An Adoration

In this snowfall season the birth

Of God’s furious and tender Son

Gives us our holy days by fire. Earth

Cradles once more the hope that Eve

And her winter children will receive

The Sunlit garden; because dear

Has no room in our savior’s castle

All love shepherds us.  The pageant kings

weep for us.  In argent rings

Heavent’s wild gabriels wrestle

For our very souls.  What stables here

Is time for us to give our sin

The shape of kneeling, to perch seven

Times seventy singing robins

Of forgiveness on our tongues

Blessing our enemies, that the bones

Which we have broken may rejoice.

No one is lost, not one, who yields

Himself to Christmas.  The red ribbons

Of his grief adorn us.  The voice

Of his mercy is heard in our fields.  

-Arnold Kenseth 

Recipe for Carrot Yogurt Muffins

Spiced Carrot Muffins 

 These took a little work, but THEY ARE SO WORTH IT.  I usually substitute applesauce for oil in muffins, but the 4 tablespoons of butter are so worth it.  I also found some leftover cheesecake topping or crust that my lovely friend Amanda left in my fridge.  Yes.  The perfect match. 

1/2 cup whole wheat flour +1/2 cup white flour +3/4 cup mix of bran flakes, steel cut oats, flax seed meal  (OR 1 3/4 - cups all purpose flour)
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 - teaspoons baking powder
3/4 - teaspoon baking soda
1/2 - teaspoon salt
2 - teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
3/4 - cup plain or greek yogurt
4 - tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
1/2 - teaspoon vanilla extract
1 - large egg
1/4 - cup orange juice (OR milk)
2 - cups peeled, shredded carrots or 3/4 - cup pureed carrots
1/2 - cup raisins, optional
1/2 cup crumbled unbaked graham cracker crust, optional BUT DO IT

Preheat oven to 370. Line 12 cups of a standard muffin tin with paper liners; set aside. If not using muffin liners spray each muffin tin with baking spray. In a large bowl, stir together flour, sugars, pumpkin-pie spice, baking powder, baking soda, and salt; set aside.

In a separate bowl, whisk together yogurt, orange juice, butter, egg and vanilla. If using pureed carrots add the pureed carrots to the wet ingredients.

If using shredded carrots fold into the batter last. Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add yogurt mixture. Stir until just combined. Fold in shredded carrots and raisins if using.

Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups and bake for about 20 minutes or until golden brown or when a toothpick inserted comes out clean.

I had to use a small spatula to get them out of the pan because they were very moist, but they held their shape.
















(Adapted from Martha Stewart and mommyskitchen.net) 

Carrots and Post Vacation Stress Disorder

We bought carrots in bulk because Samm has cut out all carbs for a while.  I have NOT cut all carbs, however, and I was craving muffins, which I often do!  so this morning I decided, I'll make carrot muffins.
I'll be honest.  I almost lost it in the process.  I burned the carrots when I tried to steam them.  I poured the brown sugar into the flour mixture before I realized it was essentially a pile of rocks.  I couldn't get the food processor lid on.  Couldn't find the baking powder.  And in the midst of this (fairly close to the beginning)  Mary Lou began wailing dramatically for no discernable reason.  Crying. Bloody. Murder.


I felt certain the gods didn't want me to have carrot muffins.

But.  The carrots (burnt as they were) and I prevailed!

I had to toss Lulu in a bath with baking soda (what won't that solve, I ask?)  And we made it!
And...again being honest here...the muffins were ridiculously good.  Here is the recipe...

Life has been slowly easing back toward normal.  We spent 10 days seeing Samms family and the coast in California. Then samm went to Chile for 9 days and Lulu and I flew home.  We made a very fancy welcome home banner for samm because he was sorely missed.

And now we are back in business as it were. Naps.  Farmers markets.  Playdates.  Big stuff.
 
I loved California.  I loved that you never totally felt indoors.  That you could wear a jacket in the morning and a swim suit later.  That everyone has lemon trees!  And avocados are 10/1$.  This picture is my favorite.  Lulu spent several happy days wandering in Aunt Laurel and Uncle Davids back yard, talking to their chickens, picking oranges with Laurel, playing happily with dirt.  It was very restful.
I'm trying to imagine ways to create some of that rest and connection with nature in our little townhouse life here in Pittsburgh.

Carrot muffins is a start for today.

My Pinterest in the world

So, here we go.  I'm feeling really judgy.  And that usually comes when I'm feeling really guilty.  

I cannot wrap my mind around the amount of pictures of dresses and cakes and long lit tables and trendy owled bedrooms there are in the world.  

Who really cares? 

Me.

I subscribed (somehow, I honestly don't know how Pinterest works at all) to feeds that appealed to me. So I can't actually say anything.  

And through "pins" on Pinterest, I just found some mom blogs that talked about spending time bonding with your toddler, which I need to do.  

So that was inspiring. 

Why do I feel so undeniably queasy when I'm pinning away?

I just want to be inspired the old fashioned way.  By moms I know.  

By watching them pay attention to their toddlers.  By going to dinner parties under dangling lights.  

By baking muffins for friends.

I am sick of screens.  But they connect us, they link us to information that can inspire us to live better. But in the meanwhile, I forget to live.  I click, click, click.  

Save me from myself, internet world.  Oh wait, you can't.  

Zen Garden

I am a broken record.  Me and apparently a dear friend who confessed this morning that she, too, is always saying to her friends (I can vouch for this) that she's about to not be busy.  But really, she has been pretty busy for years.  So she's a broken record too.  

I tell people - I tell myself - I will be happy and calm and accept myself as a good person who has not completely failed at life... in just like a day or two.  

When the house is clean, there are no piles of mysteriously clean and/or dirty clothes, when I have played with Lulu with full attention but also had delightful and deep conversation with a friend, maybe all the friends I'm behind with- oh - and all the new ones I've met who I want to connect more with... 

And then, when that happens, of course I'll quickly finish my masters and probably get a PHD in something brilliant and everyone will start thinking differently about women and church and fertility and all that stuff because I submitted my thoughts to them.  Also, obviously, at that point, I will have a really great lush yard that reminds people faintly of Eden.

Yeah. 

Well.

A girl can dream.

I should dream instead of be so miserable about that stupid pile in my bedroom that I've been blogging about FOR YEARS NOW.  Come on. 

I noticed when I was walking Lulu around our delightful neighborhood yesterday that every single beautiful window box, planter, garden, or tree that wasn't dying [our one tree is dying]  

made me feel really angry and jealous and sad that I couldn't create something so peaceful and beautiful.

I did plant some kale and other veggies, and there are technically some flowers growing out there. Here is a picture of my best landscaping yet...

Mhmm.  Very exciting.  I call it my zen garden because it has no weeds in it.  

So, I realized as I was literally grieving how awesome everyone's great gardens were....and that is ridiculous.  It's free to look!  Their gorgeousness is my gain.  How arrogant, how self-centered to only feel joy in a garden that I created in my yard.  And to be unable to take joy in the flowers on other people's fences. 

I realize that the zealousy is a symptom of something much more serious.  A lack of thankfulness.  A lack of deep joy.  A lack of peace.  

I mean, in part, I am a toddler's mom stuck at home a lot and a lush yard would provide some peace and joy, no doubt.  (Does anyone know?  Can someone get back to me on that?) 

But also, this is life.  Today is life.  My yard, my piles, this is life.  So.

Thank you little orange flowers for being perennials.  Thank you for being so friendly.  Sorry I've envied other flowers.  I appreciate you and your simplicity and the color you bring to a pretty bland spot in the yard.  

Also, there is still time to plant.  

This day gets a...B minus

My man ended up working all day.  And by all day I mean he left at 6:30 am and now I'm in bed at 10:30pm and he is still on set.  *sigh* 

Me and many spouses around the world home alone.  Home with kids. Poor lulu. I'm so lame after a full day alone with her.  When Samm is gone all day/evening I go into survival mode.

After 2nd nap we snuggled in the recliner and munched cookies while I finished my greys anatomy episode (yes I am ashamed. We should have read books or something). Keats the cat was on my lap swishing his tail in her face the whole time.  We ordered pizza for dinner as a kindof pity party, and I wore her in the the moby wrap through the rain to pizza hut. 

Every boring errand with Lulu along becomes an adventure.  People melt in her presense. They want to talk about their children.  The middle age black lady walking out with 2 pizzas tells me about her 13 year old son who only in recent years stopped sleeping in her bed.  We admitted how much we adored nursing. I said I bet she had such an awesome bond with her son when she seemed  apologetic for co-sleeping.  Who cares!  Mom, you gotta do what you gotta do! 

As Lulu flopped along strapped to my front, I felt so grateful to have her.  So delighted by how interested she was in the umbrella. The pizza box.  The rain drops. 

But also so weary in the face of her boundless energy.  I'm so lazy. So boring.  She is this lighting bug buzzing around my house, carefully piling potatoes in my huge sack of baking soda, giggling when I chase her, shaking with rage when I do not let her play on the dishwasher door.

So much person in such a tiny sweet package. 

I feel my day was a dud. Didn't clean much.  Didn't finish taxes.  Didn't ---- (fill in the blank with 20 other things, shower being among them).

Actually I started writing a song.

And I hung out with Lulu the little firefly. 

I don't know exactly where the line is between living in the moment and eating cookies so you can make it through the moment.  Well, as my friend Christine noted today, gaining weight does put a damper on the cookie plan. 

Eastertide

Is that a word?  It feels like it is.  My whole life I have wanted to wake up on Easter and have a party.  I mean banners, flowers, leaping, clapping, food... just... undignified and serious jubilation.  Like when there were riots on the Southside after Pittsburgh won the Superbowl and the Stanley Cup and the northside when Obama won - which all happened the year we moved to Pittsburgh.  People were running around in circles in the street yelling and cars were honking and strangers were grinning at each other.  

Easter is like news that the boys are coming home from Iraq.  (and the girls).  

Like news that the cancer went into remission.  Like the news that after ten years of negatives, this pregnancy test was positive. 

It doesn't change anything immediately.  Yet.  

If it's true, it changes everything eventually.  

Well maybe the Stanley Cup doesn't change everything.

Apparently CNN posts an article every Easter about the fairytale nature of the "traditional belief" in the Resurrection.  I read it this year and found myself strangely unmoved.  I am usually a little queasy at least when I read those kinds of articles.  I think agnostics have a lot of good points.  I don't disagree with their points, just their conclusion.  I even agree "you can't know" if you're "right."  At least, not in this life.  Not for sure.  There's a lot of guessing and hoping.  

But to me, that still begs the question... which story is the most likely?   Knowing that I have to live, have to choose, have to respond to the testimonies about Christ and what he said and did...and the people who have died to tell his story... I think there is more than enough reason to live on the hope that He did rise and that it matters to my life and to yours.  

So preachy sounding, sorry.  But this is my head this week.  Did it happen, does it matter, what difference has the resurrection made in my life?  In my family?  

So church was like a party... candles welcoming you into the halls, flowers hung in baskets like a Lord of the Rings castle hall, banners and colors and wreaths and songs and bells!  

But then by the time we reached the car, our family was engulfed in an all out episodic brawl about women's rights in church. There was yelling, there was crying.  It was Easter, damnit.  

And so we resolved to respect each other and disagree (at least, I think that's what happened) and life went on, and now I wonder.  I wonder how Christ's initial reversal of death rolls back into history, into time, into our days.  If it's all "not yet" - all about life after death and nothing here now whatsoever, I find that very suspicious.  Sounds like a coping mechanism for a sad life.  Like an excuse to not deal with things now. 

But I believe it's more than that.  I believe Jesus didn't leave us alone (John 14!) and that we are haunted by loveliness because it is real and that the flowers waking up each spring and the leaves unfurling and the earth turning are evidence of the real story.  Not a story about a King of a Religion.  No.  A King of a GARDEN.  A king who started with eden and animals and sex and waterfalls and walked with man.  A king who made lungs and clouds and lizards.  

It sounds like a fairytale.  But honestly, things are just so bad, so wrecked, so sabotaged [WHY do people have affairs? Why do they hurt so badly if ??]   that there isn't really any sensible explanation. They're all missing proof.  There's no such thing.  LIFE is crazy.  The amount of beauty and pain is crazy.  The magic of new life and the rhythm of seasons... these things are crazy.  Jesus rising from the dead?  I can believe that. 

Now to live in the power of that hope of restoration.  

The Honest Truth

I think people blog for two reasons:  to be honest and to inspire other people.  I have not blogged much recently, and it's because if I am honest these days it probably won't be very inspiring.

Here is a metaphor from this morning.  This is what an inspiring blog shows:

Source: bostoninteriors.com via Patty on Pinterest

That is not my bedroom/office.  You probably figured that out.

On the other hand...

...this is!   No desk... You can see Lulu has been "sorting" my magazines.  My plant table is literally in pieces with no plant to be seen.  The blinds we bought a year ago are... still in boxes.  The new pretty filing box I found at Goodwill is still empty.

Notice the "Real Simple" magazines peeking out.  They mock my pain.  Ha ha.

Been wildly aware of my inadequacies this past couple months.  Been pushed to the brink of my limits and found a disappointing capacity to bear up under the stress.

I have made poor choices.  Like my little daughter, I love applause.  I love making everyone love me.  I think I may be addicted to it.  When someone says, "Can you --- (lead worship, sing for this concert, meet me for coffee, host us next month, etc.) ?"  I feel the only right answer is always "Yes."

This has turned out to be very much incorrect.

The clutter in this corner of my bedroom, the room I most neglect because no one else sees it except the love of my life and myself and my cat, it haunts me, demonstrating vividly how cluttered my days have become.  There is a total lack of simplicity.  A lack of peace.

I do find beautiful moments in other rooms in the house.  The guest room is clean and has an office that I go sit in some mornings during nap time.  Sacred, sacred nap time.  I light candles, turn on music, strum guitar, try to read good books, try to plan worship sets that fit the liturgy for February, try to rest my soul.

The best mornings I wake up before Lulu and make coffee and read Isaiah.  Or Luke.

Not all rooms in the house have fallen into complete disarray.

But I am astonished to feel the inner chaos that comes from my room, my most personal space being so chaotic.  It is not just a cause of my inner chaos, but a revelation of it.  A hint that things are not so smooth.

Things I am most thankful for in my life - my husband, my baby, my new job at Church of the Ascension - they have all filled me with fear and anxiety instead of joy lately.  And I do not think it is their fault.  It is because I fill up my time and my mind and my house with other things.  Because I do not stop to be thankful.  Because I am weary in my soul.

I am tired of the city, tired of the noise.  I read this morning in One Thousand Gifts that habits only leave when you replace them with other habits.  I was struck.  My New Year has been a disappointment because I was hoping to improve my habits by sheer will power.  By optimism.  Which is how I approach all of life.  Realistically, there is not time to go to Trader Joes and write songs today, but if I wish wish wish maybe it will just magically happen.

No.

I have to start being honest.

Honest when people who ask (announce!) they can come in town.
Honest when people who ask me to come to events, to sing, to host.
Honest when I have needs.  (blinds up in my bedroom?)

Honest with myself.  If I host Shabbat, I probably can't do much else that week.  It will take me two days to recover.  If I have friends in town, I may not even be able to host Shabbat as planned.

If I am a poor judge of time estimates, I am a worse judge of energy estimates.  I didn't use to be a mom.  Between being up at night, being strong enough to always feed her meals, give her baths, change her diapers, all these choices I have to be strong enough to make... there is NOT a lot of strength left for self, work, house, bills, husband, church. Etc.

So.  baby steps, right?  Oh!  What a new meaning those words have as I think of Lulu's drunken toddles to and fro, as she sort of lunges crazily across the floor grinning wildly at her tiny success.



Baby steps.

Ahahhhh.  THIS is the problem!  I see the broad picture!  The epic failure, the deep desires... but what on earth is to be done about it.  I need a Type A friend to suggest something particular.

Clean the corner in my room.  That's probably a really, really good place to start.