Last weeks Friday five must have been working away in my subconscious as I have been developing some super sweet winter wonders. Saturday night's gourmet bread-and-butter pudding and then the delicious apricot cake on Sunday. The first was made with what was available so no measures. The second was in my mother's recipe book and as I have scales that can be switched to imperial or metric I just stayed with the original. Both eaten too quickly to get a picture :)
Bread and Butter pudding
About 10 slices bread (I used wholegrain)
Margarine (or butter)
2 eggs
Sticky raisins (about 1/2 cup)
Crystallised ginger (about 1/4 cup)
1-2 cups milk
Vanilla pod
Cardamom seeds
Put milk in pot with cardamom seeds and vanilla bean and place on gentle (low) heat until it smells wonderful. Meanwhile spread bread with the margarine and cut each piece into thirds (remove crusts if you want to but not necessary). Place layer in bottom of ovenproof dish (mine is 16x23cm) with buttered side down. Sprinkle raisins and ginger over the slices, then add another layer of bread followed by raisins and ginger. Keep going until all bread is used up, finishing with a buttered side up layer of bread. Take milk off the heat and allow to cool. Beat eggs in bowl and strain the warm milk mixture in on top. Beat until combined. Pour milk and egg mixture over the bread layers. Leave in refrigerator as long as possible for all the liquid to soak into the bread. Can add more milk, very carefully, if necessary. Then bake in oven at about 180 Celsius for 30 mins or until cooked through.
Apricot cake
1 cup dried apricots
1 cup boiling water
6 oz butter
6 oz sugar
8 oz plain flour
2 eggs
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
Pour boiling water over apricots and leave to stand. Cream butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time and beat well. Drain apricots and reserve liquid. Add apricots to creamed mixture. Add flour and baking powder and mix well. Dissolve baking soda in 1/3 cup of the apricot liquid. Blend thoroughly into batter. Pour into 8 inch tin. Bake in moderate oven 180 Celsius until cooked through (about 40-50 minutes). Orange icing was recommended for this cake. We used a cream cheese topping but it really was a bit too sweet. Mum was right (I should have known!)
We had a great weekend of feasting which has set us up for the week. A great walk on Sunday afternoon between showers. Weather is cool but our hearts and tummies are warm! Thanks be.
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Friday, August 8, 2008
Summer sweetness
Great Friday Five from Presbyterian Gal sweltering in the summer heat provokes a bit of nostalgia.
1. What is your sweetest summer memory from childhood? Did it involve watermelon or hand cranked ice cream? Or perhaps a teen summer romance. Which stands out for you?
Strawberries and pavlova. Kind of like a huge meringue covered in whipped cream. A New Zealand icon - although Australians like to claim it as their own :-)
2. Describe your all time favorite piece of summer clothing. The one thing you could put on in the summer that would seem to insure a cooler, more excellent day.
A gorgeous little white linen jacket with coconut shell buttons. Looks good with everything. And has pockets. I'm wearing it in this (Presbyterian) photo.
3. What summer food fills your mouth with delight and whose flavor stays happily with you long after eaten?
Now that would have to be watermelon. The stains on the chin stay around for a while as well.
4. Tell us about the summer vacation or holiday that holds your dearest memory.
The year that we spent 5 weeks at Whangamata. Kind of a busman's holiday as my beloved took the worship services at the churches there and they provided accommodation. He departed for two weeks in Tokelau and left daughters and me to fill his shoes for the final week. That summer I completed a tapestry, enjoyed sun and sea, read avidly, watched 5 DVDs starring George Clooney one after the other. It was idyllic. This will sound liturgically strange to those in the opposite hemisphere but it was the summer I discovered Epiphany and the baptism of Jesus. I still think the sermon was good for any preacher including this lay one. And some good interactive creative participation with sea shells and stars.
5. Have you had any experience(s) this summer that has drawn you closer to God or perhaps shown you His wonder in a new way?
Staying with my wonderful friends and their toddler daughter this past summer reminded me again of the wonder with which little ones explore and investigate our world. And walking along the waterfront refreshed my spirit.
Bonus question: When it is really hot, humid and uncomfortable, what do you do to refresh and renew body and spirit?
Splash witchazel about abundantly.
Hug-me-tight
A celebration of a completed work! I'm sure there's some kind of therapy going on as I use assorted inherited needles to knit vintage patterns from the stash inherited from my mother and including some with grandmother's name on them. I did choose to use new machine washable wool though, from Tapestry Craft. I couldn't find suitable buttons in my enormous button jar, so yesterday wandered along to All Buttons Great and Small and found the sweet little flowers.
Now getting on to sewing up calico bags for youth group tonight. They are going to decorate (fabric paint, applique etc) and auction them to raise money for a microcredit project in West Timor. Inspired and backed up by the authoritative evidence base of Numb3rs that microcredit has a 97% success rate. This episode was also mentioned on In Good Faith but unfortunately the link to the episode didn't work for me. May 11 2007 if you want the details.
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Big hearted Godde
Over the past weekend I was among 40+ leaders in our local church at the Naamaroo Conference Centre - a great venue surrounded by National Park land with plenty of opportunity for bushwalking and reflection. As I wandered on Sunday morning I was reading the Oremus office for the previous day and kept coming back to these words from Micah7 (vv 14 and 18):
Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock that belongs to you, which lives alone in a forest in the midst of a garden land; let them feed in Bashan and Gilead as in the days of old... Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of your possession? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency.
I had with me Te Paipera Tapu - the Bible in Te Reo Maori - the language of the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand. As far as I know this is basically the translation made by predominantly British missionaries in the 19th Century - as there is no notation of revisions in the frontispiece. I find benefit in reading scripture in a language I don't know (especially a phonetic one like Maori) as it somehow reaches through my intellect and connects at a gut level.
The last part of verse 18 reads: ... no te mea e ngakau nui ana ia ki te tohu tangata. In this case I know enough Maori to know that ngakau nui is big heart. And tohu tangata is a subject people. I think this means that Godde has a big heart toward the people of Godde.
Ngakau nui will be my updated mobile phone banner for the next while (I noted the other day it is still Lent for Life but we are well past that season of the church year). As I delight to know that Godde delights in showing clemency. That word is so precious.
Shepherd your people with your staff, the flock that belongs to you, which lives alone in a forest in the midst of a garden land; let them feed in Bashan and Gilead as in the days of old... Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of your possession? He does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency.
I had with me Te Paipera Tapu - the Bible in Te Reo Maori - the language of the indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand. As far as I know this is basically the translation made by predominantly British missionaries in the 19th Century - as there is no notation of revisions in the frontispiece. I find benefit in reading scripture in a language I don't know (especially a phonetic one like Maori) as it somehow reaches through my intellect and connects at a gut level.
The last part of verse 18 reads: ... no te mea e ngakau nui ana ia ki te tohu tangata. In this case I know enough Maori to know that ngakau nui is big heart. And tohu tangata is a subject people. I think this means that Godde has a big heart toward the people of Godde.
Ngakau nui will be my updated mobile phone banner for the next while (I noted the other day it is still Lent for Life but we are well past that season of the church year). As I delight to know that Godde delights in showing clemency. That word is so precious.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
No greater love ...
Just returned from a wonderful thanksgiving service for a man I never knew. I knew of this man through meeting his wife, and hearing from others of her wonderful care and attention to him, especially in the last of their 60+ years together. Afterwards I got talking with another wonderful man who told me about the love of his life for 55 years. He still mises her eleven years after her death. He delighted in telling me how they met and their life together. He had the firmest handshake I've experienced for a long time. I am so blessed to have heard these stories of lifetimes of love and commitment. Tears are not far away. As I give thanks for these two examples of great love lived well. Thanks be to God.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Trust me I'm a professional!
Crimson Rambler's post hit my buttons! When she commented how frustrating it is as a priest when people tell her what to say at funerals.
Disclaimer: This post is a therapeutic outpouring of personal story and is not an overt or covert criticism of any person or priest or professional living or deceased on any planet at any time. It is a psalm of praise for the wonderful professional support we received at a vulnerable time. It just may not sound like it at first.
Having relatively recently been part of a 'bereaved family' I now cringe at how bossy we were with the minister. I even told him what to put in the prayers. In fact I wanted him to use a prayer that I had written as an exemplar because it was such an excellent model. I wasn't at all certain that he would get it right! Family members did write and present one of the prayers.
And we refused to tell all Mum's life-long friends about longstanding but largely-hidden-from-public-view issues that had affected our family life. It kind of seemed a betrayal of her personal history despite the minister's best CPE stance that everything had to be put out in the open. Why should people who had known her for over 50 years suddenly, after her death, be told of something she had kept to herself through long years. Also he only seemed to pick up on the negatives of what we said and not the positives of living with a person of extremes. I still think we were right - our position was that we were not prepared to say anything about Mum after her death that we would not have said in front of her during her life.
I guess from the other side of the fence we were farewelling someone we loved very very deeply and who (for us her daughters) had known us our whole lives. And because of the circumstances we were entrusting this task to someone who had some brief associations with her in the past but who had known her mainly as a frail and rather lonely elderly woman.
It was a huge thing for us to entrust someone with this farewell. We were in the midst of really mixed up emotions. Our Mum was very particular - and idiosyncratic - about aspects of her faith and we wanted that to be respected. She had distanced herself from the institutional church for several years. Yet avidly watched religious television and talked about faith with family members. Not all of us are active churchgoers and we didn't want to force any member of the family to take part in something that was false to their personal position. Some of our family are at the evangelical end of the spectrum and were already saying things like "Hallelujah Father! Welcome your daughter home at last." It was also important not to compromise their experience and beliefs. It was so important to get it right. For everyone. Without reducing the frustrating, wonderful, generous, stubborn, innocent, loving, hurtful, hurt, family-focused, opinionated, creative mother with whom we enjoyed complex life-giving relationships. And me being an INFP control freak I placed that task of getting it right firmly on my own shoulders.
Yes I know the minister was the professional. As I write this I hear all the clergy reading it chorusing "Don't you think we know that". "We have trained for fifty zillion years and we know what we are doing." "Your family is just like the hundreds of other families we have done this for." "Just let me get on with my job."
Well perhaps that was part of it. For you it is your job. For us it was our life. It was our only chance to do this. We knew the people who would be there. Our aunties and uncles had also known us our whole lives, and our Mum had been part of their whole lives (at least the ones in her immediate family). To the professional we were one of many. We were farewelling our only mother. We had a lot invested in making sure that the farewell was good and that there was room for healing and rejoicing. And to be honest we had all attended some pretty terrible funerals over the years. As well as some amazingly good ones. We didn't know which kind this would turn out to be.
The tears are pouring down my face now. I didn't realise there was so much stuff I still had to work through. But how did it go you ask? I know my partner was surprised at how controlling we were and if he reads this he might be surprised at the persisting depth of feeling over four months later (as I am actually). If the minister blogs his post would probably read like that of Crimson Rambler. It's probably the example of difficult family he uses in CPE courses.
But for us - it was brilliant. All these people from Mum's childhood appeared, the church was absolutely packed. The singing was of the high calibre that can only come when you combine Baptist and Presbyterian traditions going back for generations. The minister must have received an extra measure of grace as he patiently and with great care held the whole assembled group together and supported participants. As well as stage-managing the non-appearance of two readers (their father tried to take a 'short-cut' to save time driving to the church and ended up running into a major obstacle that delayed them significantly), a soloist bursting into tears, a candle in a church with no matches, and a prop that didn't fit on the stand provided. And he drove me to the crematorium with grace and care. Comments afterwards reflected that together we had achieved what we set out to achieve - a realistic but positive celebration of a life lived sincerely. There was a good balance of tears and laughter. Of course facilitated by the gentle professional management of the event. A person who had been estranged by comments from Mum reestablished a relationship with our family (and works 500 metres away from one of my sisters so they can meet for coffee or lunch). Driving along the river at the end of the day I wanted to tell Mum how good it had been and to let her know who had come to pay their respects.
Reflecting back I realise how frustrating this must have been for a person skilled and trained in pastoral care to deal with. It must have felt as if we had a basic lack of confidence in his abilities. Yet our drive to control was based on some really deep fears. That a real person would be made into some kind of plaster saint. That small parts of a life now completed would be exaggerated and be the focus of events. And some real hopes. That hurts might be healed. That understanding might grow. That someone who had found it hard to accept love might be remembered with love.
When we realised that this was understood we were able to be supported and loved through our farewell to our Mum. Thanks to CR for helping me to see just how much pastoral care was involved in bringing us to that point.
At the end of our tribute to our mother I said:
... The words we will use later today in the committal part of the service are especially apt for our Mum: "Lord, I am your servant, and now I can die in peace, because you have kept your promise to me."
She had a strong sense of God’s faithfulness to her, that kept her free from harm. God had kept his promise to her. She had seen her children grow to mature adulthood. She was so proud of her grandchildren making their way in life in their own special ways, as strong caring individuals with purpose and plans for the future. The imminent arrival of her first great-grandchild gave her a sense that the clan identity was continuing on into the future. She was ready to depart in peace.
We will miss her so much. We rejoice that she is released from the restrictions and limitations that made day-to-day life more difficult. We cry and express our sadness, yet we do not lose hope because we know that love is stronger than death, and that the life she has shared with us has helped us to become the people that we are.
This morning I walked along the bank of the Waikato river – the river where her father chose to make his home, where Mum was born, committed her life to Christ, trained as a nurse, married, and where the three gorgeous redheads were born. The old Central Baptist Church on the banks of the river was the scene of many family weddings and other occasions. It was the river beside which we lived as a family at the Narrows, and runs through the town where each of us has lived as adults, where we farewelled our Dad eight years ago and where our Mum is now laid to rest.
I made my own letter L from a piece of discarded flax, trimmed from the bush so that new shoots can grow and flourish.
This L is for letting go.
So depart in peace dear mother
Let the current of God’s love carry you far into his heart
where you are treasured forever
Enjoy fullness of life in the Saviour
whose death and resurrection we celebrate this weekend
And may the Holy Spirit keep your Spirit safe through all eternity
We will now have a time of quietness to remember our mother, sister, Grammy, friend. Let go of what we need to let go of, and keep deep in our hearts the things we need to remember and cherish.
I still have some letting go to do. Thanks for bearing with me - those who have got this far. And thank you so much to CR for the opportunity for this therapeutic outburst. You must be such an amazing pastor to your people.
Disclaimer: This post is a therapeutic outpouring of personal story and is not an overt or covert criticism of any person or priest or professional living or deceased on any planet at any time. It is a psalm of praise for the wonderful professional support we received at a vulnerable time. It just may not sound like it at first.
Having relatively recently been part of a 'bereaved family' I now cringe at how bossy we were with the minister. I even told him what to put in the prayers. In fact I wanted him to use a prayer that I had written as an exemplar because it was such an excellent model. I wasn't at all certain that he would get it right! Family members did write and present one of the prayers.
And we refused to tell all Mum's life-long friends about longstanding but largely-hidden-from-public-view issues that had affected our family life. It kind of seemed a betrayal of her personal history despite the minister's best CPE stance that everything had to be put out in the open. Why should people who had known her for over 50 years suddenly, after her death, be told of something she had kept to herself through long years. Also he only seemed to pick up on the negatives of what we said and not the positives of living with a person of extremes. I still think we were right - our position was that we were not prepared to say anything about Mum after her death that we would not have said in front of her during her life.
I guess from the other side of the fence we were farewelling someone we loved very very deeply and who (for us her daughters) had known us our whole lives. And because of the circumstances we were entrusting this task to someone who had some brief associations with her in the past but who had known her mainly as a frail and rather lonely elderly woman.
It was a huge thing for us to entrust someone with this farewell. We were in the midst of really mixed up emotions. Our Mum was very particular - and idiosyncratic - about aspects of her faith and we wanted that to be respected. She had distanced herself from the institutional church for several years. Yet avidly watched religious television and talked about faith with family members. Not all of us are active churchgoers and we didn't want to force any member of the family to take part in something that was false to their personal position. Some of our family are at the evangelical end of the spectrum and were already saying things like "Hallelujah Father! Welcome your daughter home at last." It was also important not to compromise their experience and beliefs. It was so important to get it right. For everyone. Without reducing the frustrating, wonderful, generous, stubborn, innocent, loving, hurtful, hurt, family-focused, opinionated, creative mother with whom we enjoyed complex life-giving relationships. And me being an INFP control freak I placed that task of getting it right firmly on my own shoulders.
Yes I know the minister was the professional. As I write this I hear all the clergy reading it chorusing "Don't you think we know that". "We have trained for fifty zillion years and we know what we are doing." "Your family is just like the hundreds of other families we have done this for." "Just let me get on with my job."
Well perhaps that was part of it. For you it is your job. For us it was our life. It was our only chance to do this. We knew the people who would be there. Our aunties and uncles had also known us our whole lives, and our Mum had been part of their whole lives (at least the ones in her immediate family). To the professional we were one of many. We were farewelling our only mother. We had a lot invested in making sure that the farewell was good and that there was room for healing and rejoicing. And to be honest we had all attended some pretty terrible funerals over the years. As well as some amazingly good ones. We didn't know which kind this would turn out to be.
The tears are pouring down my face now. I didn't realise there was so much stuff I still had to work through. But how did it go you ask? I know my partner was surprised at how controlling we were and if he reads this he might be surprised at the persisting depth of feeling over four months later (as I am actually). If the minister blogs his post would probably read like that of Crimson Rambler. It's probably the example of difficult family he uses in CPE courses.
But for us - it was brilliant. All these people from Mum's childhood appeared, the church was absolutely packed. The singing was of the high calibre that can only come when you combine Baptist and Presbyterian traditions going back for generations. The minister must have received an extra measure of grace as he patiently and with great care held the whole assembled group together and supported participants. As well as stage-managing the non-appearance of two readers (their father tried to take a 'short-cut' to save time driving to the church and ended up running into a major obstacle that delayed them significantly), a soloist bursting into tears, a candle in a church with no matches, and a prop that didn't fit on the stand provided. And he drove me to the crematorium with grace and care. Comments afterwards reflected that together we had achieved what we set out to achieve - a realistic but positive celebration of a life lived sincerely. There was a good balance of tears and laughter. Of course facilitated by the gentle professional management of the event. A person who had been estranged by comments from Mum reestablished a relationship with our family (and works 500 metres away from one of my sisters so they can meet for coffee or lunch). Driving along the river at the end of the day I wanted to tell Mum how good it had been and to let her know who had come to pay their respects.
Reflecting back I realise how frustrating this must have been for a person skilled and trained in pastoral care to deal with. It must have felt as if we had a basic lack of confidence in his abilities. Yet our drive to control was based on some really deep fears. That a real person would be made into some kind of plaster saint. That small parts of a life now completed would be exaggerated and be the focus of events. And some real hopes. That hurts might be healed. That understanding might grow. That someone who had found it hard to accept love might be remembered with love.
When we realised that this was understood we were able to be supported and loved through our farewell to our Mum. Thanks to CR for helping me to see just how much pastoral care was involved in bringing us to that point.
At the end of our tribute to our mother I said:
... The words we will use later today in the committal part of the service are especially apt for our Mum: "Lord, I am your servant, and now I can die in peace, because you have kept your promise to me."
She had a strong sense of God’s faithfulness to her, that kept her free from harm. God had kept his promise to her. She had seen her children grow to mature adulthood. She was so proud of her grandchildren making their way in life in their own special ways, as strong caring individuals with purpose and plans for the future. The imminent arrival of her first great-grandchild gave her a sense that the clan identity was continuing on into the future. She was ready to depart in peace.
We will miss her so much. We rejoice that she is released from the restrictions and limitations that made day-to-day life more difficult. We cry and express our sadness, yet we do not lose hope because we know that love is stronger than death, and that the life she has shared with us has helped us to become the people that we are.
This morning I walked along the bank of the Waikato river – the river where her father chose to make his home, where Mum was born, committed her life to Christ, trained as a nurse, married, and where the three gorgeous redheads were born. The old Central Baptist Church on the banks of the river was the scene of many family weddings and other occasions. It was the river beside which we lived as a family at the Narrows, and runs through the town where each of us has lived as adults, where we farewelled our Dad eight years ago and where our Mum is now laid to rest.
I made my own letter L from a piece of discarded flax, trimmed from the bush so that new shoots can grow and flourish.
This L is for letting go.
So depart in peace dear mother
Let the current of God’s love carry you far into his heart
where you are treasured forever
Enjoy fullness of life in the Saviour
whose death and resurrection we celebrate this weekend
And may the Holy Spirit keep your Spirit safe through all eternity
We will now have a time of quietness to remember our mother, sister, Grammy, friend. Let go of what we need to let go of, and keep deep in our hearts the things we need to remember and cherish.
I still have some letting go to do. Thanks for bearing with me - those who have got this far. And thank you so much to CR for the opportunity for this therapeutic outburst. You must be such an amazing pastor to your people.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Lock me in, Lock me out
Songbird posted the Friday Five this week with some disconcerting news:For some reason, Blogger declared this blog possible SPAM and locked us down yesterday. This morning, we're free to post again, but there was a fair amount of excitement last night among our contributors, who found a dire notice on their Blogger dashboards threatening that this blog might be deleted in 20 days!
We requested a blog review, and I posted a request at the Blogger Help group, where I found we were not alone. Many other perfectly nourishing and cromulent blogs got the same notice last night.
This turned out to be a very small barricade in our blogging community life, but it seemed appropriate to explore locks and blocks and other barriers this week. Also, I liked the picture of the security team above! Could they be Blogger's Spam Prevention Robots, working overtime?
In honor of their efforts, I bring you the "Lock Me Out, Lock Me In" Friday Five.
1) How do you amuse yourself when road construction blocks your travel?
Generally just sit in the car and twiddle my thumbs. It can be an opportunity to explore some of the byways if there is a possible alternative route. If I'm at risk of developing a version of road rage, the story I remember is of women from Hinds in mid-Canterbury at the turn of the previous century, who were concerned that their children hadn't been baptised. So they set out on foot and horseback to traverse over 100 kilometres. On the way home a horse stumbled fording a river (there were no bridges at that time) and one of the children momentarily swept away. Kind of keeps things in perspective when I think of that commitment to travel.
2) Have you ever locked yourself out of your house? (And do you keep an extra key somewhere, just in case?) Yes and yes.
3) Have you ever cleared a hurdle? (And if you haven't flown over a material hurdle, feel free to take this one metaphorically.) Athletics and I were never good mates, but metaphorically - I have overcome a fear of using a lawnmower (my Dad did a very good job at convincing me as a little girl how dangerous they were, and working in Casualty I saw a few chopped up fingers) and now enjoy mowing the lawns. We have a Camphor Laurel in our backyard and I just love the fragrant leaves chopped up in the grass in this wintertime.
4) What's your approach to a mental block? Nothing consistent but a mix of
- Go for a walk
- Spend a set time in a specific creative activity
- Move to another task
- Persist and break through the barrier
- Find some more routine part of the project to focus on (e.g. preparing the graphics, data analysis, formatting etc)
- It is a bit strange but I do find PowerPoint can be helpful when I have a writing block. Visualising the final presentation can help to sort out what really needs to be said.
My brain does not cope well with 'funny' at this time of night but they do make me think of the nursery rhyme Three blind mice
Three plastic guards
See how they stand
Stolid helmetted fixed in place
Danger lurking beneath each face
Did you ever wonder where they would race
If they could run
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