#AdventUs FAMINE

Famine

There was a time when famines were only caused by crop failure and national disasters.  We have crop failures and national disasters in the United States.  We never have famines.  

There’s another cause of famine.  

War and political unrest and government policies.  We have the knowledge, technology and resources to make famine nothing more than something we read about in history books.

What we don’t have is the will.

Especially when the famine takes place in Africa.  Did you know there is a famine in Somalia right now?  At least 3 million people face starvation.  

I get that there is so much suffering and need in the world and it’s hard to know how to respond to even one part of it, much less keep up with it all.  And I am tired of the “How come you care about these people but not these people?!” scolding on social media. 

But we can’t avoid some honest soul searching to face the fact that suffering among white Europeans gets more attention than in Africa. 

And work on changing that.  

#AdventUs INNOCENCE

Innocence

Whenever I am confronted with someone who seems so evil I wonder how I can quell my hatred and muster up any forgiveness or compassion, let alone Christian love I remember:

They were once a child.  

They were innocent once.

#AdventUs WAY

Way

You know we are just all on our way.  Anyone who thinks they have arrived really have a long way to go.  

The road is rather strange in that sometimes we get to share the road with someone who is a lot farther along than we are. And sometimes we are called to walk beside and encourage those who have farther to go than we do.   

Sometimes we lead.  Sometimes we follow. There are times when we need to lean on someone else.  There are times when others lean on us.   

Much of the way we travel alone. Sometimes we stop and rest awhile. 

We are just all on our way. 

#AdventUs Life

Life 

Water.  Water is life.  

We take water for granted.  

Globally, 1.8 billion people – that’s about one out of every four people – drink from contaminated water sources. Unsafe water leads to illnesses that claim the lives of 840,000 people each year, almost half of whom are children under the age of five.

There are people in our own country who do not have running water.  Who do not even have an easy way to get water.  

Access to water is a human rights issue and one with global warming we are not going to be able to ignore for long.  We probably won’t do anything about it until it becomes difficult for white middle class Americans to get water. 

Donate to the ELCA Walk for Water

#AdventUs Survival

Survival

Squirrels are annoying.  They find ways of getting into my bird feeders.  

It wasn’t until after I took this picture that I realized this annoying squirrel was a nursing mama who needed food to feed her family.  I was less annoyed by the squirrels after that.  

They have to eat too, to survive.

Feed squirrels and birds is mostly entertaining for me. Something privileged people can do.  Birds and squirrels can survive just fine without my extra peanuts. 

There are too many in the world who cannot survive without those of us who have enough to feed birds and squirrels being willing to share.  

Those birds and squirrels in my yard are less hungry than too many children in the world.  

May God open our hearts to give of our abundance and privilege that others may not only survive, but thrive.  

#AdventUs Conquest

Conquest

This is a map of the conquest of Britain by Anglo Saxons.  

The history of England is a history of conquests.  

I don’t know who came before the Celts.  But they were invaded by Rome.  

Then came the Anglo Saxons.  That conquest was so devastating I read somewhere there is no male Celtic DNA in England.  Then they in turn were conquered by the Normans.

Toddlers take what they want, even if it means slugging their baby sibling who has it.   As parents we try to teach them not to do that.  

I’m not sure we have been all that successful.

Bourbon Spiced Cranberry Sauce

"If it doesn't have the ridges from the can, it's not cranberry sauce", was my late husband's point of view.  My son takes after him. 

So for Thanksgiving we have the jelled cranberry sauce out of the can.  AND we have the real stuff.  

I've made several versions.  Here is an adult version I really like.


Soak a 12 oz bag of cranberries in a cup of Bourbon for an hour.  (Take them out of the bag first)

Add 1 cup orange juice and a cup of sugar.  Personally I don't care for tart so I add another half cup of sugar.  Start with a cup and taste it. 

Add 1/2 tsp Penzeys applie pie spice  (which is a combinatio of cinnimon, nutmeg, mace & cloves) and 1/2 tsp ginger.

Cook it on low for about 15 minutes.  Then I take an emulsifier and blend it up a bit so it's still chunky but you don't bite into a whole cranberry. 

St. Lucy & St. Nick

So is it Advent or is it Christmas?  

Are we preparing for Christmas or are we celebrating Christmas?  It can be confusing.  The church who kind of inventing Christmas says it’s advent.  We are waiting.  We are preparing.  It is not Christmas.  

But the world where we spend most of our time is telling us something else.   The world is screaming CHRISTMAS at us full blast.  It’s confusing.

And the message of what we should be doing to prepare and celebrate Christmas is confusing as well.  The commercial world in the media, which we spend most of our time is screaming at us  BUY BUY BUY. Christmas is about STUFF. 

If you aren’t ready for Christmas it’s because you don’t have enough STUFF!  Here we have some stuff you can buy!

But there is a counter movement that is pushing back against that message.  

There’s a movement to recover advent from the commercialism of Christmas.  

But sometimes I think that message is a little legalistic and dare I say scroogeish?  It says don’t buy anything!  It’s not about present.  Don’t buy presents.  Give it all to charity. 

 Now I’m all for generous giving during the holidays or any days.  But no presents?  Don’t buy anything?  

Not even a few pretty decorations?  

That just doesn’t sound right to me. 

Surely there is another way.  

How can we find our way through the craziness of this season back to the real reason for the season?  Where can we look for the star which will lead us to Bethlehem and the child born to a poor couple in a stable?

Well today I’d like to suggest we can find our way with a couple of people who are the epitome of Christmas.  

Santa Lucia and Santa Clause.

I’m sure everyone knows about Santa Clause.  And those from Scandinavian backgrounds know about Santa Lucia.  

All the stories and traditions surrounding these two go back to real people.  Real people who were followers of Christ and who sacrificed a lot to celebrate and worship the babe in the manger. 

Santa Lucia or Lucy lived in Sicily in the late third century. She was a follower of this new strange sect called Christians. 

Christians were suspect because they did not worship the old gods of Rome.  

In fact sometimes they were called atheists because they did not believe in the gods and insisted there was only one God. 

Lucy lived in a time when it was dangerous to be a Christian. 

When Lucy went to the market nobody said “Merry Christmas”.  

Lucy was from a wealthy family and her family had arranged for her to marry a man from another wealthy family in order to solidify their fortunes.  But Lucy wanted to dedicate her life to Christ.  She did not want to marry.  

She wanted to live a life of prayer and care for the poor.  

Lucy was known and loved by the poor whom she would help.  She would often go out at night and walk through the dark Roman tunnels wearing a wreath of candles on her head to light her way to bring food to the poor in her city.   

When her mother fell very ill Lucy spent day and night praying for her recovery and when her mother recovered Lucy was so grateful she sold her dowry and gave all the money from that to feed the poor. 

Her fiancée was not happy about this.  

He’d had enough of this Christian nonsense and her putting off of the marriage.  He reported her to the officials as a Christian.  

Now what they would do back then if you were accused of being a Christian was to test your loyalty.  You would be asked to burn a sacrifice to gods for the sake of the Emperor who was thought to be a god.  

See the Romans didn’t care if you worshiped Christ, as long as you worshiped the gods who they thought protected the emperor.  

Not to sacrifice for the sake of the emperor was considered treason, punishable by death.  

But of course Christians would not sacrifice for any other gods and so Lucy refused.  She was sent to a house to entertain men.  

It was said this was the idea of her fiancée, who thought it would be a good punishment for a woman who did not want to marry.  Lucy went to the house but refused to have anything to do with the men who paid for her to be with them.  

They tried to torture her with fire to get her to give in but she refused and finally she was killed with the sword.   Some stories tell of her  eyes being put out and she is often shown in art holding her eyes on a platter.

She died on December 13.  

Lucia means light and her day fell on what was the shortest day in Northern Europe so people would remember her as they turned from the long dark of winter to shorter days and she became associated with Christmas and light in this way.  Also there is a story of a terrible famine in Sweden.  Just as it looked as though everyone would starve a ship appeared and Santa Lucia, adored in her wreath of candles and a white gown appeared to feed the people the way she would feed the poor in Rome.  

And that is why to this day little Scandinavian girls wear candles and sing of light and joy.  

But always remember behind this was a young woman whose love for the Christ Child motivated her to risk everything to help the poor and gave her courage to face down her persecutors.

A few years before Lucy was killed a young man’s wealthy parents died in an epidemic.  His name was Nicolas and he too was motivated by Christ to give away most of his fortune to care for the poor.  

This is the story told about him:

One day Nicolas heard about a poor man with three daughters.  In those days the only way a woman could marry was if she had a dowry to give the man’s family.  The man with the daughters was too poor to give his daughters and if they could not marry, they could only look forward to an unsavory future.  

When the eldest daughter was of an age to marry she woke up one morning to find a ball of gold insider her stockings that she had left over the fireplace to dry.  She didn’t know where it had come from but it provided a dowry for her to marry well.  

A few years later the same thing happened to the second daughter.  When the youngest daughter came of age her father stayed up at night to see who it was helping his daughter and was surprised to find it was Nicolas, who refused all thanks and told him only to thank God.

Nicolas was eventually elected bishop and he too was arrested for refusing to sacrifice to the roman gods and he spent many years in prison.

Behind Santa Clause there is St. Nicolas who protected children and helped the poor.  And who risked his life for his faith.

I think these two saints with their fun Christmas traditions can help us find our way through Advent, we don’t need to be scrooges but we don’t need to let the season make us crazy either.  

These two saints lived in a time when no one dared say Merry Christmas and it didn’t seem to ruin Christmas for them.   

They remind us that Christmas is about giving.  

It is about being a little on the outside of the rest of the world. We don’t show our faith by whether or not we say “Merry Christmas” but in our generosity and love and kindness to others.  Amen.

#AdventUs Prostitute

Prostitute

Who remembers “Pretty Woman”? 

Yea the romanticized view of a prostitute who managed to survive walking the streets without a pimp.  If that wasn’t unrealistic enough, she finds a rich handsome man who remakes her into the truly sophisticated woman she was inside.  And marries her and they live happily ever after.

The real story of prostitution is uglier than that.  

It’s called the “world’s oldest profession” but it’s not a profession for most women.  It is big business and it’s always been difficult for women to have any power in big business.  Even if the commodity is her own body.  

The average age a girl begins to be sold for sex in the US is 13.  It’s younger in other countries. 

Rahab who is named in Matthew’s genealogy of Jesus was a prostitute.  I think she was a slave like most women and girls (and boys) who are sold for sex.  She was pretty eager to sell out her town.  The town that had used her body and profited from it.  

I bet she didn’t cry any tears when it was destroyed.  

*For more about trafficking see Making Iowa Inhospitable to Traffickers

#AdventUS ~ BREACH

BREACH

A breach of contract happens when one party doesn’t keep their part of the deal.  By law, Judah owed his daughter-in-law a husband and a son.  His failure to find her a husband was a breach.

Her solution (seducing him and conceiving his son) was another kind of breach.  Tamar's act is a breach in  patriarchy that silences women.  

Scripture is full of those breaches.

It’s true that much of the Old Testament is disturbing stories of violence and oppression against women and other marginalized people.  The Old Testament reflects the world in which it was written.

But what I find amazing are the cracks, the breaches in that world that many of the stories reveal.  

The story of Tamar outwitting her father-in-law is a breach.  Rahab the prostitute that saves herself and her family is a breach.  

Ruth, the story of two women who find a way to survive in a man’s world is a breach.  

The inclusion of these women in the genealogy of Jesus is a sign that the kingdom of God that Jesus brings is going to rip that breach even further.

#AdventUS ~ Whore

WHORE

Today’s word is not your usual devotional word.  

It’s an ugly word. 

 It’s an ugly word that is often applied to women that men cannot control.  

Tamar was a whore because she took control of her situation and used what she had (her sexuality) to get what was due her.  

Throughout history powerful women have been given this name as a way to dismiss them.  

By adding Tamar and other whores to Jesus’ genealogy, Matthew turns that around. 

#AdventUS ~ Power

Power

This is from the overflow room at Michael Brown’s funeral in Ferguson, MO last year.  

There was power in that room.

In the wake of yet another mass shooting there has been much frustration expressed about platitudes and exhortations to pray. 

People are fed up with prayer.

They are fed up because they don’t see any action accompanying the prayer.

“If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill’, and yet you do not supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?”James 2:15-16

It’s not that prayer is not powerful.  

The people at Mike Brown’s funeral believed in the power of prayer.  They also believed that along with hearing their prayers God would stir them up to act.  

And act they did. 

Protests, voter registration, meetings with city leaders.  They realized they had more power than they thought.

Prayer has the power to change things when we are ready for prayer to change us and use that power to change things. 

#AdventUs~ Widow

After my husband died I found the word widow to be a harsh and cruel word.  

Widowhood is a harsh and cruel experience. 

It was easier for me than many.  I had a job.  I knew how to take care of myself and my children.

The biblical mandate to take care of widows comes from a worldview where women need men to take care of them.  It’s like saying “Ok guys, you want to take care of everything, then TAKE CARE OF EVERYTHING.  Including the women and orphans.“

The biblical mandate to take care of widows and orphans is a mandate to take care of those who have no voice.  

I think today it means more than taking care of them and being their voice.  It means giving them voice, hearing their voice and empowering them to take care of themselves.  

#AdventUs ~ Family

Family comes in several shapes and sizes.  

This is my sister and I a few years ago.  She died this past year of breast cancer.  

We were very different.

We were 12 years apart, had different fathers and in many ways our mother was very different with each of us.  We had different childhoods.  We had very different adulthoods.  

And yet we were sisters.

We were close like sisters. We especially enjoyed taking vacations together.  She was the grandmother to my kids they never had.  Although kinda wild for a grandma.  We were family.

Family comes in different shapes and sizes.  

I thank God for the time I had with my sister. 

See Visiting Poverty

#AdventUs ~ Birth

Sometimes we wax poetic and sentimental about the “miracle of birth”.   Miracle yes. 

Birth  is also bloody, messy, painful and dangerous.  

Birth usually ends in tears.  Hopefully tears of joy, but too often tears of mourning. 

Not every woman or infant survives birth.  

Every day, approximately 830 women die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.  Just under six out of every 1,000 babies died at birth or in the first year of life in the U.S. in 2013, triple the rate of Japan or Norway and double the rate of Ireland, Israel or Italy.

Birth is inherently dangerous...

but most deaths of women and infants in childbirth in the world can be prevented.  

Instant of sentimental words about the babies and birth, we could work and give toward preventing those deaths.  So that more births would end in tears of joy.

#AdventUs

So every year there's an Advent & Lent Photo a Day Challenge. 

And I'm always gun-ho every year.  And I never make it all the way through.

But I am an optimist.  

And I believe in Grace.  And second chances.  

So I'm trying it again. 

 I am going to do the SlateProject AdventUs   AND I'm going to commit to writing a reflection to go with my photo.  

Maybe this will be the year I stick to it.

Oatmeal Cinnamon Chip Cookies

This is a cinnamon intensive cookie.  

Penzeys sells a Vietnamese cinnamon that is rich and delicious.  I use that.

• 1 stick real butter
• 1 cup butter flavored Crisco
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 eggs 
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 5-6 oz. cinnamon chips
• ½ tsp. cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp cloves
• 1 1/2 Cup flour
• 4 cups oats
• 1 tsp bourbon
• 1/2 tsp vanilla

Cream sugar with butter and Crisco.  Add vanilla and bourbon, cinnamon and cloves and mix well.  Add eggs, salt and soda and mix well.  Add flour and mix.  Add oats and mix.  Then add the chips.

Drop by spoonful on baking sheet.  Bake at 375 for about 13 minutes.  

Put them on cooling rack as soon as you take them out of the oven to prevent bottom from burning.

Really Good Pot Roast for One

You can have pot roast if you live alone.  Just buy a smaller cut of meat. This is a great meal for a rainy day. 

• 2-4 lb. rump roast
•  
• Bunch of carrots (or buy a package of cut up carrots, I like the chips)
•  
• 2 Potatoes, chopped1 yellow onion, sliced1 red bell pepper, sliced
•  
• Red wine (always Merlot for me) do NOT buy cooking wine.  Cook with the wine you drink.
•  
• 2 TB Molasses
•  
• 2-3 cloves garlic, sliced
•  
• ½ cup flour
•  
• Garlic powder
•  
• Salt & Pepper

Liberally rub salt pepper and garlic powder into roast.   

Cover the meat in flour.  Heat a little vegetable oil in a pan and sear the roast on both sides on high heat until its dark.  

Put in in the slow cooker with all the veggies.  Add about a cup of or more of wine and the molasses.  Cook on low all day. 

You can make gravy out of the juice but I like the juice just the way it is.

When you are tired of eating left over pot roast, Eat hash

Nuke a potato in microwave for 4 minutes. Chop it upChop an onion

Sauté the onion in olive oil for a few minutes.  Add the potato, left over veggies and chopped up meat from pot roast.   

Stir for a while, then pat it all down and cook on high until bottom is crisp, turn it over and cook until that side is crisp.

Chicken & Waffles

People think Chicken & Waffles is a Southern thing.  But Harlem claims them as well.  

During the Harlem Renaissance musicians would come into the Wells Supper Club on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard in the wee hours of the morning.  

They couldn't decide if they wanted dinner or breakfast so left over fried chicken and waffles was the perfect solution.

Here's my version.

Chicken

4 skinless boneless chicken thighs
1 cup flour
1/2 cup corn meal
tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
lots of pepper
Other herbs or spices. 
I used cumon and chipotle
1 cup sour cream

Cut the thighs in thirds.

Marinate the chicken in sour cream, salt & lots of pepper.

Mix flour, corn meal, baking powder, salt, pepper, and herbs,  Take the chicken directly from sour cream and cover in flour mixture.  Fry in about an inch of vegtable oil

Use your favorite waffle recipe.  I just used the recipe on the Bisquick box.

Bourbon & Chipotle Maple syrup

Pour about a cup of maple syrup in pan.  Add about a fourth cup of bourbon.  Melt a couple of tblspoons butter in it.  Add as much chipotle powder as you can stand.  boil.

Serve the chicken on the waffles and pour the syrup over all of it. It is really good.

Curried Cauliflower & Peppers

This was going to be soup.  But it was so pretty I didn't want to blend it up.

1 head of cauliflower, cut up
1 onion, coarsely chopped
1 red bell pepper, coarsely chopped
1 clove garlic, chopped
1/4 cup coconut milk
1/4 cup white wine
2 large Tb Apricot preserves
2 Tb  hot curry paste (it's really not that hot)
1 tsp Curry powder
1 tbl flour


So toss the cauliflower with a little olive oil on a pan and roast it at 350 for about 15 minutes.

Saute the onions and peppers and garlic (add garlic last so it won't burn) in olive oil until they are soft.  Add salt, pepper, and curry powder and mix it up.  Add the wine.  Add the flour and stir it up.  Add the curry paste and apricot preserves.  Add the cauliflower.  Stir it up and add more wine or coconut milk if it's too thick. Simmer on low for about 10 minutes.  Keep an eye on it an stir or add liquid to keep it from sticking.

Serve over rice.  You will not be sorry.