Sunday dinner and beyond

I was feeling better (probably more energetic than I really was) and decided to cook Sunday dinner for Bill who was coming over after Mass at the cathedral. I swiftly regretted not taking a photo of the main course. Mind you, it was mostly rather simple.

Pork roast, already marinated by Costco and sealed in a cryopac. I took that out of the freezer on Saturday. Mashed potatoes (with cream cheese, butter, milk, white pepper, salt, and nutmeg) - more on those in a moment. Green peas taken out of the freezer and microwaved. See? Simple. Oh, and a sauce.

The supermarket had some lovely sweet peppers and I bought a nice orange one and roasted and peeled it. (Roast directly over the gas flame until it is charred all over, then put in a moist brown paper bag to sweat for ten minutes. Remove and peel under running water.)

The sauce began with about two tablespoons of finely minced onion and an entire small package of crimini mushrooms (they call them baby bellas now, but I mean the brown ones) chopped, sauteed in butter and oil. I added thyme and freshly ground black pepper. Then I tossed in the chopped roasted orange pepper. When those were partly caramelized I set them aside and deglazed the pan with white wine. To that I added some beef stock and about half a teaspoon of demi glace (you DO keep that in your fridge at all times, right?). I cooked the liquids down to about one third their original volume then added the onion-pepper-mushroom mixture. Bill tasted it and it did not need adjusting. The sauce was done except for adding some pan juice from the pork roast at the end.

Not long after Bill arrived I was running about doing this and that and doing what I do best in a kitchen: schvitzing like a behayma. As I frantically wiped my brow with paper towels and tried very hard not to bump my nose in the process, with only mixed success, Bill volunteered to mash the potatoes, which he did and I could calm down.

As the meat rested I microwaved the peas, reheated the sauce, warmed the plates. Then I sliced the pork and served up. I used my mother's china because it was Sunday dinner. The result was pleasing to the eye and even with my impaired sense of smell it tasted great. Since I was winging this without recipes, I was relieved and pleased.

There were fresh flowers on the table and ironed napkins.

You can see the salad course above: mixed greens tossed with canola oil, white balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper. Topped with chunks of pear, toasted pecans, and dried cranberries.

Dessert was slices of fruit cake and small glasses of port.

I did very little cooking in the period 2002 to last year but have begun to cook more. I hate cooking for myself. Sunday was a nice excuse to do up a formal meal. It wore me out but it fed my soul.

Last night (Sunday/Monday) I slept through the entire night. This was the first time in a week and I am greatly relieved and encouraged. Sleep has been segmented and inadequate as I have been recovering. Although I did not go to work today, and won't until next week, this felt like a Monday. The only accomplishments were cutting my hair and riding the exercise bike but I am beat. I managed to go seven hours between painkillers, which was really stretching it further than I should have. Anyhow, I am clearly recovering.

Last week I was too out of it to feel cabin fever. I think it is setting in now in week two. I could not help wondering why I have to spend this week home also but I have realized over the weekend that my number one job right now is to protect my nose. It is tender and fragile, even though it looks just like before surgery on the outside. It is incredibly easy to bump it, nudge it, wrinkle it up, etc. in the course of unconscious daily life. I must be mindful, night and day, to prevent that from happening. I must wash my face and shave very carefully. I cannot rub my nose, scratch it, blow it, etc. I cannot sleep in my favorite positions. I have to pay attention even wiping my brow. My upper lip is badly bruised on the inside from the trach tube and this makes some drinking awkward and can cause sudden sharp, but mercifully brief, pain. Which can trigger a sneeze. That I can't wipe as usual. Bottom line: I can't resume habitual behavior just yet. And I am still pretty much a mouth breather. Most unattractive.

Patience, Grasshopper.

Thanks for letting me share another meal with you all. If I cannot gather all my online friends around my table and feed them, I can at least share the memories. Hope that's not too much of a tease.

--the BB

Advent thoughts – Monday of Advent 3

There is so much to ponder in the Daily Office readings that I barely have time to glance through them and pick out what catches my attention. Even then, I try to focus. Y'all know how I CAN carry on. There is so much that can be said and so little I have to offer each day. That said, here are three items for today.

“Then if anyone says to you, “Look! Here is the Messiah!”* or “There he is!”—do not believe it. For false messiahs* and false prophets will appear and produce great signs and omens, to lead astray, if possible, even the elect. Take note, I have told you beforehand. So, if they say to you, “Look! He is in the wilderness”, do not go out. If they say, “Look! He is in the inner rooms”, do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man.” (Matthew 24:23-27)

When one looks at a passage that straightforward, one wonders how Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, can declare that he is "humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent" (see footnote 1 at Wikipedia) and yet church folk will attend conferences of his Universal Peace Federation and he has even convinced some pastors and congregations to take down their crosses. It makes me wonder if they have ever read Matthew 24.

[If you are a new visitor here--and we have had many in the last day--you may well have similar questions about me. I can assure you there is not a verse of the Bible I have not read several times, I have no desire to found new churches, I know myself to be a frail and sinful human (and God's beloved child at the same time), and there is nobody I choose to call Lord besides the Holy Trinity. Just so you know. That won't convince anyone I am Orthodox, nor should it, but does set some clear boundaries about false messiahs. All I publish here are my own thoughts on a wide variety of topics. It's a place I alternately spout and play.]

Only one more thing to say on the passage above: if it's the Second Coming, we won't have to wonder whether it is. We'll know.

Switching to the Apocalypse, we encounter a theme in the letter to the Christians in Philadelphia (the original one in Asia Minor, not the one in Pennsylvania) that recurs toward the end of the book.

‘And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write:


These are the words of the holy one, the true one,


who has the key of David,


who opens and no one will shut,


who shuts and no one opens:

‘I know your works. Look, I have set before you an open door, which no one is able to shut. I know that you have but little power, and yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name. (Apocalypse 3:7-8)



And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day—and there will be no night there. (Apocalypse 21:23-25)

It is the theme of the open door. Jesus is the one with the key. Jesus decides what is shut and what is open. We are treated to the image of a door that is never shut. Elsewhere he speaks of a closed door, but here of an open one.

In a world where we find defenses necessary for survival, where we keep our doors bolted and windows shuttered for protections, where we maintain our masks when interacting, keep persons and forces at bay, and generally avoid vulnerability, how very powerful it is to come toward the end of the Apocalypse (and the Bible) and find an image of unflinching openness!

God does not avoid blatant hints. Behold, I set before you this day life and death; therefore choose life! Hello! There is a door in front of you; it's open. [Hint, hint: try entering.] God offers an invitation and I hear echoing in my mind the chorus we sang in summer camp and Sunday school: "Jesus said that whosoever will (repeat two more times), whosoever will may come."

The New Jerusalem does not shut the gates and bar the doors at night. In fact, there is no night there. The radiance of Uncreated Light permeates everywhere. The final vision is not one of fear and defensiveness; it is one of openness and light. The kings who wailed over the fate of the wordly city, the city of earthly dominion and oppression and wickedness, the whore of Babylon--yes, those kings are now bringing their treasures into the heavenly city, the city of God, the bride of Christ, the new Jerusalem. I have often said that I don't know how God gets from chapter 18 to chapter 21, because there is one heckuva turnaround and transformation, but God can do what mortals cannot. So I trust God for the miracle and for the details. All I need to know is the hope found in the imagery that even Babyolon's buddies wind up entering those never-closed gates. Amazing. Unexpected. Pure grace. God at work.

Finally, there is this incredibly striking expression in the psalms of the day.

I said, "LORD, be merciful to me; heal me, for I have sinned against you." (Psalm 41:4)

Now, one would expect the logic to run like this:

I said, "LORD, be merciful to me; heal me, for I have kept myself without reproach." That is the reasonable appeal, the one that makes sense, the one we would normally anticipate. After all, that is how we try to bargain with God all the time. I know: futile and pointless and based on false premises, but we do it nonetheless.

The psalmist, however, understands fully the folly, blindness, and arrogance that would make that kind of appeal to God. Instead, with devastating self-awareness, honesty, and an audacity that knowns something of God's heart, the psalmist says, "Heal me, for I have sinned against you."

What other plea can we make? We need healing precisely because we cannot know true life without God's grace and our attempts fail repeatedly. It is because we overstep, miss the mark, walk about in illusion, and are just plain willful that we need healing and so the psalmist teaches us, with gobsmacking honesty, how to ask. Here it is, God. Help.

As Peter said to Jesus, "Where else will we go?" And under what other circumstances could we possibly ask?

It is all mercy. It is all the goodness of God.

--the BB
UPDATE: Maddie gives us this news from the Daily Nation (Kenya):

He is branded a blasphemer and a worshipper of evil, and has even been ostracised by his community. And his controversial sect, in which he claims to be “God the Father of Jesus”, has not won him many followers. Instead, it stirs feelings of anger and hatred wherever he goes.

At one point, Mr Jehovah Wanyonyi’s house was set ablaze at night as he and his family slept. This and other incidents have forced the spiritual leader of the Lost Israelites of Kenya sect of Kitale to shift several times over the past few years looking for a safer haven.

But despite all this seeming setback, Mr Wanyonyi soldiers on, saying that his message is the biblical truth, and that he is being sought for persecution just as Jesus was. But he is not just another mortal capable of sinning and dying, he says. And, because many people do not recognise him as the creator, he promises to punish the human race.

His commentary on Matthew 24 should be enlightening.

We'll see

Episcopal Café has a post up titled "End of Schism in Sight?" The topic is healing a 950-year rift between the Italian Church and the Orthodox Churches as discussed in a Times article by Ruth Gledhill. The Ravenna Document allegedly provides a map toward healing the schism. Trying to stay within the common 3-paragraph practice for fair use, I share the following from the Times:

If the proposals move forward, the Pope would be acknowledged as the universal Primate, as he was before the schism. Although it is not stated outright, he would be expected by the Orthodox churches to relinquish the doctrine of infallibility. The proposals could also allow married priests in the Catholic Church, as already happens in the Orthodox.

...

The document, The Ecclesiological and Canonical Consequences of the Sacramental Nature of the Church, has been produced by a commission of Orthodox and Catholic bishops and theologians that met in Ravenna in western Italy last month. The Russian delegate walked out of the meeting, an indication of the enduring disputes within the Orthodox Church.

...

The document suggests that the Pope, always referred to in the text as “Bishop of Rome”, could be the “first” among the regional patriarchs. But this would be only as a primus inter pares, with his authority resting firmly on the support and consensus of the other patriarchs. “Certainly Rome could not be the absolute centre of administration, with authority over all the others,” Greek Metropolitan Athanasios Chatzopoulos, one of the participants of the Ravenna conference, said. “The ‘primus’ would not be able to do anything without the consent of the other Patriarchs.”

I note with amusement the sentence: "Although it is not stated outright, he would be expected by the Orthodox churches to relinquish the doctrine of infallibility." This is rather like expecting the Bush White House to make substantive compromises in order to work in the bipartisan manner they keep saying should prevail in Washington. Not. Gonna. Happen.

But if it does, I want the popcorn concession as the Vatican out-contorts Chinese gymnasts to undo something they declared as dogma in the First Vatican Council.

Shall we all put on our imagination hats and envision the Pope as something like +Cantuar in the Anglican Communion? Wasn't that fun? You may now untangle your brains.

Frankly, as much as I would like the Great Schism to heal, I don't see why the Orthodox would degrade themselves to have anything to do with the Vatican. It needs a few more Vatican IIs and a few less Vatican Is before it is ready to play with the other children.

I am reminded why my faith is in God and not in any church.

Having said that, let us pray:

Gracious Father, we pray for thy holy Catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Savior. Amen.

Photo from the Southern Cross

UPDATE: For a humorous look at this and an interesting chat in comments, visit OCICBW. Evidently shoe mojo has a large role to play.
--the BB