Sage Advice

The meteorologists and scientists tell us that we are experiencing climate change. It is hard to discount their advice this year: the temperature tomorrow is forecast to be in the 60's -- this, the first day of February in Connecticut. We are cooking our climate, and the effects are one year of unbelievable snowfall followed by this year of June-uary.

This weekend I made pesto with sage that I picked that day from my kitchen garden. I still have collards and kale growing. My garlic is coming up. The vegetables do not know that it is winter. they are growing and flourishing in this odd New England January. And I am eating pesto fresh from my own garden in a time when all should be covered in a deep blanket of snow.

P.S. The pesto was wonderful and I made fresh pasta to go with it.

Sweetness and Light

On Saturday, my brother opened the bee hive. The bees have ended their winter’s hibernation and are back out, visiting dandelions, forsythia, clover, and vetch. The hive has the left-over honey from last year, what they did not need to see them through the cold. At the end of the fall, when almost everything had stopped blooming, the bees fed on basil blossoms. And the honey they made from those end-of-season flowers is lightly sweet and the color of summer sun. We uncapped the honeycomb, each cell a miraculous perfect little hexagon, and ate the honey in the yard, even as the bees flew off in search of the nectar of another spring.

Praying in the Produce Aisle

Grocery shopping can be a chore: something on the weekly to-do list, necessary but not especially rewarding or exciting. I suspect it is safe to say that most folks don’t approach this task as an occasion for prayer -- but perhaps we should.

The next time you are in the produce aisle, take some time to reflect on the bounty before you. Even a regular grocery store will have at least six varieties of apples, maybe eight different lettuces, five kinds of tomatoes. Kale comes in two or three forms, each one colorful and interesting; there are red, yellow, orange, and green sweet peppers, and small fiery chiles. For relatively small amounts of money, we can have the fruits of someone else's labor in unimaginable array.

When I am in a hurry, tired, stressed, it is easy to miss the extraordinary beauty and abundance in this ordinary place. But instead of mentally griping about the high prices or the hassle, I am trying instead to engage my shopping chores with a sense of gratitude and thanksgiving. I am trying to be mindful of the care and provision that God makes for all creation, understanding that as pure grace, and rejoicing.

And I am also reminding myself of those unable to partake of the bounty because they are poor, disabled, ill; because there is no real grocery story in their neighborhood; because they have to ride a bus to shop. I am reminding myself to offer prayers prayers of intercession on behalf of the hungry in my own area and then concentrating on putting those intercessions into action.

And finally, I think that produce aisle might also be a call to repentance. There is enough food in the world so no one has to go hungry and yet people are still starving to death. The problem is not lack of food, but lack of will. Might we repent of our self-focus and turn our skill and ability to repairing the structures that keep the hungry from being fed?

Physicist Brian Swimme writes about the creation of the universe as “a titanic bestowal, a stupendous quantum of free energy given forth from the bottomless vaults of generosity.” All that gift is played out in microcosm right there in the midst of the squash and the celery and the peppers. Let us pray that we may be part of realizing that overflowing abundance.

Vegetable of the Week

It is round and yellow, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. It looks like a lemon with funny little spines on it. But when I slice it open, the secret is revealed: It is a cucumber! It has the transparent seeds, the cool pulp, the taste and clean smell.

The great naturalist, scientist E. O. Wilson, has long been a proponent of biodiversity. I think he is mostly thinking about creatures, not vegetables, but I'm sure he would appreciate the lemon cucumber. I don't know what benefit there is in the world having a round yellow cucumber, except that it is a beautiful thing. And maybe that is all the justification that needed.

Pesto!

I made the first pesto of summer, with basil that I brought home from our farm in my suitcase. It has a lot of garlic -- so I can only eat it when I am going to be alone. It has the sharp, bright greenness that is both a color and a flavor. If my garden yields even half as much as my mother's, I will have lots to put in the freezer. Then, in the depth of winter, I will take some out, cook a little pasta, and have a taste of summer.... all by myself!

Beulah Land!

Last Sunday, we sang an old Southern hymn, "Dwelling in Beulah Land." You won't find it in the hymnals in the kind of churches I attend in Connecticut! The chorus has stayed with me all week:

I'm living on the mountain underneath a cloudless sky,

I'm drinking at the fountain that never shall run dry,

O yes! I'm feasting on the manna from a bountiful supply

For I am dwelling in Beulah Land.

There is one place in the Bible, Isaiah 62.4, that speaks of Beulah Land. It is a powerful statement of the promise of God's love fulfilled in the land itself, in the place of grounding, where the people find their life and livelihood. The prophet reminds them: "You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate;but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Beulah (Hebrew for Married); for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married."

It is odd to think of the land being married, but the old hymn explains the meaning. It is to come to a place of abundance and joy, a place where all that is needed for life is present in overflowing measure. Maybe Beulah Land is all around us but our culture has become so soaked with fear and greed that all we see is scarcity. It is a fact that there is enough food in the world for everyone to be fed, and yet countless numbers die of starvation every day.

I was in my own Beulah Land when I sang the hymn. In the few days I was there, different people showed up with various little gifts: a cabbage freshly cut from the garden, a dozen eggs right from the chickens, potatoes and onions newly dug, squash and blueberries just picked. It was a bountiful supply of manna and we indeed had a feast, several actually!

And the first verse of the hymn starts with these words: "Far away the noise of strife upon my ear is falling." I did, in those few days, feel that the noise of the world's strife was far away; not absent, but not overwhelming either. To live in the place of abundance is to be able to be present in a world that is far from perfect and still to know that God's intention for all the earth -- people, animals, plants, and everything -- is only good, always shalom. It is to remember that the whole universe is, indeed, as Brian Swimme has said, "bottomless vaults of generosity."

How to eat peas

Go to the field.

Pick the first five fat pea pods of the season.

Pop them open with your thumb,

and eat them raw, right then and there!

Christmas Eve

Christmas Bread

Micah 5:2-5a

Luke 2:1-20

What does Christmas smell like to you? Cinnamon, maybe, from cookies made with once-a-year recipes? How about pine needles from the tree set up in the living room? Or the warm, acrid smell of wood smoke from a fire in the fireplace? Maybe special company is coming and the house is full of the smell of wax and silver polish. There is also a special smell to a frosty December night when we are up late, waiting.

Christmas has many smells but I suspect that the smell of baking bread is not commonly considered a Christmas smell. Really, though, it ought to be. There is nothing more Christmassy than bread. But I doubt we think about our light bread or corn bread or biscuits as special Christmas food. Bread is so ordinary.

Except it isn’t, is it? As we gather around the Table here, the bread that we share is a powerful sign of God’s love in our midst. The bread that we break is the body of Christ. Nothing ordinary about that.

There is something about bread that feeds our bodies and our souls. When we speak of breaking bread, we are really talking about fellowship, nourishment for our hearts. Mother Teresa, a modern-day saint if ever there was one, spoke about her work with the desperately poor of Calcutta: "We give dying people bread," she said, "because they hunger and perish not just for bread but also for love. When we hand them bread, we are also giving them love." To be given bread when you are hungry is to be given love. That is what God does with us here, at this Table, on this holy night. God gives us love.

And tonight we turn our hearts to Bethlehem. We remember the little town where Jesus was born. We sing about it in our hymns. We picture it lying still under the starlight. We turn our hearts to Bethlehem, the little town whose name in Hebrew means House of Bread: bet which is house and lechem which is bread.

It was to Bethlehem, of course, that Mary and Joseph made their way. There was no room for them in the inn so they found shelter in the stable. There was no meal prepared and waiting for their arrival so they must have eaten the leftovers from their travels, hard crusts of bread perhaps washed down with milk still warm from a goat or a sheep in the stable. They were poor people. We kind of forget that when we look at lovely paintings of the holy family, clean and glowing, robed in blue and white.

And Bethlehem was a poor town. It was already an old village when Jesus was born. Although it was central in the history of David, in all truth, it was probably an insignificant place to all except those who lived there or had family connections there. It was close to Jerusalem, about five and half or six miles away, but certainly not as well known or important. It was just an ordinary place, nothing special – except in God’s eyes.

In fact, God had spoken through the prophet Micah to signal Bethlehem’s place in human history. It would be the place where the Messiah would be born, this tiny place. This “little clan of Judah” would be the origin of the one to rule the people, the one who would feed the flock, the one who would bring the peace the people hungered for. All that from just a little place.

Isn’t that so often the way God works, taking something small, insignificant, seemingly unimportant and using it to bring salvation and justice to the world? That is just what happened in Bethlehem, the little town whose name means “house of bread.”

Two simple, ordinary words for two simple ordinary things: house and bread. Except maybe not so simple and ordinary. A house is shelter, bread is food. These are the basics of survival; without them we would die. So Bethlehem, house of bread, comes to be that place that gives us what we need for life.

God’s miracle of a Messiah came into the world in that place. As the baby grew inside his mother, God was shaping the whole of human history. As a baker mixes the yeast in the dough, so God put eternal life in fragile flesh. Invisible at first, small and insignificant, growing and developing, coming forth to provide what we most need for life.

And as that baby grew into a child and into a man, he claimed for himself the legacy of his birthplace. He broke the bread and fed the multitudes. He gathered his disciples at the table. And he told a parable about the way God was at work in the world, at work in him. The kingdom of heaven, Jesus said, “is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measure of flour until all of it was leavened.”

And there is God for all of those centuries, kneading, shaping, working the yeast into the dough of the world until finally it began to rise in the womb of a young girl and she brought forth her firstborn son. She would name him Jesus and we would come to know him as the Bread of Life.

The gift of the Christ child, this good news of great joy for all the people, is like the gift of bread to the starving. The Messiah, the Bread of Life, fills our emptiness, answers our deepest hungers, renews and restores us, and gives us strength for the journey.

And as he is bread for us, so we are to be bread for the world. We are to be like loaves in his hands, taken, blessed, broken and multiplied, given in love to feed the hungers of a needy world.

There are many this night who cannot find their way to Bethlehem, who do not know the life giving presence of the one who is the Bread of Life. And there are many others who have no Bethlehem because they lack shelter and food. The one who has given us everything on this holy night calls us to give in return so that this weary world may know the coming of Christ that changes everything, when all will be fed and all will find a place to belong. The one who has given us everything calls us to make every house a Bethlehem, a house of bread, where Christ can be born and find shelter and nourishment. And where we, too, may be shaped by the hand of God into bread for the world, so that all who encounter us may know the glory of God and the peace of Christ just as those first residents of Bethlehem did so many years ago.

Every home a house of bread, every heart a Bethlehem. May it be so. Amen.

(c) Martha C. Highsmith 2009

49 million

From the New York Times, that is "the number of Americans who lived in households that lacked consistent access to food in 2008," the highest number since the US Department of Agriculture began tracking the data 14 years ago. Maybe those millions of people are not hungry all the time, but they live in a state of food insecurity. "In about one-third of those households, lack of money forced members to skip meals, cut portions or otherwise forgo food at some point. The rest had enough to eat, but only by eating cheaper or less varied foods or by relying on government or private help."

On this day the centers on food, when we gather around tables everywhere to give thanks, maybe we should also pledge to share what we have. There is enough in the world to feed the world. It is not the earth that holds back or fails to produce; it is us. A true celebration of God's abundance would mean that we do what we can to make sure all can experience it.

So today, eat, drink, be merry, enjoy family and friends. Give thanks for the blessings of God's good earth. And remember that all the free turkeys distributed by churches and food banks and others will be gone by next week. But the need will not.

Rainbow Chard

There is a frost warning for tonight, but my little garden seems not to know that the summer is past. After a slow start, the veggies are thick and green. I have picked armfuls of rainbow chard today and packed it into the freezer. You are supposed to cut out the stems because they get tough but they are so lovely -- bright yellow, red and orange -- and I left some in. In January, when the snow is deep and the garden is covered, I will make sauteed greens from the summer bounty. Maybe this recipe from Tyler Florence and the Food Network:

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup honey
• 1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
• 1/2 pint walnuts, for garnish
• 3 bunches assorted winter greens (such as Swiss chard, radicchio, or escarole), washed, stemmed, and torn into pieces
• 1 tablespoon grainy mustard
• Extra-virgin olive oil
• 1/2 cup pomegranate seeds, for garnish
• Parmesan shavings, for garnish
• 1 shallot, chopped, for garnish

Directions

Cook honey and balsamic together over medium-high heat in a large saute pan, about 5 minutes. Toast walnuts in a small skillet; set aside to cool.

Pile greens on a platter. Stir mustard into balsamic-honey dressing, then whisk in about 1 cup extra-virgin olive oil; pour over greens. Season greens with salt and pepper and garnish with walnuts, pomegranate seeds, shavings of Parmesan, and shallot.

Or I will brown some onion and garlic in olive oil, mix in the chard and maybe a little spinach, add a few red pepper flakes and a splash of balsamic vinegar.

And maybe I won't wait until January to try this out!

In the mail

In our family, we think that you can mail just about anything. I have gotten rocking chairs, an air conditioner, and pecan pies in the mail – and once, a whole set of bent wood lawn furniture. My mama mails me a lot of things. So when I came home and found a package from her, I was pleased but not surprised, at least not until I opened it. It was full of fresh North Carolina okra, cut by my daddy and sent off to me “up north.”

I cooked it the way we do at home: roasted with a little olive oil in a very hot oven and then sprinkled with sea salt. As soon as I took the first bite, I was transported in my mind to our kitchen table. It was a taste of home, so good, so fresh, so precious.

Food is necessary for life, of course, but it is not just nourishment for the body. It also feeds the soul and strengthens the ties to those we love. The okra is more than a vegetable; it is a love letter from home.

A Tiny Taste

from Father Joe: The Man Who Saved My Soul by Tony Hendra, page 63:

It took my breath away: the curve of the great path, the contrasts of raw earth against rushing cumulus, of tumbled old stone against tall young grass, of leaf-speckled oaks against the sea. A very different landscape than my placid, green-shaded Hertfordshire; this was impeccable and classic, every element of natural beauty in exact harmony, a foretaste of perfection, an amuse-bouche of Paradise.

I confess: I like to watch the Food Network. That is where it have learned that an amuse-bouche is a wonderful little dish that is only one bite. It is meant to tempt and delight the palate, similar to but not to be confused with hors d'oeuvre. This is a tidbit, often tiny, served as a free extra to keep you happy while you are waiting for your first course to come. It gives you an idea of the chef's approach to cooking and the restaurant's attention to your appetite. It is literally a happy mouth.

What an amazing way to think about this beautiful earth: a tidbit, just a taste, given to us now to show us God’s approach to all of eternity and God’s attention to our needs. As the psalmist says: O taste and see that the Lord is good (Psalm 34.8a).

Peace and Beans

When I was growing up, it was rare to see a grownup sitting down in the evening without a pan of beans or peas to shell. It was a perfect activity to go with story-telling, conversation, or gentle motion in a rocking chair. Last night I shelled and peeled the fat fava beans I got at the farmers’ market. I don’t know how long it has been since I have done something like that. But it brought me right back home to the farm, and I had that deep peace that I feel when I am there. The beans were done all too soon and I will enjoy cooking and eating them, but maybe I will savor the peace of their preparation the most.

Funeral Food

In the Bible stories that tell of events after Jesus’ death, there is a lot of eating going on. The two disciples from Emmaus have supper with the risen Christ; Christ shows up in a locked upper room and asks if there is anything to eat; he cooks breakfast for the disciples on the beach. This, apparently, is what you do after someone has died: you eat. Certainly, we have done that. Our friends and neighbors have brought wonderful, comforting, abundant food: fried chicken, barbeque, casseroles, pound cakes, strawberry pies, devilled eggs, butter beans, ham, homemade biscuits, gallons of iced tea. We have eaten food from the hands of those who love and care about us, and it has nourished our bodies and our souls. We have been fed and comforted, renewed and strengthened. And in that eating, that food, we have known the presence of the risen Christ, just as those sorrowful people did so long ago.

This Week's Bounty

My half-share from the CSA this week includes swiss chard, a bunch of scallions, two tender yellow squash, lettuce, and... garlic scapes. I have never cooked or eaten the scapes, but I will make a "from scratch" hummus with them, and if there are left-overs, I'll do a pesto. The vegetables are so beautiful, and it is wonderful to receive this bounty as a kind of weekly surprise. It feeds my body with goodness, it feeds my soul by connecting me in a much more direct way to the kind of farming life that was my growing up, and it feeds my spirit by stretching me to be creative and thoughtful about what I cook and eat. Last week, I made stuffed cabbage: pale and lovely Napa cabbage bundles filled with onions, mushrooms, garlic, carrots, herbs, and tofu -- so good!
I'll let you know how the scapes turn out.

A Half Share of Produce, A Full Share of Life

This year, I signed up for one of the local Community Supported Agriculture projects, Holcomb Farm. This was the first week. My half share included a bunch of white salad turnips, two green garlics, a lovely lettuce, and two heads of pak choi. Tonight I made supper from this wonderful harvest. I sliced the turnips in halves and quarters, tossed them with olive oil and sea salt, and roasted them (450 for 10 minutes, turn, another 5 minutes or so). I sautéed the turnip greens with olive oil and added the green garlic with lots of the green scapes, also sautéed. I had a bit of good bread leftover from dinner last night, contributed by a friend, and a slice of cherry upside down cake made with fresh cherries, from another friend. It was so good, this food from the earth, from my friends. It was like eating summertime. Tomorrow, I will have a salad with the tender green lettuce. Or I will steam the pak choi and sprinkle it with soy Parmesan cheese. And next week, there will be more vegetables and maybe even some strawberries.

Taking part in a CSA is like real life somehow – often good, a bit unpredictable, not something that can be easily planned, but challenging and surprising, pushing you to try things you never even imagined or knew existed. So I will not plan my menus this summer but will instead take what comes and do the best I can with it. I imagine there will be things that I like a lot (pak choi) and others that I don’t much care for (fennel), but it will all be nourishing and I will give thanks for it.

I will do this with my half share of produce – and with my full share of life.

This takes the cake!

Where I live now, the sugary coating that goes on a cake is called frosting; where I grew up, it is called icing. Either way, I was thinking about it this morning, and both words are appropriate descriptions for what I woke to see. It has been a long time since I made a seven-minute icing, but the world looked just as though God had spread a spatula of it across everything. It had snowed and then sleeted, and the whiteness was coated with a shiny smooth layer. It was beautiful. The sun sparkled on it like the candles on a birthday cake. The whole world looked as though it had been decorated for a celebration. Maybe that is why people love the idea of snow for Christmas. All that frosting and icing is a reminder that we are preparing, and being prepared, for the ultimate birthday party!

Holy Food

I've been going to the gym in the mornings. While I'd just as soon tread away in silence, the two TVs are tuned to the morning news shows -- pictures on both, sound track only from one. The news (if one can call it that) on the two TVs is not exactly in sync, but both TVs cover mostly the same stuff. Maybe it is the logical outcome of 24 hour talk TV, or the early morning hour, but a lot of what I see at 5:30 in the morning is pretty silly.

This week, there was a story about a holy pancake. A woman in Florida was cooking breakfast on Sunday (of course....), when she served up a pancake with an image of the Holy Family on it. Or it might have been Moses -- who could tell, for sure. (All those holy folks kind of look the same in the frying pan, don't they?) And then the big dilemma: What exactly do you do with a pancake that has a picture of Mary and Joseph and the baby Jesus, or Moses or some other holy person, as the case might be? Do you freeze it so you can take it out on special occasions and view it? Do you serve it up with butter and syrup, destroying the evidence of your personal miracle? And if you do that, who gets to eat it, and then does that person become holier than before, and holier than thou?

Well, what this family did was put the pancake up for auction on EBay with a starting bid of $35.00.

I don't know what I would have done. In the first place, I don't make pancakes, and then, too, I don't really look for pictures of Jesus in my food. I've never found a Madonna in a potato, for example, or seen the face of Jesus in a biscuit. And the truth is that I discount this sort of experience.

And then I am reminded of what happens to me on Sunday morning, not at the kitchen table but at the Communion Table. I break the bread and pour the juice, and it is holy food. I eat and drink and I know the mystical presence of Christ. I take all that in and, God willing, I edge toward holiness myself.

But what happens at that Table is not for sale, not even to the highest bidder.

November Tomatoes

There are some bug holes and cracks and spots, and they aren't perfect -- but this is November 2 and I have gathered vegetables from my garden. I don't know whether to rejoice in the grace of bounty from this little plot of earth at this time of year or to despair that global warming seems more imminent all the time. A hurricane swirls in the ocean, tomatoes and peppers and eggplant ripen in New England, and next door the bicycles are still in the yard. I thought I would return home and find all the leaves gone, but lots of trees are still green and the raking has not yet begun in earnest. I read in the newspaper about a little town in Tennessee that has run out of water. And I read about a town in Mexico that is inundated with too much. The times seem out of joint, somehow, as though nature is protesting our casual treatment of her, as though she is irritated that we have taken her so for granted. I hope this is just a small lover's quarrel, that we can make up for the damage we have done, that it is not too late to mend our relationship with the earth. And, in the meantime, I eat my November tomatoes.

Homecoming

It was homecoming today – not the football game kind of homecoming with a parade and floats and the smiling queen with the bouquet of roses. This was homecoming at church, my brother’s church. It is a small country church, out in the middle of nowhere. The members all know each other by name and genealogy, have probably visited in each other’s homes, go sit in the hospital when one of them is having surgery, and lend a hand or send money when there is trouble. Homecoming means special music, fall flowers, and dinner in the fellowship hall after worship. Tables were piled with food: fried chicken, pimento cheese sandwiches, collards and potato salad, devilled eggs, hush puppies and biscuits and ham and barbecue. And a whole separate table just for dessert with cakes and pies, cupcakes, banana pudding and peach cobbler. There was sweet tea in big red cups, and it was good. Everybody was talking and laughing and taking pictures. The little boys were running around, the teenaged girls were patting their hair, and the teenaged boys were watching the teenage girls. And the rest of us were catching up with each other, smiling at the children, and eating. There was everything in abundance in that small church – love, food, family, enjoyment, joy. Other churches may have gathered today with bigger choirs or fancier buildings or more powerful preaching, but none with a purer spirit of fellowship than where I was.