Category Archives: Community

Snow candy

Today I was inspired by Little House in The Big Woods to try to make maple sugar snow candy.  With the help of the Greenhaus kids I gave it a shot.  Our first setback was when the maple syrup came out in a moldy clump.  Turns out I should have taken the “refrigerate after opening” more seriously.  So I switched to melted butter and sugar and we made something more like butterscotch, but still drizzled on snow.  We only got one really good batch in before it burned — turns out the sucker (pun intended) is very finicky — but it was fun anyway, and a learning experience.  I’ll do better next time.  Here are some pics.

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My clever friend

Here is the challenge:

impossiblelego

And here is my friend Joel’s creation:

triangle1

Nice, eh?  If you want to see how he did it, go here, but try to do it yourself first, it’s fun.  And by fun, I mean excruciatingly frustrating.

To see what else Joel is up to, visit his blog, Whistling in the Dark.  He actually means that literally as well as figuratively.

Almost lost

The internet has a way of finding what I thought I’d lost, like old friends, and sometimes losing them again. I thought it had done it to me again, when a friend from myspace, who was technically (no pun intended) not lost, it’s just that I never hang out on myspace anymore, showed up on facebook and started posting all these interesting thoughts and writings and such, as this particular friend is prone to do, and then suddenly disappeared, left, without saying goodbye, leaving me with his comments tragically pale, literally (pun intended) rendered opaque to signify that a friend had come, commiserated, and left. But, the internet giveth again, and I have foundeth his shiney new 2009 blog, and in the spirit of that world wide generosity I share it with you.

http://jerespresso.blogspot.com/

As this friend likes to reminds me, You are not alone.

Forgiveness (not the Rod Stewart song, God forbid, this is something else).

Recently I had a conversation with a friend in which we both raised a bunch of things that we’d been upset with each other about for a while.  It was really good to be heard and for him to apologize, but what surprised me is that the real healing for me came in hearing how I had hurt him, in apologizing and in him offering his forgiveness.

This struck me as really significant.  We all have the desire to be forgiven when we have done something wrong, and the desire to know when we’ve done something wrong so we can repent of it.  True repentance is very different from the sort of free-floating guilt and shame that all of us deal with to some level or another, and which can be quite debilitating.  This is a particularly significant delineation in the Christian concept of sin.  I am a sinner (original sin, which afflicts us from our birth into Adam and Eve’s legacy) and I have and do sin (specific sins of commission and ommission).  But Christ’s death for me has wiped away the stain of original sin, and all I must do to receive forgiveness for my own sin is to ask.  If we have repented of our known sin, and asked the Spirit to convict us of any sin we’re unaware of — or too stubborn to admit to ourselves and God — then we are all set!  i.e. clean, forgiven, justified and pure in the eyes of God.  That nagging feeling that we are bad, or that what we do is bad or, worse, not good enough is NOT the voice of God.  The conviction of the Spirit is a clear, specific voice, and resolves into joy when we repent.

Thank God for forgiveness.

And on a lighter note, I continue to enjoy Boston’s billboards:

Stolen from a friend

Lately my friend Mark and I have been talking about the value of hope, and not, unfortunately, in a cheerful way. We both have illness that we have struggled with for a long time (he much longer than I), and agreed that it was easier not to hope than to hope and again and again be disappointed. It felt wrong to me, but that’s where I was. And still am to some extent. What about Philippians, suffering produces perseverence, perseverance character and character hope? Well, I may need character building, I’ll grant you, but I don’t really see that Mark does. Enough already.

Before I share the thing that cheered me (somewhat) up, I want to share the lyrics of a couple of songs that have been channeling my frustration and hopelessness.

“Because the keys to the kingdom got locked inside the kingdom

And the angels fly around in there, but we can’t see them.

But I’ve got a girl in the war, Paul, I know that they can hear me yell.

If they can’t find a way to help her they can go to hell.”

~Josh Ritter, Girl in the War

and

“I wish you would
Come pick me up
Take me out
Fuck me up
Steal my records
Screw all my friends
They’re all full of shit
With a smile on your face
And then do it again”

~Ryan Adams, Pick Me Up

I’m not really sure what that last song means to me, other than a hopeless resignation, but it is somehow very satisfying to hear him sing, “Fuck me up.” Like, I don’t care, do anything to me, it doesn’t make a difference at this point. A lyric from Ray LaMontagne did that for me last year,

“Well I looked my demons in the eye
Laid bare my chest said do your best destroy me
See I’ve been to hell and back so many times
I must admit you kinda bore me”

So this is how I’m cruising along, and I’m not saying that I’m doing badly: I’m getting things done, I’m officially on staff with IV, being paid for my job, and a lot of other things in my life are coming together, too. But there’s that lack of hope, and the feeling that I don’t want to hope. Then Mark finds this:

Let us in all the troubles of life remember – that our one lack is life – that what we need is more life – more of the life-making presence in us making us more, and more largely live. Let us rouse ourselves to live. Of all things let us avoid the false refuge of a weary collapse, a hopeless yielding to things as they are…he has the victory who, in the midst of pain and weakness, cries out…for strength to fight; for more power, more conscious-ness of being, more God in him. (George MacDonald, Unspoken Sermons)

I have been choosing the false refuge of a weary collapse, a hopeless yielding to things as they are. I repent. The victory is not in me being strong, the victory is in crying out for strength. More power, more consciousness of being, more God in me. May it be so, for me and for you.