Christmas Toast

We had a wonderful holiday with all three sons and two wonderful lady friends–one supplied the mimosas and one took the photo!

Christmas Cooking

I have a canker sore on my tongue which is putting a damper on my desire to cook or eat this Christmas but I felt like I really should at least make one batch of Christmas cookies to have on hand for our guests.  So last night I made Pecan Crescents, in honor of my stepmother’s mom Jean, who shared the recipe with me some years ago.  These are so delicious and tasty with coffee.

Pecan Crescents

1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt (not in the original recipe)
2 cups sifted flour
2 cups pecans, ground.  (I used my immersion blender.  It was a bit of a process but it worked.  Grandma Jean had a little hand-cranked grinder that she used for the purpose.)

Form into crescents and bake at 325 for 25 minutes.  Dust with powdered sugar.

About the new priest

I haven’t said much about the new priest because I was waiting to develop a more fully formed impression.  We really like him.  He’s quite different from our previous priest, whom I also loved.  Kevin was urbane, full of energy for his new career and excited to share the riches of the Anglican tradition as well as to lead people to understand the Bible better and to deepen in spirituality through prayer.  Because of those emphases, he was a really good fit for me.

He and his wife had an air of taste and old money about them. When he talked with you, you had the sense that you were in the presence of an immensely talented person who was firing on all cylinders.  The only downside was that he reminded me of our oldest son–juggling so much mentally that it seemed hard for him at times to corral his mental activity and devote himself to the person in front of him.

Our new priest is rougher in appearance.  He is not urbane.  He does, however, have a large presence, both physically and otherwise.  When he’s talking with you, he is fully there.  He talks about God easily but not flippantly.  He is deeply faith-filled and gives the impression he’s had a “come to Jesus” experience and has determined he will follow.

One silent witness to the sort of priest he’s been is the steady stream of visitors to our church from his previous churches.

I had received the impression that he would put a high priority on pastoral care, and this proved true for us when our youngest son and his best friend were in a car accident earlier this month, resulting in the death of his friend, he made it very clear to me that he was completely available to our family, to talk with us or help in any other way possible, including reaching out to our son.

Settling into his office meant transforming it into a cozy place for conversation, eschewing the overhead fluorescents in favor of cozy lamps and comfortable chairs within an embrace of bookshelves and mementos.

He leads the service well, and his sermons are very good — but he reads them.  That is not my favorite way–it seems to me to introduce distance and can be harder to attend to.  However I totally understand why a person would do that, and a priest’s week is busy enough without having to memorize a sermon.

I’m looking forward to getting to know him and his family better.  I think his spiritual direction will be really helpful for me at this time, too.

All Present and Accounted For…

Oh we had a wonderful thanksgiving with our sons.  Also Scott’s dad and stepmom were with us and it was a good visit with them, too.  One of my happiest memories is of wandering out to the kitchen for a drink of water at 4:30 in the morning and finding the three boys still up, sitting around the kitchen table, laughing and telling stories.  In the morning there was a note on my desk from our youngest, saying how glad he was to be born into our family.  <3   That was so wonderful.  I am so thankful for them, too.

This is close to the theology in our church

I love theology in small doses.  I’m not cut out for theological study at a deep level  but I do love it in small doses, and I pay attention to it.  It’s how my brain works.  So when we started attending our Episcopal church I was alert to the theology but I couldn’t figure it out, couldn’t fit it into the categories I was used to.  That bothered me!  The liturgy presents the outline of the biblical story; it offers the Nicene creed, but it doesn’t dwell on a particular theology of atonement or salvation.

I came to the Episcopal church having explored and been attracted to first Calvinistic and then Lutheran ways of connecting the theological and biblical dots.  Those were ports in a storm for me, and I looked for the comforting outlines of monergism, etc in my new environment.  But for the most part it was as if I had come to a place where “all that” was taken for granted and here the categories were different.

Today I came across a blog post that makes sense of the difference–and it is not an Episcopalian blogger; in fact he’s an evangelical.  I have followed his blog for a long time and even corresponded with him once.

On Tweaking the Soterian Gospel
(Soterian, by the way, is a theological term that refers to salvation.)
The Gospel Today

I’m convinced he’s onto it. In these two posts he works out the difference between my former theological dot-connecting, and where I’m at now.  It’s very interesting to see it in black and white.

Going to Church Makes Me Happy

Sun streaming through our stained glass windows

I drive a half an hour to my church, and half the time I go alone.  I go early because of choir rehearsal.  Of choir rehearsal, perhaps the less said the better.  As I drive there, I have to remind myself that Jesus didn’t gather the well-bred, well-mannered and healthy around him.  A Christian community worth its salt will have misfits and people whose disabilities are uncomfortable to be around at times.  Such is our small choir.  And yet I wouldn’t give it up, I love it.

And then there are days like today when every lyric we sang spoke to me.  Being in the choir and rehearsing gives me extra time with the music and lyrics, and they are usually worthwhile.

Today we also had a very fine sermon from our guest celebrant, the same retired priest who was with us for several months during our rector search.  (Our church is hard on priests, seemingly.  No sooner had our new rector, Father Matt, taken up the reins than he has had to go in for back surgery.)

The prayers, the liturgy, all of it was speaking to me today.  I am so glad to be able to have this experience.

A favorite from childhood

An image from Walter the Lazy Mouse, by Marjorie Flack, brought to you by the Internet. I got to thinking about this book the other day and wondered if I could find any trace of it on the ‘net.  It was one of the favorite, read-over-and-over, pore-over-the-illustration, books from my childhood. We were poor and didn’t have a lot of toys, but my parents and other relatives would buy us nice books.

Not as scary as he used to be

You can see that Lulu thinks Scott’s not as scary as he used to be.  They have gotten to be good, good buddies.

Recent Non-Game Night

Middle son and his girlfriend were over for dinner recently but we didn’t play a game.  But we had a lovely dinner.  Middle son had made a fantastic sourdough bread – from his OWN starter, no less.  It was the best bread I’ve ever eaten in my life.  (I have to pause now and remember…the great flavor and perfect texture….ahhhhh).

We also had a steak salad (Scott’s salad had salmon, he doesn’t like to eat red meat as much as the rest of us do).  The steak salad was delicious and I made the dressing using the immersion blender I got for mother’s day …. such a handy tool.

Here is the steak salad recipe.  I added artichoke hearts and fresh slices of red bell pepper.  Those were good additions.

Everyone loved it.

I really love when Middle son and his girlfriend come over because they are so appreciative of my cooking efforts and are enthusiastic about trying new things.

I have heard the Goat Rodeo Sessions album

And it is a whompin’ MARVEL.

Here is the third teaser Sony has released. Turns out there are two vocals on the project, duets by Aoife O’Donovan (Crooked Still, Sometymes Why) and Chris Thile (Punch Brothers, Nickel Creek, etc.). Their voices blend really well:

This is a really exciting project.

What’s the hell?

Scot McKnight over at Jesus Creed draws attention to how theologians/bible scholars can grapple with hell–and conclude that eternal, conscious torment is not what the Bible teaches on the subject.

Pinnock contends the Bible, when read properly in context, does not teach the traditional view; he also contends that the predominant images of hell in the Bible are about death, perishing, destruction, and corruption — not conscious torment. One of his major beefs is that the traditional view assumes the immortality of the soul, which is a Greek idea and not a biblical

Very interesting! The doctrine of hell is my least favorite part of Christianity–the only way I deal with it is to let it alone, and to say that God — who is good — can be trusted with this. But it would be great to discover that the biblical teaching is more palatable than people have traditionally learned.

Pinnock concludes:

The real choice is between universalism and annihilationism, and of these two, annihilationism is surely the more biblical, because it retains the realism of some people finally saying No to God without turning the notion of hell into a mostrosity.

But to that, I like to add Robert Capon’s argument that is shaped by his reading of the story of the Prodigal Son (and much else besides).  The father welcomes home the prodigal son and throws him a party.  The elder brother, stony in disapproval, stands aloof, refusing to go in.  Now the father has lost that son, but pursues him out onto the porch, reasoning with him and inviting him to come in, “‘My son,’ the father said, ‘you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. ³² But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

And that’s the end of the parable.  Does the brother relent and go in?  Or does he remain bitter and stay away?  The father has the last word, and it is a word of acceptance.  I personally think that’s because the older brother stands for God’s chosen people, the Hebrews, but that’s not to say the parable can’t be read on several levels.

Capon says:

The parable ends with a freeze frame. It ends like that with just the father, and the sound goes dead—the servants may be moving around with the wine and veal—but the sound goes dead and Jesus shows you only the freeze frame of the father and the elder brother…

When the father goes out into the courtyard, he is an image of Christ descending into hell; and, therefore, the great message in this is the same as Psalm 139, “If I go down to hell, You are there also.” God is there with us. There is no point at which the Shepherd who followed the lost sheep will ever stop following all of the damned. He will always seek the lost. He will always raise the dead. Even if the elder brother refused forever to go in and kiss his other brother, the Father would still be there pleading with him.

Late September

Happy 16th Birthday to my awesome nephew, Henry!

Lulu’s doing great, we have taken her to the dog park several times and she enjoys that.  She’s eager to play but she is not usually the dog that gets something going.  Instead she’ll signal that she’s interested and wait for the other dog to respond.

When we’re not at the dog park, she snoozes the day away at my feet or on the couch, or wants to go outside and see what the squirrels are up to out in the yard.

Today I finished knitting a Christmas stocking for Dan,

and finished a website project for Sean Watkins.  Talked to my mom on the phone and did some ironing and listened to a fascinating edition of the Diane Rehm show, with the author of the Third Industrial Revolution.  Very convincing and hopeful stuff.

Lulu After the Doggie Day Spa

Doggie Day Spa is a fundraiser for the Pre-vet club at MSU.  They fund their club and donate the rest to an animal rescue organization and horse therapy program here in town. Great cause.  For $10 they bathe your dog, trim toenails and clean ears.  What a deal!

Lulu had the works this morning.  She stood in line beautifully and although she was not happy about the situation and timid, she handled it all really well.  It was tiring to be so good:

Then she heard the click of the camera and woke right up:

You can see how much happier and confident she looks than in the first photo of her I posted a couple of posts ago, where she looks wary.

We took her to the dog park in the late afternoon today and after she warmed up to the situation, she played with several of the other dogs.  It’s very encouraging.

Lulu she is, and Lulu she’ll stay

We have decided not to change Lulu’s name. I know this is not earth-shaking news but I mentioned it was up in the air, so for those losing sleep over whether we did or didn’t, you can now relax. Bonding with Lulu has been important since she’s been a little on the shy side, and we decided that going with her current name would help us all.

She has warmed up a whole lot since we first got her. She is very affectionate and cuddly with me. She’s having a harder time with my big scary husband but even that is improving quite a bit.

We took her to the vet today to have a couple of health issues looked at–her ears were bothering her and she’s having some vaginal discharge (she was spayed a week ago. The vet has some concerns about this. We’re going back tomorrow morning for a follow-up.)

Helping Lulu Settle In

Lulu is now home!  (Her name may change, we’re not sure what to do about that.)

We drove 3.5 hours to the kennel where we were picking up Lulu in a state of high anticipation.  The breeder was waiting for us with Lulu and a couple of her own dogs.  Lulu knew something was up and was extremely loathe to meet us and go in the car with us.   She had been spayed Monday and this was only Friday night, so it had been a rough week for her, capped by leaving her home for the past 5 years.

On the ride home, she responded well to being petted and about halfway home, I got into the back seat with her and petted her continuously the rest of the way home.  That was a good move and when we got home, she seemed to view me as more of a safe haven than anything else, although she was also timid about me, too.  Scott’s pretty scary to her still.

She’s really cute and really sweet.  She’s still timid about being approached and will try to evade being approached if she can.  She doesn’t snap or anything like that–she doesn’t seem to have an aggressive bone in her body.  She just gets up and moves or kind of shrinks down if you approach.  She does relax and accept attention after that, though.  And if you look at her across the room and tell her she’s beautiful and sweet, her tail will thump happily.

She looks a lot like Amber at that age, except stockier and tanner — where Amber was apricot fading to sandy, Lulu is “cafe au lait” which is a tanner color.  She has the brown nose and eye rims and amber colored eyes of a proper cafe au lait.  It threw me at first–being used to the black nose and dark eyes of Amber.

She’s a big healthy girl at 57 pounds.  The breeder had originally told us she was 70 pounds but when she went in to be spayed, the vet’s scale said 57.  She just looks really big for a poodle; I’m not at all surprised the breeder thought she might be 70.  She’s got big broad shoulders and huge paws.  Super cute.

A Lulu of a Poodle

We’re getting a new dog tomorrow evening.  I’m so excited, I can barely contain myself.  The time is so right.  Our old beautiful, wonderful, beloved standard poodle, Amber, died about a month ago – hard to believe it’s been that long – and though we had told ourselves we would take time to be dogless, to reap the benefits thereof–less expense, less tied down–we could not stick to that resolution. Our home needs a dog.  We miss our Amber so much.

After hearing a Diane Rehm program on adopting senior dogs, I came home and started looking on the internet for the availability of foster poodles or adult or senior poodles from rescue societies in our area.  There were a couple that we saw and contacted the organizations, but they were already in the process of being adopted.  “If it falls through, we’ll let you know,” they said.  I looked a little further and somehow bumped into a photo of Lulu, a momma dog being sold by a breeder in Southern Indiana.  She had not gotten pregnant in the most recent go-round, which indicated to the breeder that, at the age of 5, her cycles had become unreliable.  They needed to let her go to make room for other dogs that fit their breeding program better. So Lulu was spayed on Monday and is going to come and live with us.  Her days as a proud, pedigreed breeding dog are over, her days of playing with chew toys and going on walks and hanging out in the woodshop with Scott will begin this weekend.

We are excited that her personality passed muster to be in the breeding program–she is described as calm, eager-to-please and outgoing, and we are pleased that her health also passed muster.  She has been cleared– for now–of the ills that can plague the breed.

The only thing is that Lulu is 25 pound heavier than Amber was.  So that’s going to be interesting!  It will be interesting to observe other differences.

Geekier than thou

I forgot to mention that last week I went over to a fellow’s house so he could bring me up to speed on the way our church is using Google apps/Google site for its email accounts (bypassing our website hosting, in so doing–it’s a little confusing.)

This fellow is 80 years old. His lovely wife met me at the door and led me to Jim’s office, a small bedroom in their home, where glowed, from the four corners of the room, no less than 5 monitors. Jim was seated at a double-monitor set-up and bade me take a seat at the latest Mac set up next to it. I opened up my laptop, and his wife brought us coffee and brownies and left us to it.

We geeked out for the next two hours. The information I needed and the reason for my visit took about 5 minutes and then the rest of the time Jim showed me things about his workflow. It was great. He was a database engineer in his life before retirement, and has loved computers for decades.

It was such a pleasant look at what 80 can be.

We have a new priest

This was our first morning with our new priest.   I think the search committee did a great job and it SEEMS like the new priest is going to be a good fit and that it’s going to be nice for him to be here, too.  Apparently he has family roots in the area.  It’s a little incongruous that he would come to our tiny church in a small town because he’s coming to us from a much larger church in a more metropolitan area — and from all appearances it’s not like he’s a duffer who needs to downsize.   A little internet sleuthing revealed that he graduated cum laude from his seminary and a friend at church says both of his previous churches loved him.  But his dad was at the service this morning and looked frail so maybe this is an important time in his life to be closer to family.

From the interactions I’ve had so far, he seems to be genuinely a people person and genuinely a spiritual person.   Our previous priest was really great for the needs of the church at the time–with his energy and organizational skills.  He really helped reboot the church, which had declined through bad management and a toxic rector in the period somewhat before we started attending.  I loved his fresh-from-seminary enthusiasm for sharing the riches of the Anglican tradition.  He was skillful with people in a professional sort of way, but not tender.

Father Matt strikes me as quite different but I suspect his strengths are going to be just right for our church — and me — at this time.  I know I felt both relief and anticipation as I heard his sermon this morning and watched his movements in conducting the service.  He was intentional and reverent — but unselfconscious (at a time when he had to know everyone–like me–was watching with particular interest.)   I saw people responded to him warmly.  And during the sermon he surprised me by basically declaring his love for the congregation rather like an old testament bridegroom for his bride, sight unseen.  It was believable, it was woven into the context of the gospel passage and it was not sentimental or self conscious.

It was commensurate with a person who is either reckless or who knows he has been loved by God and therefore doesn’t need to protect himself or hedge his bets.

And it fit what I’d heard about him so far,  I’d asked a member of the search committee what she felt his strengths were and she said, “he makes a connection with people that is very genuine.”  And that is what I’ve seen so far.  The canon had said he was a man with a deep, genuine faith in God.  That too seems evident.

It’s going to be an interesting ride and I pray that he will be good for us, and we will be good for him.  Amen.

Can’t wait to get this album in October!

Now we know the title for the new project from Yo Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile and Stuart Duncan!  I can’t wait to hear what those 4 musicians have cooked up for us.

Game Night and Other Family Activities Part 2

This evening we had Middle Son and his girlfriend over for a wonderful (if I say so myself) meal and a fun card game Son brought over called Tichu.  Much fun and laughter ensued, it was a great evening.

The menu was a classic summer meal that I wanted to be sure and have before summer is over:

Appetizer:  Pico de Gallo Cocktail

BBQ Burgers
Corn on the Cob
Watermelon
Chocolate Cream Cheese Brownies (a Taste of Home recipe I clipped long ago and never made until now.  Delicious!)

Meanwhile Youngest Son is having a big adventure, flying to Las Vegas (driving himself to the Nashville airport, putting his car in longterm parking, etc) to meet his Grandpa and his cousin to see a Cirque du Soleil show and have his grandpa show the two 21 year olds the ways of the blackjack table.   I don’t know who is going to keep whom out of trouble!  Grandpa can be a little like “Uncle Fred” in the Wodehouse story, “Uncle Fred Flits By”.  However I’m sure they’ll have a great time and I’m happy Youngest can spend some time with his cousin, too.