Verse for reflection: “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.” Mark 12:43-44.
Twenty-seven years ago this week, our youngest daughter was born. Four days before that, we were in the emergency room because our two-year-old had a seizure. And ten days later, the new baby was back in the hospital with jaundice. (You can see them both below, including signs of jaundice.)
Of course our problems were minor compared to many people. Yet all of this on top of new-mother-exhaustion plus caring for my two preschoolers, left me with few coping resources, frequently near the edge of tears. The hospital bills also meant extra expenses.
A dear older woman from church volunteered to babysit so I could take the middle child back to the doctor for tests related to her seizure (turned out to be fever-related). But when I picked the other two children up, Connie stuffed an envelope into our diaper bag saying, “Someone left this for you.”
When I was in the car with all three kids strapped in, I couldn’t wait to see what was in the envelope. It was a crisp $100 bill. You can imagine the tears, flowing so freely I could barely drive. Who and why?
Most of us have been recipients of someone’s generosity at one time or another. The widow mentioned in the Mark passage speaks to us this Lent: if the widow put in everything she had to live on, what is God saying to me? How could I stretch to sacrifice for someone else? I may never be able to repay the gift of whoever slipped us that $100 bill, but I can repay it to others. I haven’t come close to putting in everything like the widow, but remembering how we’ve been blessed helps me be more generous with others.
This brings to mind that God sacrificed the divine son for the forgiveness of our sins. Since we are created in God’s image and likeness, we should get that was a heart- wrenchingly difficult gift to us. Thanks be to God.
Action: Recall, with gratitude, God’s generous gift, and when someone blessed you with generosity.
Verse for reflection: “Martha, Martha, the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.” Luke 10:42:42
I love these women. They have issues—family issues. Jesus loved these women. (No, not like that.) I love that the gospel writers include several stories about these real women.
Our family had issues. When our oldest daughter started going to school, we struggled constantly with morning routine. She got ready in slow motion; I operated on fast-forward. Finally in exasperation I observed, “What’s wrong here is that all the hurry is in me. Don’t you realize what will happen if you’re late for the bus?”
So it was interesting to find that daughter number two, after only a few weeks of kindergarten, started watching the clock in the morning with all the worry of a fast-track executive. “Come on,” she’d tell her sister ten minutes before the bus was due. “The big hand is straight up and the bus is coming!” With that she’d hurry out the door.
Today, remarkably, her gifts in this area are put to good use in her real job.
We can’t escape a certain amount of fast-lane living. But we can make choices to tame the hurry in us. This daughter unwinds walking her dog after work. She jogs. She takes time for really long walks on Sunday afternoons. She digs in a small raised bed garden.
During Lent, we might want to get up ten minutes early to find time for solitude, talking with God to help control the hurry of the day. Time spent with God won’t be taken away from us. Ever. As my pastor reminded us yesterday at our Ash Wednesday service, “Give up busyness for Lent.”
Challenge: My pastor’s challenge was this: take ten minutes and do nothing. Can you do it?
***
I invite you to join me on this journey through Lent (if you sign up to follow this blog it will be easier).
As a thank you, I can send you a FREE booklet I wrote several years ago, 14 Days to a Better You, which is a look at the classic 7 Vices and 7 Virtues. No obligation—just my way of connecting with blog followers a little better. Leave a comment and I’ll be able to see your email and follow up.
Day 1: Ash Wednesday
Verse for reflection: The Lord delights in you and will claim you as his own.
Isaiah 62:4
My oldest daughter and I both remember the time she accompanied me to a fancy hotel at the age of eight for a grown-up Virginia Press Women banquet. I had thrown in a pair of dress shoes that I thought she could still wear.
As we hurried to get dressed at the hotel, she exclaimed, “Mama, those shoes don’t fit me any more,” like she was the one talking to a child. After mild panic and trying, Cinderella-step-sister-like, to squeeze her feet into her dress shoes, I eased up and said, “Oh just go ahead and wear your tennis shoes.”
I had to swallow a bit of my pride as I hastily explained to one woman who glanced at my daughter’s shoes, “Kids have a way of growing so fast. I thought she could still wear her dress shoes!”
But the rest of the evening was wonderful—and I savored watching my daughter add her own special glow and bright conversation to the candlelit table, sneakers safely out of sight under the table.
More than any parent, God delights in us, as today’s verse says. That may seem like a weird way to begin the solemnity of Lent, with the accompanying self-denial and sacrifice we sometimes associate with the season. But if you participate(d) in Ash Wednesday services today with imposition of ashes—with the somber reminder that we are mortal and to dust we shall return—let it also be a sign of the love and joy God marks us with: God knew us in the womb and claims us forever and ever. Amen.
Action: As you go through the day, (or think back on it) imagine God delighting in you. How? Why? What specifically does God savor about you? Enjoy.
***
I invite you to join me on this journey through Lent (if you sign up to follow this blog it will be easier).
As a thank you, I can send you a FREE booklet I wrote several years ago, 14 Days to a Better You, which is a look at the classic 7 Vices and 7 Virtues. It’s more fun than it sounds and small enough to slip into an envelope. No obligation—just my way of connecting with blog followers a little better. Leave a comment and I’ll be able to see your email and follow up.
Adapted from Why Didn’t I Just Raise Radishes: Finding God in the Everyday, by Melodie Davis, Herald Press, 1994, p. 15-17.
Fat Tuesday. Day to use up all the “fat” or oil in the house and do without until Easter (or “feast days,” Sundays, if you practice that kind of Lent). I do plan to make pancakes tonight—what an easy supper. Every other year we have a pancake supper at church but not this year. Boo.
Daughter Doreen gets served up some pancakes at church
by Bill Sanders; husband Stuart watching from far left.
But even if you’ve never practiced any kind of Lenten fasting or sacrifice, I invite you to make this a time to focus on faith, your relationship with God, and growing or shaping up spiritually. In case you think that sounds like boy, Melodie is really going all spiritual on us, I am not playing better than thou. I often go too many days without any real meditation time or Bible reading. I’m as haphazard (not proud of this) as many mainstream Christians. I go in fits and starts. So I’m always a little startled when I find God speaking to me in fresh and new ways when I take the time.
As part of my discipline this Lent I hope to post a daily scripture with related short meditation and photo (each weekday, Monday through Friday) with a break on the weekends.
So party hard tonight if you must, and enjoy those pancakes (see here for my sausage gravy recipe.) And join me here tomorrow as we begin a journey toward “Finding Harmony Every Day of Lent.”
***
I invite you to join me on this journey (if you sign up to follow this blog it will be easier).
And as a thank you, I can send you a FREE booklet I wrote several years ago, 14 Days to a Better You, which is a look at the classic 7 Vices and 7 Virtues. It’s more fun than it sounds and small enough to slip into an envelope. No obligation—just my way of connecting with blog followers a little better. Leave a comment and I’ll be able to see your email and follow up.
I made my second batch of Amish Homemade Noodles, using 1 tiny teaspoon of lard.
I had to think of my friend Emily who once threw down a bag of Martin’s Gibbles potato chips, (a yummy brand made in Dutch country around Chambersburg, Pennsylvania; ask my kids about Martin’s BBQ chips). After she scrutinized the label she exclaimed “Lard!” like it was poison. Despicable, of course, unless you are making fine pie crusts or maybe homemade noodles.
Here’s the recipe I used this time, from Mennonite Community Cookbook (I appreciate the small quantity here for my experimenting, but real Amish or Mennonite cooks would have multiplied these many times over if they were making a batch.)
1 ½ c. flour
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. fat
3 tbl. water
1 egg
Make a well in the flour and add egg, salt and fat.
Rub together and add water to form a stiff dough. Knead.
Divide dough into three parts and roll each as thin as possible.
Spread rolled dough on a cloth and allow to dry partially.
Then cut dough into strips about 1.5 inches wide and stack on top of each other. Then cut cross wise into fine shreds. Dry. (Mrs. Elo Synder, Breslau, Ontario.)
First I went to Red Front (local independent grocery) and bought the smallest container of lard I could find.
Then, I followed the steps exactly, making a well in the flour,
mixing up the dough with my hands.
Kneading the dough, then dividing it into three balls.
And finally, rolling them out as thin as I could get them.
The noodles tasted about the same though, in all honesty. I wasn’t sure how just one tiny teaspoon would make a flavorful difference. Noodles are not my husband’s favorite thing so I’ve been trying out my noodles by making lots of homemade chicken noodle soup. It is good weather for that. And good for ailing bodies. Check this recipe from Mennonite Girls Can Cook, from a wonderful cook, Lovella Schellenberg, who also describes how to make noodles, Russian-Mennonite style.
Here’s a photo essay of Lovella and her granddaughter making homemade noodles, just added 2/15/2013.
The more I researched this topic the less I know. You know how that goes.
***
In my previous blog post on this topic, my mother said the mention of homemade noodles instantly brought back the image of her mother’s noodles hanging over the ironing board to dry.
So she wrote a few more details, which I was happy for: “Looks like [my] Mom followed the recipe and instructions in Mennonite Community Cookbook, p. 124. The rolled dough would have been probably larger than a pie crust and very thin. Not too dry of dough or the noodles would get crumbly. She put them on the ironing board in the parlor with older dish towels underneath. I was sort of amazed that this cookbook stated stuff so much like Mom did. She did have a very ancient cookbook called Inglenook with a plain lady pictured on the cover with a covering on and stings! Boy would that be worth something now.”
My grandmother Ruth Stauffer on my mother’s side.
Mother seemed to remember Grandma just using the egg yolks in her mother’s noodles to make them yellow but I haven’t found any recipe recommending that. More on yellow later.
I also consulted the book, The Amish Cook, by Elizabeth Coblentz, the wonderful cook and columnist from Ohio whose column appeared for years in our local paper, now written by her daughter, Lovina Eicher. Elizabeth died in 2002.
In Coblentz’s cookbook published in 2002 with Kevin Williams (Ten Spread Press), she says they rolled their noodles about 1/16 inch thick. That was helpful to find an actual dimension. And they used yellow food coloring (!) to make the dough a “nice yellow.” She also explained that noodles need to dry at least a week, rearranging the drying rack every day to ensure they dry evenly. Later, she says, they used a hand cranked noodle maker that “rolls out and cuts the dough … What used to take all day now just takes a couple hours. We can put 30 eggs, 30 tablespoons of water, and 30 cups of flour through the noodle maker in an hour.” (p. 87). Elizabeth’s actual recipe is much the same as the one I posted earlier, or the one above, except she did not use any lard or shortening in hers.)
That’s a lot of noodles. But like my mother said, “We used to probably always [love her nuances] feed thrashers noodles.” If you don’t know what thrashers are, my grandpa (on my father’s side) was one. They went around harvesting wheat and stuff with big equipment. So there would always be need for cheap filling food to feed workers on thrashing day.
Finally, I loved my daughter’s mother-in-law’s story shared on my last post on this topic. Sue wrote: “My aunt made homemade noodles for every holiday. They were so good. I tried making them once. I had them all rolled out, cut and spread on the counter to dry. I was doing something else and my oldest daughter came along and proceeded to clump them all back together again into one big dough ball!! I gave up!!”
And that’s about enough on homemade noodles, until I get learn from an Amish cook at Camp Amigo in September when I’m helping with a Road Scholar program on heritage of Mennonites and Amish. Check it out!
Chicken soup from my latest batch of noodles:
Here’s a guest blog I wrote this week for www.Mennobytes.com which is one window into what’s been keeping me from writing any other blog entries.
Excited to be working as compiler/editor on Fifty Shades of Grace for MennoMedia.
There will be stories to make you cry, laugh, connect, and remember the epic grace of God in your life.
Coming in April, we hope!
Or, come away with me, to a tropical island in the city.
The U.S. Botanic Gardens in Washington, D.C, (inside the conservatory), is:
An oasis of green and bright flora in a world of gray cold winter.
A tropical island in a concrete jungle of macadam and blocky beige Federal buildings.
Warm and moist air to nourish the skin and nasal passages dried out by too much North wind and icy frost.
They say that going out in a woods or tropical forest calms and quiets the spirit—something about the photosynthesis, light mixing with green things giving off oxygen which humans need. (I’m sure all the scientists will help correct that if I’ve way oversimplified it since I’ve always been scientifically fuzzy.) Someone once told me they thought a walk in the woods filled one with “rarefied air.” I like that. So did the botanical gardens.
It was a beautiful respite coming out of a long, hard January (ok, yes, we had just enjoyed a 70 degree day on Wed., which plummeted to 17 degrees F. by Sat.)
Never been? Me neither, in 40+ years of living just two hours away, in dozens of trips to the city for meetings, for touring, for museums. (It’s free, of course.)
Don’t ask me what all the names are of these gorgeous flowers blooming away to their hearts content, (but you can find more pictures and names in this Virtual Tour). We should do a naming contest.
I know there were rare plants, endangered plants, ancient plants, carnivorous plants! Yikes.
And they were just what I was needing. And you probably have something similar in a city near you.
Oldest daughter Michelle, her husband Brian, his mother, Jeannie.
Some better poets/artists than me have said these lovely things of flowers:
“The earth laughs in flowers.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.”
― Edna St. Vincent Millay
“Nobody sees a flower – really – it is so small it takes time – we haven’t time – and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time.”
― Georgia O’Keeffe, Georgia O’Keeffe
“I must have flowers, always, and always.”
― Claude Monet
One of my favorite mentions of flowers in the Bible is this:
“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.” (Matthew 6: 28-29.)
Amen.
If winter comes, can spring be far behind?
The last Sunday in January is always “house church Sunday” in our congregation, when our small groups (house churches) plan and conduct their own worship services in homes.
Pastor Ann always says house church Sundays are her favorite because she doesn’t have to prepare a sermon! It happens roughly four times a year. One group is assigned to meet at the church house so there is something going on there for any visitors or those who aren’t in house churches.
My house church, Kara, which runs a free clothes closet, (each house church is organized around a specific mission), happens to have the pastor emeritus of the congregation in it, Don Allen. In fact, he founded the congregation. He was called to plant a church for Shenandoah Presbytery back in 1962-3 and wanted to do “a new thing.” We are celebrating our 50th anniversary all year.
Don also wrote a book about the launch of Trinity, and what he learned in researching the house church movement of the 60s and 70s. You can still find his book, Barefoot in the Church in Amazon used book stores (or at our church or from Shenandoah Presbytery Resource library).
So what is worship like on a house church Sunday?
We come in the back door, by the kitchen.
We might sign a birthday card for someone having a birthday.
Everyone talks as we gather. We practice new ties for scarves.
We sing, we have confession, we pass the peace of Christ to one another.
The “sermon” can be anything from a video to a panel discussion, to a simple dance by the whole group, to short stories or “testimonies” from two or three. This Sunday we had a “scripture and music” sermon led mostly by composer/singer John Henderson.
We are fortunate to have an ordained minister to lead communion in our small group. In groups that don’t have a minister as a member (and we have lots of retired ministers at our church), the installed pastor sometimes visits if communion is desired. Each person serves the next one. (In Presbyterian circles, a clergy person almost always leads the Lord’s Supper.)
In today’s service, Don starts communion by recalling how when Trinity was first beginning and they began to practice communion in homes like the original disciples, he remembers how elderly Mrs. Funkhouser kept the communion leftovers on her table in her breakfast nook for a whole week before cleaning it up, because she was so awed by the idea of having that special meal in her home. Don reminded us that our simple table today is the same meal commemorated in huge cathedrals all around the world in much fancier surroundings, and the same meal Jesus served.
We usually close with a circle prayer. (No photo. I didn’t want to spoil the moment.)
Jim always does the benediction. Maybe because he’s the most senior and has the best position from which to pronounce blessing on the rest of us.
Then comes the real meal. Is that what makes house church Sunday so special? It was the house fellowships which first made my future husband and I decide to continue our faith journey with Trinity.
This time Sue has brought “Sticky Date Pudding” with Toffee Sauce and Ice Cream, a dessert she loved on a trip to Prince Edward Island. It wins wave reviews. (Dalvay By the Sea shares the recipe online!)
We sing Happy Birthday to Marjorie (second from right). Just like we used to do as children in Sunday school. Or like a family.
That’s what house church Sunday is like on a cold but bright January day. A house church, like any church, is made up of humans with faults, weaknesses, strengths and gifts. That humans can come together and find harmony and powerful connection with each other and God in spite of our quirks and differences is a profound witness to God’s ever present and beautiful Holy Spirit.
***
I enjoyed reading what another congregation has discovered about their decision to have something they call “Table Church” once a month.
No, this is not about how women who work or live in close proximity like in a dorm often end up with their monthly cycles in sync.
It is about the worst fight I ever had with my sis, God bless her.
Sister on left, me on right. Notice who is holding the dog. Always.
We were close and great friends, being only 26 months apart. Growing up, people thought we were twins at one stage when I was growing taller than her. I ended up about four inches taller but she charged ahead on the basketball court anyway, one of the best female players (I’ll say modestly) Goshen College (Ind.) ever had (she made it into the Elkhart County sports hall of fame, so it is not just me saying that).
Bethany girl’s GAA before we even had uniforms. That’s my sister Pert on far left, second row, long hair, flipped up, bangs. Short. That’s me on far right, last row (tall row, ahem), long hair, flipped up, bangs, Circa 1967.
But she had this infuriating way of laughing at me that pushed my buttons. She also knew that that would make me even madder, so that was even funnier, oh ha ha ha.
I have always been a kind of a middle-of-the-road-even-keel-type of person, trying to solve or stay out of conflicts rather than starting them, or at least trying to soothe them over, like my mother. Or maybe it was like my father, who often said “Kids, now you need to kiss and make up.” Overall Dad’s philosophy of life was probably the original “Why can’t everyone just get along?”
Neither one of us know what started the fight in the chicken house that day. But I do know it got me into a heap of … well, broken eggs.
We had 10,000 caged layers in those days (I know, it sounds terrible, but we didn’t know better back then, and the chickens didn’t either), and our job as kids on the farm was to gather the eggs each evening, pushing big carts down long rows and placing them on flats holding 2.5 dozen eggs each. (Mother and a hired neighbor woman gathered eggs in the morning when we were at school.)
When the chore was completed, we’d wheel the eggs into the large walk-in cooler, and place the flats into large egg cases holding 360 eggs to be shipped to our distributor. The egg cases were heavy but not unmanageable for kids raised on the farm. We were probably ages 12-15, something like that. We were not above throwing eggs into the wet soupy manure that lay stinking beneath the cages, in order to send a spray of poop onto the sibling gathering eggs in the next aisle.
Whatever my sister said that evening—in a laughing, menacing, “I know you’re mad” manner—sent me over the edge and next thing I knew, I was hefting that whole case of eggs in her direction to ram her as hard as I could just to get her to stop.
It felt so good.
Then I was shocked that I would do such a thing and wondered immediately how many eggs I’d broken.
She sobered up, I think we both apologized, and began to open up the case of eggs to survey the damage I’d done which she had provoked.
It was not pretty. But there’s no use crying over cracked eggs, right, so we immediately started cleaning up our mess.
The dog had a lot of broken eggs to eat that night. When dad found out (I have no idea who told) we of course had to pay for the eggs we’d broken. I do think we split the cost, because my sister knew that in spite of the fact that I had shoved her, she had pushed my buttons on purpose.
And that was the worst fight we ever had.
Love you, Pert. Her side of the story might be a little different.
(Notice who is still, always, holding an animal.)
Also love my big sis and little brother, with whom we all mostly got along, most of the time.
Me, big sis Nancy, Mom, little bro Terry, Dad, Linda aka Pert
***
P.S. I hope I don’t have to point out how this is actually a good clean way to fight:
1. State your issues
2. Try not to push buttons.
3. Apologize.
4. Clean up the mess (hurt feelings, etc.)
5. Pay for your damages.
This past Sunday in some Presbyterian circles, congregations observed a renewal of baptism service right after Epiphany. Presbyterians do not believe you ever need more than one baptism, but they allow for a liturgy that focuses on a reminder of your baptism, and the service is a time to reaffirm faith in Christ, turn away from evil, and an opportunity to go to the baptismal font (usually on a small pedestal at the back, front or middle of most worship spaces) and touch and finger the water therein. It can be very meaningful, or it can be another “out there” ritual that makes some feel uncomfortably compelled to go forward whether they feel like it or not.
My own baptismal anniversary is coming up January 30, (1966). While we don’t have photos of that, (none even taken after the service, to my knowledge, it was a different era!), I do treasure a grainy photo of a baptismal service reproduced in a simply printed/photocopied edition of my home congregation’s 50 Year Anniversary at North Goshen Mennonite, Indiana.
I treasure it because up front, (circa 1963,) holding the baptismal pitcher is my father, Vernon, who was a deacon, and that was one of his special jobs. He still wore a plain “Mennonite” suit at that time. We “poured” in our congregation—which is a good thing when you are baptized on Jan. 30 in northern Indiana.
For this baptism, you can spot me in the row directly behind the baptismal candidates, girl on the end, with a slightly messy (always) ponytail. My mother is next to me, and my brother, (I love this) is perched forward on the seat in front of us, as if to get an even better view of the proceedings. My other two sisters must have been sitting with the youth group in the youth corner. But my brother was probably also pitched forward because he knew what would come next: the “Holy Kiss” which was my mother’s job, as deacon’s wife, to go kiss the female baptismal candidates. (We’ll discuss some of the other fun jobs of a deacon’s wife in another blog sometime.)
I also treasure this photo because across the aisle is my 90-something-year-old grandfather Uriah, who lived at our house. He had pink wintergreens in his suit pocket for the kiddies after church; he always did. (Uriah is the little white head on far right of photo, second row.)
Nostalgia aside, how does a born and bred (and “reborn”) Anabaptist-Mennonite who later in life joined the Presbyterian church and had her own infants (gasp) baptized find harmony with that mix of theologies? My father, for instance, was not happy with me.
I knew without asking Dad would not want to come to the baptisms of our daughters. After all, when your forebears suffered, were tortured and died for the radical right to withhold state baptism of your kids, and to be “rebaptized” as adults, swallowing the idea of infant baptism as another form of dedicating your kids, practiced in most Mennonite congregations, didn’t quite cut it for him.
[Our oldest daughter with our interim pastor, Tempe Fussell. One of them looks really happy. It was the first baptism Tempe did out of seminary.]
[Our middle daughter with then pastor Dan Grandstaff.]
[My daughters and I on Easter Sunday, 1986; the babe in arms was baptized that year on Mother’s day (but I can’t find the photos. Isn’t that what happens to the youngest child?) but I’m happy to say my mother was able to come to that baptism. O happy day!]
I first wrote about my first daughter’s baptism here (In Presbyterians Today magazine) so I won’t repeat myself.
After my own father died, I felt freer to address some of my thought processing head on in Mennonite World Review.
Today I’m happy that, and my pastor made this point on Sunday, that Presbyterians practice infant, adult, teen and even child baptism at whatever stage parents want to make the claim of “this is my child and I will do everything in my ability to help him or her grow up to declare their faith on their own.” I’m glad there is more openness for parents to freely choose whether or not to have their children baptized, and not feel like people did at one time that a child who was not baptized soon after birth was not in the realm of God’s grace.
It is kind of a weird ritual, on the face of it, like the Lord’s Supper. If you were to be dropped into Protestant culture from the middle of Africa and not knowing anything about Christianity, observe either a river immersion, a “bathtub” emersion like those who have such fixtures in their churches, sprinkling—or watched a communion service, you would go—wow, wait a minute, these people are weird. What kind of cult is this?
But in the depth of it, baptism is a wonderful recognition that I am a recipient of God’s grace; that God loves me—amazing! That God claims me. What a way to start each day, as it was rumored that Martin Luther did, looking in the mirror and saying, “I am baptized!”
It is as weird, radical and wonderful as that.
***
A moving and transformational original “ana-baptist” (re-baptizing) re-enactment (10 min.) from the movie, “The Radicals”.
A fuller explanation of the Anabaptist view on baptism.
findingharmonyblog 