independence. It means recognizing our need for grace, our inability to save ourselves from everything (from anything?).

I'm not so good at this. I like to think I'm pretty good at managing my life, or at least at convincing other people I'm good at managing my life. If that's the case, though, why would I need grace--really need it? It might sound nice, but it doesn't sound necessary. Unfortunately that's not how this grace thing works. Grace necessitates a deep, deep need for others, for love, for God, for help. As long as I don't believe I need any help, grace will probably stay a fuzzy concept for me, a part of my potential identity that I recall occasionally, wistfully, uneasily.

the light in the darkness

2014-12-22T08:47:00.002-06:00

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” – John 1:5

The structure of this short sentence has always fascinated me. “The light shines” – present tense. “The darkness did not overcome it” – past tense. The light is shining now, and the darkness did not overcome it then. Why this juxtaposition? Who or what is John talking about? I’m pretty sure that the “light” is Jesus, but everything else about this verse is a mystery to me.

When faced with a puzzling piece of scripture like this verse in John, it is easy for me to get caught up in the details, to diminish a statement’s power in my attempt to dissect it. When this happens, I have to take a step back, to accept that I can’t fully grasp the verse’s original meaning, and to reflect on what they mean to me in this moment.

When I read this way, with my heart rather than my intellect, the haze around this passage clears immediately. I might not know John’s intention, but I know lights. Lights are the people who refuse to let the darkness, the sadness and pain of the world, overcome them or the ones around them. In particular, at this moment, the light I think of is Lorraine. Lorraine runs a little food pantry out of her home in Lincolnville, South Carolina. I called her last week to let her know that the food bank where I work is providing 50 free Christmas food boxes for her to give out to low-income elderly people in her community. Based on her response, you would have thought I told her she won the lottery. “Thank you Jesus!” she yelled into the phone. “God may not come when you expect Him, but he ALWAYS comes on time!” She forgot I was on the line for about 30 seconds as she rejoiced in the news I delivered. She brought tears to my eyes.

Lorraine is not a wealthy woman; in fact, she could use one of those 50 boxes herself. And the 50 boxes she’s giving out won’t solve the problems in her community, a place where one in five people don’t have enough to eat, hundreds lack access to adequate healthcare, and poverty rates are exponentially higher among people of color. Lorraine knows all of this, but Lorraine doesn’t let these details overwhelm her. She doesn’t let her light get snuffed out, because she knows people need that light, and she trusts that God always sends a little light just in time. So she shines in the darkness, regardless of the facts.

Lorraine is one of hundreds of lights I know, one of millions of lights across our world. I can shine my light with her. You can shine your light with her. God, who sends the light into the world, shines with and through all of us.

“The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” Keep shining. The darkness did not overcome the light; the darkness will not overcome the light. Amen.

good fruitcake (really)

2014-12-18T13:40:00.003-06:00

The holidays are pretty different for my family this year. I spent Thanksgiving with my boyfriend Schuyler's family, my first one away from my parents and sister. In October my sister had twins--a boy and a girl!--so we're moving Christmas 200 miles west, from Bamberg to Atlanta. This will be my first Christmas outside of my hometown.

If you know me, you probably know I don't handle change gracefully, or graciously. I like routine, tradition, predictability. But when I reflect for just a moment on the change I've seen this year, I can't help but feel grateful for it. We're welcoming new, healthy, beautiful members to our family (the babies and Schuyler, although I suppose he's not so new to the world as a whole). It feels more like the beginning of a new chapter than the end of anything...although of course it's both.

Perhaps in response to this newness, I've gotten awful nostalgic in my holiday food choices. I baked three pecan pies over Thanksgiving. I made my grandmother's fudge to send to a secret Santa, even thought it turns out her secret recipe is on the back of the Kraft marshmallow creme jar.

And yes, I made fruitcake.

I didn't grow up eating much fruitcake, but every Christmas a brick of it sat on my grandmother's washing machine. (Her washing machine was in her kitchen, for reasons yet unknown.) Fruitcake never held the appeal of fudge. It's not exactly a kid-oriented dessert, what with all the dried fruit and liquor. Now, however, that sounds perfect. Fiber and alcohol in one dessert? Sign me up! Also, I found out last week that if you use real dried fruit as opposed to that day-glo green and red jellied stuff, it actually tastes pretty good. Sort of like alcoholic trail mix, but much better than I made that sound.

If you're feeling a little nostalgic over the holidays, this just might do the trick. If nothing else, everyone knows fruitcake is the classic re-gift.

good fruitcake
adapted from King Arthur Flour
makes one 9"x5" loaf, 6 to 8 mini loaves, or 1.5 dozen muffin-sized cakes

ingredients:
fruit:
3 1/2 cups diced mixed dried fruit (I used cranberries, golden raisins, pineapple, and figs)
3/4 cup whiskey, rum, brandy, apple juice, or cranberry juice (I used whiskey)

batter:
1/2 c (8 tbsp) butter
1 c (15 oz) dark brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground allspice
1/8 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 large eggs
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tbsp cocoa (optional, for color)
2 tbsp dark corn syrup
1/4 c apple juice, cranberry juice or water
1 c chopped, toasted nuts (I used almonds, pecans, and walnuts)

instructions:

To prepare the fruit: Combine the fruit with the liquid of your choice in a non-reactive bowl; cover and let rest overnight. Too impatient to wait until tomorrow? Microwave everything for 1 minute (or until it's very hot), cover, and let rest 1 hour.

Preheat the oven to 300°. Lightly grease your pan(s).

To make the batter: Place the the butter and sugar in a large bowl, and beat together until well combined. Beat in the salt, spices, and baking powder. Beat in the eggs one at a time, scraping the bowl after each addition.

In a separate bowl whisk together the flour and cocoa. Add the flour mixture and the syrup to the mixture in the bowl, beating gently to combine.

Stir in the juice or water, then the fruit with any collected liquid. Scrape the bottom and sides of the bowl, and stir until everything is well combined. Spoon the batter into the pans, filling them about 3/4 full.

Bake the cakes on the middle shelf of the oven, as follows: 50-60 minutes for the individual cakes; 60 to 70 minutes for the small loaves; and approximately 2 hours for the 9"x5" loaf. The cakes are done when a cake tester inserted into the center comes out clean.

Remove the cakes from the oven, and brush them with liquor or liqueur of your choice, simple syrup, or flavored simple syrup. When the cakes are completely cool, wrap them tightly in plastic wrap, and store at room temperature for up to 6 to 8 weeks (how good they are after 8 weeks is yet undetermined).

For John.

2014-08-12T16:39:00.000-05:00

Direct us, O Lord, in all our doings,

with your most gracious favor,

and further us with your continual help,

that in all our works,

begun, continued, and ended in you,

we may glorify your holy name,

and finally, by your mercy,

obtain everlasting life;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

A friend of mine died last week. I don’t know how else to put it; or rather, I don’t want to put it any other way. I hadn’t spoken to him in several months, since I left Nashville, and I didn’t even know he was sick until three, maybe four weeks ago. What do people do? What do I do? This seems like the silliest, most obvious of questions, but really I don’t know.

I suppose the thing to do is not to ask that question, not to ponder my response to make sure it’s timely, appropriate, enough. It will never be enough. John has died. This fact leaves a gaping hole in life, in lives many more than my own.

A few minutes ago I was trying to conjure up my grief (yes, I have to do that sort of thing), and I rummaged through my closet to find the card that has on it the prayer above, the prayer from Weavings, a journal John edited for years. We read this prayer at the beginning of every weekly meeting John and I had during the year I spent under his guidance at The Upper Room. As time went on I found it more and more surprising that John wanted us to recite this prayer so regularly. It seemed so orthodox, so Anglican, so Jesus-y…so unlike what I expected from a man as progressive in his thinking as John was.

Why did we pray this prayer? I never asked. I wish I could say I have an answer now, but no. I have a feeling I won’t for years, perhaps many of them. Still, it brings me…something. Not peace, exactly, or even comfort, but just a bit of memory, a bit of John. Is that what prayer is? Memory? Presence? The memory of presence? If it is, then I’m on board with it more than I’ve ever been. Not that prayer needs me to be on board, but I need to be on board with prayer, or at least with some act, any act, that makes the dead come alive again.

I wanted to write this to, oh, I don’t know, process my feelings, or to use what I learned as a hospital chaplain this summer, to allow grief to enter and to welcome it. Now I’m not so sure. But, I am utterly convinced that not enough people knew John because the whole world didn’t. I am writing this, and sharing it, so at least another handful of people know how good he was, or is. If not the whole world, I want a few more creatures to remember him. Amen.

might as well bake a cake.

2014-01-28T20:24:00.000-06:00

I think it's safe to say that as I write this, almost everyone I know is in a place that is really, really cold. According to my omniscient iPhone, in Nashville it's 16, in Charleston 32, in Atlanta 19, and in Bamberg 30 (and on top of that it's hailing there). So, I win the coldest place contest, but to be honest it's not a victory I want to claim.

I don't know about you, but when it's cold (read: under 50 degrees) all I want to do is wrap myself in a blanket, read novels, eat carbs, and drink wine. (I hate how much that sounds like the start of a chick lit novel, but I suppose mass marketing gets you somewhere.)

Anyway, since "read The Witness of Preaching" and "write a paper about theology and suffering" are not on the list of things I want to do, I figured I'd put them off by writing something about a cake that I made before Christmas. This is no ordinary cake. I asked for a cookbook specifically because of this cake. It's quite the project, more like two desserts in one, as it involves peeling and poaching pears on top of making batter and a glaze. So, what I'm really saying is that it's the perfect project for a snow day. If you're stuck inside, why not make something beautiful and delicious?

A couple of small but important notes: 1) make sure you poach the pears until they feel tender enough that you think you could eat them easily with a fork. I didn't poach mine long enough and this made the cake a bit difficult to eat without a knife; 2) if you don't want a huge cake, you can cut this recipe in half and make it in a loaf pan, which is how it was originally written.

cardamom cake with whole pears & white chocolate
adapted from homemade winter, by Yvette Van Boven
serves 16-20

ingredients:
for pears:
6 medium crisp, firm pears, peeled but whole, with stems left on
1 (750-ml) bottle dry white wine
2 1/2 c sugar
8 whole cloves
6 star anise
16 cardamom pods
4 cinnamon sticks

for cake:
1 lb (4 sticks) butter, softened
2 c sugar
8 eggs
3 c self-rising flour
2 tbsp ground cardamom
1/4 tsp salt
6 oz white chocolate, cut into chunks

instructions:
Poach the pears: in a large saucepan, combine the pears, wine, 2 1/2 c sugar, cloves, star anise, cardamom, and cinnamon and poach for 30 minutes over low heat, or until you can easily pierce the pears with a fork.

Take the pears out of the poaching liquid and set them aside to cool. Add 2 1/2 c water to the poaching liquid, turn to medium-high, and boil to reduce the liquid by half. (Watch this carefully so you don't burn it--which is what I did!) Let cool.

Make the cake: preheat the oven to 350. Using a mixer on medium speed, beat the butter and sugar in a large bowl until creamy. Beat in the eggs one at a time.

Sift the flour, cardamom, and salt over the batter and gently fold it in with a spatula.

Grease a large tube pan, and spoon the batter into the pan. Press the pears into the batter, stem ends up. Bake for 60-70 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Allow cake to cool in the pan, then gently remove it to cool completely on a wire rack. (You might want to find a helper for this part--you have to flip it twice to make it right side up, and it can be tricky to hold this massive cake with one hand without breaking off the pear stems...or just breaking the cake! But I have faith in you.)

Melt the white chocolate: set a heatproof bowl over a pan of simmering water, and stir the chocolate in the bowl until melted. Using a spoon, drizzle the chocolate over the cake.

Let the chocolate dry for a bit before serving the cake in thick slices, with the reduced pear syrup poured on top.

hey, this recipe has pumpkin in it.

2013-10-21T23:10:00.002-05:00

It's pumpkin season. I know this because every person I have ever met has posted about how many pumpkin muffins/lattes/soups/pies he or she has already had and it's not even November yet. As you may have guessed, I am not as big of a pumpkin fan as every else that I know. But I am a people pleaser, so I bake pumpkin things when people want pumpkin things.

I made this recipe for a "pumpkin potluck" my friend Leslie hosts every year. Last year I made Dorie Greenspan's "pumpkin stuffed with everything good"...so if you want a serious pumpkin fix (and accompanying post-pumpkin food coma), you could double up. Fair warning: both recipes are very rich but also very good.

While we're getting into the fall spirit, here are a few pumpkin jokes for your viewing pleasure (yep, it's that time of night):

Q: What does a pumpkin pie say after a big meal?
A: That was filling!

Q: What is a pumpkin's favorite sport?
A: Squash!

And my personal favorite...

Q: How do you mend a broken jack-o-lantern?
A: With a pumpkin patch!

I'll be here all week.

pumpkin whoopie pies with bourbon-maple-cream cheese filling and candied walnuts
adapted from Gourmet Live
makes 16

ingredients:
for the cookie-cakes:
1 1/2 c all-purpose flour

pumpkin cookie-cakes ready to be filled!

1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1 c packed light brown sugar
1/2 c vegetable oil
1 (15-oz) can pure pumpkin (not pie filling)
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
for the candied walnuts:
1 1/2 tbsp maple syrup
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 c pecans
for the filling:
6 oz cream cheese, softened
3/4 stick (6 tbsp) unsalted butter, softened
Pinch of salt
1 1/4 c confectioners' sugar
2 tbsp bourbon
2 tbsp pure maple syrup (preferably Grade B)

instructions:

For cookie-cakes:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpats.

Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and spices in a bowl.

Whisk together sugar, oil, pumpkin, egg, and vanilla in a separate large bowl until well combined, then stir in flour mixture.

Using a 1-ounce ice cream scoop or tablespoon measure, drop a scant scoop's worth of batter or 2 scant tablespoons of batter onto a lined baking sheet to form 1 mound. Make 15 more mounds, arranging them 2 inches apart until baking sheet is full (you will have batter left over).

Bake until springy to the touch, 15 to 18 minutes. Transfer cookie-cakes to rack to cool.

Form and bake remaining batter on the other parchment-lined sheet. You should have a total of 32 cookie-cakes.

Leave oven on.

For candied walnuts:
Line a small sheet pan with parchment paper.

Stir together sugar, salt, and 1/2 tablespoon water in a small saucepan. Heat over moderate heat until sugar dissolves, then bring to a boil. Stir in pecans.

Spread mixture on lined sheet pan and bake until coating is bubbling and golden brown, about 10 minutes.

Cool completely on pan on a rack.

Coarsely chop candied walnuts.

For filling:
While cookie-cakes are baking, beat cream cheese, butter, and salt in a bowl with an electric mixer until smooth. Add confectioners' sugar, bourbon, and maple syrup, and mix on low speed until smooth.

Chill filling until firm enough to hold its shape when spread, 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Assemble whoopie pies:
Spread 1 heaping tablespoon of filling each on flat side of half the cooled cookie-cakes, then top with other half of cookie-cakes. If necessary, chill whoopie pies just long enough to firm up filling again, about 30 minutes.

Gently press walnuts onto filling around middle of each whoopie pie to help them adhere to filling.

the finished product.

pie time for a party.

2013-10-06T22:37:00.001-05:00

When I first came to divinity school, I wanted to keep throwing dinner parties like I did in Charleston, but there was just one small problem: I didn't have an income to pay for these parties. My mom suggested that I start a potluck supper club, which I did, and it was fun the first 3 or 4 times we did it, but most people's enthusiasm waned much more quickly than mine. Unless you really like to cook, committing to doing that once every two weeks just doesn't sound like that much fun.

Two years later and I'm trying again. This time I actually know some people in Nashville (which tends to happen when you've lived somewhere for two years), and I put out an open call on Facebook asking who was interested in joining. We had our first supper on Friday, and it was wonderful. Everyone brought amazing food--Senegalese peanut stew, butternut squash, rosemary, and goat cheese flatbread; and salted beer crescent rolls, to name a few--and several of our friends stayed for 3 or 4 hours just talking, laughing, and drinking the wide variety of pumpkin beer people brought. It was basically my dream come true.

Who knows if this iteration of the supper club will last, but I'm pretty sure I'll keep trying to make these happen as long as I live. There's just nothing I would rather do with my time than enjoy good food with good people.

Anyway, about what I brought to the party: When I was a kid, we used to have this savory pie at least 2 or 3 times a year, usually when we were in the middle of a "cold" snap (i.e., under 50 degrees). It's a magical dish, the epitome of warmth and comfort, but I hadn't made it in years. I'm not sure what reminded me of it, but as soon as I thought about it I knew I had to make it. I just ate the last leftover piece for supper tonight, and I already want to make it again. In fact, it was so good that every time I cut myself a slice I forgot to take a picture until I had already eaten a couple of bites. I promise, it tastes better than these pictures make it look.

A few notes: Feel free to substitute 1 lb. regular sausage + 1 tsp red pepper flakes if you don't have hot sausage. It's not spicy either way, but omit the red pepper if you don't want any spice at all. You can also use any frozen greens here in place of the spinach, or cook/drain about 32 oz (2 lbs) fresh greens to replace the frozen. Unless you happen to have fresh greens on hand, because you're mixing this with so many other ingredients I would stick with the frozen variety. Also, you can certainly use a pre-made refrigerated pie crust, but I think the flavor and flakiness of this recipe make it worth the effort.

cheesy spinach, mushroom, and sausage pie
serves 8

ingredients:
1 lb hot sausage
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 lb mushrooms, sliced
2 10-oz packages frozen spinach, thawed and drained
7 eggs
2 c grated mozzarella
16 oz ricotta or cottage cheese
2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
1 tsp kosher salt
2 prepared pie crusts

instructions:
Preheat oven to 350. In a large saute pan over medium-high heat, brown sausage with garlic; drain. In the same pan, brown the mushrooms; remove from heat.

In a very large bowl, beat 6 of the eggs, and beat yolk of remaining egg with 2 tbsp water; reserve egg white. Add sausage, mushrooms, cheeses, and salt to 6 beaten eggs and mix until combined (you may want to use your hands for this).

Roll out one layer of pie crush into a greased 9-inch deep dish pie pan and brush crust with egg white. Spoon filling into the crust and top with remaining layer of pie crust. Press edges together and crimp to seal. Cut a few slits in the top to allow steam to escape, and brush top layer with the egg yolk-water mixture.

Bake for an hour and a half to two hours, until the crust is golden brown and a knife inserted into the center comes out hot. Let cool for 15-20 minutes before serving.

maple bacon crackerjack.

2013-09-30T19:14:00.000-05:00

Yes, you read that right. This is popcorn popped in bacon fat, tossed with bacon, peanuts, and maple caramel. Don't make this unless you have guests, and even then, you probably shouldn't make it until right before they arrive so you don't gobble it all up before they get there.

This is not the kind of thing I make often, and in fact I haven't made it in several years. But it's always a huge hit, it screams fall (tailgate food!), and I guarantee people will ask you for the recipe. You can say you made it up--my feelings won't be hurt.

maple bacon crackerjack
adapted from cooking light
makes about 10 cups

ingredients:
5 slices bacon
1/2 c popcorn kernels
1/2 c peanuts, roughly chopped
2 tbsp butter
1/3 c sugar
1/3 c maple syrup
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes (optional, but it makes you eat it a little slower!)

instructions:
Preheat oven to 325. Place bacon in a large pot (this helps reduce the number of dishes you'll have to do later), turn burner to medium and cook until crisp, turning frequently. Remove bacon and drain on paper towels.

Add a couple kernels of popcorn to the pot and set your burner on medium-high. Wait for those kernels to pop, then remove from heat and add the rest of the kernels. Keep off heat for about 30 seconds (this gets all the kernels to the same temperature). Put pot back on the stovetop until most of the kernels have popped, which should happen fairly quickly. You might want to shake the pan a little so none of the kernels burn. Transfer to a large baking sheet and sprinkle the peanuts over the popcorn. Dice the bacon into small pieces and add that as well.

Combine butter, sugar, maple syrup, and salt in small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Remove from heat and pour over popcorn-peanut-bacon mixture, tossing to coat (this is pretty messy). Sprinkle with red pepper flakes. Place in the preheated oven for about 10 minutes to crisp it up before serving.

home.

2013-09-11T13:49:00.000-05:00

This semester I'm in a class called "Visions of the Future," in which we're talking about some different ideas about what the future will hold. Mostly we'll focus on those visions that are informed by some countercultural perspective, perhaps feminist or queer or postcolonial. But for this week our professor simply asked us to write a vignette describing a sliver of our vision of the future--what we dream or hope the future will be. Because I don't have a picture or dish to post quite yet and I enjoyed writing this, I thought I'd put it up here. Of course, it always comes back to food, and feeding each other.

People from all over town trickle in to the church, tired enough from their walks that they will relish a good meal, but awake and healthy enough that they are as excited to see each other—to hug, to talk, to catch up—as they are to eat. Everyone has brought a little something to share, perhaps a loaf of bread, or carrots from their garden, or a bottle of wine if it’s been a good week. We put down our food and begin to set the table, and no one, not even new people, has to stand around awkwardly waiting for someone to talk to. No one has to ask how to help because it is so clear that this is what we do next. When the tables are set and the candles are lit we all sit down together. Anywhere is fine; there is no wrangling for seats or concern about sitting next to someone I don’t particularly like (or someone who doesn’t particularly like me). We all have a place at the table, and it’s not one that’s been assigned. Perhaps it is chosen for us, but we also choose it.

The meal begins without ceremony or prayer because we know the meal is our prayer. We pass around what we’ve brought without worrying if it’s fancy enough or fresh enough or enough. We do not worry that giving away some of what we have will cause us to run out. We simply provide for each other when need be out of an understanding that nothing we have is ours alone. We eat and drink our fill, then get to the work of clearing plates and wrapping up leftovers and washing dishes together. And we linger, never quite ready to leave this home for another.

There's my vision of the future. What's yours?

the perfect summer dessert

2013-07-02T17:28:00.000-05:00

Summer always makes me eat just a little bit healthier, particularly when it comes to the end of a meal. The rest of the year you can always count on me to choose a chocolate dessert (usually a giant brownie) when I have the option, but when the thermometer starts topping out at 90+ degrees, I switch gears and go for something a tad lighter. Don't get me wrong; I don't want just fruit for dessert--let's not get crazy--but a side of fruit with my ice cream is a nice touch.

There are so many fruit desserts out there: cobblers, pies, crumbles, brown betties, crisps, slumps (yes, that's a thing). Who can keep up? I think I've tasted them all at least once, but I couldn't tell you the difference if I tried. No matter now, though, because I've found the perfect summer dessert. Like most of my favorite recipes, it's infinitely adaptable--replace the pistachios with almonds and the grapes with cherries, or go for peanuts and strawberries--whatever you have around, really. The great thing about roasting fruit is that it actually does better when it's a day or two past its prime, so feel free to make this when you bought one basket of peaches too many and you just can't finish them before they go soft.

If you're in charge of dessert for a 4th of July celebration, I promise people will love this. If they don't, you can complain to me...and please send along the leftovers.

goat cheese tart with roasted grapes & pistachio crust
adapted from food & wine
makes one 9-inch tart, 8-10 servings

ingredients:
1/2 c shelled pistachios
1 stick unsalted butter at room temperature
1/2 c sugar
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 c all-purpose flour
3 c red seedless grapes
1 tbsp olive oil
1/4 tsp kosher salt
8 oz soft goat cheese at room temperature
2 1/2 c Greek yogurt (whole milk or 2%)
Juice and zest of one lemon
1/2 c powdered sugar
1/4 c honey
whipped cream to top (optional)

instructions:
Make the pistachio crust: pulse pistachios in a food processor until finely ground. Beat butter and sugar on medium speed until pale, about one minute. Add ground pistachios, almond extract, and salt, and beat until combined. Add flour and beat on low speed until incorporated and the dough is crumbly.

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Scrape the dough into a fluted 9-inch tart pan with a removable bottom. (A pie pan also works fine if that's all you have.) Using the bottom of a glass, press dough into the pan so the bottom and sides are of relatively equal thickness. Prick the dough all over with a fork, then bake until fragrant and golden brown, 40-45 minutes. Transfer to a rack and let cool.

Meanwhile, roast the grapes. Turn your oven up to 400, and toss grapes with olive oil and kosher salt. Roast until grapes are softened and have begun to caramelize, 20-25 minutes. Transfer to a rack and let cool.

By now your crust should be relatively cool, so go ahead and make the tart filling. Beat goat cheese, yogurt, and lemon juice and zest in a medium bowl on medium speed until combined. Add powdered sugar and beat until smooth. Scrape the filling into the crust, and top with cooled roasted grapes (make sure you get all of the delicious olive oil-grape juice syrup on there, too!). Refrigerate for at least two hours or as long as overnight.

Just before serving, heat the honey in a small saucepan over medium-high heat until it begins to boil. (Food & Wine recommends getting it to 236 degrees, but I don't think you have to get that particular). Pour the warm honey over the tart and let it soak in for about 5 minutes. Cut into slices and serve.(You'll need a pretty serious knife for this...the crust is pretty substantial.) I topped each slice with a dollop of thyme-infused whipped cream, and it was absolutely perfect.

homemade ginger ale

2013-06-23T12:40:00.001-05:00

For a long time I didn't think I liked ginger. I liked ginger ale (which, let's be honest, often tastes nothing like actual ginger), but at our house we never ate anything with ginger in it so I stayed away from it until I went to college. I only found out I liked the "real" taste of ginger when I tried it pickled along with sushi, another food I didn't try until college. (Shockingly, sushi wasn't readily available in Bamberg, South Carolina.)

After discovering I actually liked the taste of ginger I continued to drink, say, Canada Dry, but I also wanted to find a more gingery ginger ale. I tried Blenheim and it certainly tastes like real ginger, but it also has a cough-inducing kick to it that doesn't exactly scream "refreshment." So I went back to the standard supermarket varieties until recently, when I realized I could make my own.

For my birthday this year my sister, who is pretty much the best gift giver on earth, sent me a SodaStream along with a very thoughtful Pinterest board of soda and cocktail recipes to go along with it. For the past few months I've just been making seltzer water, but I'm a big cocktail fan during the summer, and since I'm not in school I have the time to make things like homemade soda. I gave it a shot and the results were well worth the minimal effort.

This recipe for ginger syrup also comes with a nice perk--you end up with candied ginger along with the syrup! Once you've strained the ginger and spices out of the syrup, toss the candied ginger (it's just been boiled in syrup, after all) with sugar and let it sit out for a few hours to dry. Voila--crystallized ginger!

ginger syrup for ginger ale
adapted from FormerChef
makes about 3 cups of syrup, enough for about 9 liters of ginger ale (don't worry, it keeps for awhile!)

ingredients:
1 c brown sugar
1 c white sugar (or raw sugar, if you prefer)
2 c water
2 tsp cardamom pods
1 tsp whole allspice
1 tsp peppercorns
3 star anise pods
4 oz peeled and sliced ginger, about 3/4 c

instructions:
Stir together the brown and white sugars and water in a small pot. Toast the whole spices in a skillet until they begin to brown; remove from heat. Add the spices and ginger to the sugar-water mixture and bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Once the mixture boils, turn it down to a simmer and let simmer for about 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let steep until mixture cools. Pour into jars and refrigerate.

To make ginger ale, use about 1.5 tbsp syrup per cup of seltzer. The syrup will keep in the fridge for at least a month, and I've read that if you add a bit of vodka to it it will keep indefinitely.

This will vastly improve any ginger ale-based drink you want to make. The buck, your basic ginger + spirit (e.g., gin buck, whiskey buck, tequila buck) is a good place to start. Here are a few other cocktails to try your new concoction in:

- bourbon & ginger: bourbon + ginger
   ale + peach
- pear haymaker: vodka + ginger ale +
   lemon juice + pear
- the operator: white wine + ginger ale +
   lime juice
- tequila grapefruit splash: grapefruit
   juice + ginger ale + tequila +
   Campari + triple sec

strawberry season!

2013-05-04T10:27:00.000-05:00

Although it's not quite time for strawberries in Tennessee yet, in more southerly states the season is in full swing. I really wanted to make a strawberry cake for my birthday party last week (along with strawberry-infused vodka), so I had to make due with CostCo strawberries. Of course a friend from Louisiana brought strawberries picked that morning to the party, but it was too late for the cake so we've just been eating them out of hand (which may be the best way to enjoy them anyway).

Luckily, this cake doesn't rely too heavily on the quality of the strawberries; they mostly provide a little color and some tart texture to round out the airy soft genoise layers and light and creamy mousse filling. This cake requires a bit of time and effort but I think it's worth it, particularly for a special occasion. Having a stand mixer makes the process much easier because you whip the batter for a long time, but it's possible to make it with a handheld mixer.

If you make nothing else, make the cheesecake mousse filling--it's quite easy and probably the best filler/frosting for a cake I've ever made.

P.S. - Speaking of strawberry season, my strawberry-basil breakfast bowl recipe was recently featured on a Whole Foods' cooking blog--check it out! (It's a variation on a blog post I did last summer, the blueberry-basil breakfast bowl.)

vanilla bean genoise filled with cheesecake mousse and strawberries
adapted from Sarabeth Levine and, oddly enough, Worcester Telegram and Gazette
makes one three-layer 9" cake

ingredients:
genoise:
   5 tbsp butter
   5 large eggs + 5 large egg yolks
   1 c sugar
   seeds from 1 vanilla bean, or 1 tsp vanilla extract
   1 c pastry or unbleached cake flour
cheesecake mousse:
   8 oz cream cheese, at room temperature
   1/2 c powdered sugar
   seeds from 1 vanilla bean or 1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
   1 c chilled heavy cream
+1 pint strawberries, hulled and thinly sliced

instructions:
Make the genoise: Preheat oven to 350. Grease three 9" cake pans (or one or two, if you don't have three and need to bake the layers in batches) and line them with parchment paper. Do not leave out this step; I promise the cake layers will stick to the pans if you do!

Melt the butter in a small saucepan over medium heat, or in a small heatproof bowl in the microwave. Let cool.

Bring a large saucepan of water to a simmer over high heat. Reduce the heat to low to maintain the simmer. Whisk the eggs, yolks, and sugar together in the bowl of a stand mixer, or a very large heatproof bowl. Place the bowl over the water (the bottom of the bowl should not touch the water), and whisk constantly until the sugar is completely dissolved and the mixture is very warm to the touch, about 1 minute. If you have an instant read thermometer, the mixture should reach 118 degrees.

If you have a stand mixer, attach the bowl to it and fit it with the whisk attachment. Add the vanilla and beat the mixture on high speed until it is almost quadrupled in volume, very pale yellow, and fluffy, about 5 minutes. If you're using a handheld mixer, Sarabeth says this will take at least 6 minutes. She says the right consistency has been reached when, if you lift the whisk attachment a couple of inches above the bowl, the egg mixture creates a thick ribbon that falls back on itself and holds its shape on the surface of the mixture for at least 5 seconds before sinking. I whipped mine for at least 6-7 minutes and didn't quite reach the 5-second mark, but my cake turned out just fine! Whenever you think it's good enough, remove the bowl from the stand mixer.

In four equal additions, sift the flour over the egg mixture, folding in each addition with a whisk. (I'm not much of a sifter, but I think it's important here.) Handle the batter gently to keep it as light and fluffy as possible. Transfer about a quarter of the batter into a medium bowl; add the butter and fold in with a whisk. Pour this mixture back into the remaining batter and gently fold it in with a whisk.

Pour the batter into the cake pans and smooth it over with a spatula. If you don't have three pans to use at once, try to fill the pans you have to about a half-inch thickness; this should make your layers roughly even. Bake until the top of the cake is golden and it springs back when pressed gently with your finger, 15 to 20 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool completely in the pan. (If you need one of the cake pans to make another layer, you can probably get away with letting the layer cool in the pan for 10-15 minutes before removing it.)

While the cake layers are cooling, make the mousse: using a handheld or stand mixer (whisk attachment) on medium-high speed, whip together the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla until light and fluffy. Whip the heavy cream in another bowl until soft peaks form. Using a spatula, fold the whipped cream into the cream cheese mixture in three additions, and cover and refrigerate until cake layers are cooled and you're ready to assemble the cake.

Assemble the cake: Run a knife around the outside of one cake pan, and flip the cake out onto the plate you want to use for your cake. Remove the parchment paper, and spread a thin layer of mousse over the surface of the cake. Cover this with a layer of sliced strawberries. Repeat this process for the next layer, then top with the third layer and frost the top and sides of the cake with the remaining mousse. Top with strawberry halves or more sliced strawberries, if you'd like.

You can store this cake in the refrigerator for a day or two before serving, but make sure to remove it at least an hour before you want to serve it.