food – Page 4 – Salvaged Faith

taking the first steps to healthy

Posted on June 28, 2010Leave a comment

I might have posted something about this before… but pastors, in general, and in the Iowa Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church, in particular, (did I use my commas correctly there?) are pretty unhealthy. There was some outstanding (and not in a good way) statistic a year ago at conference that said that our group for health insurance with Blue Cross Blue Shield has like 2x the rate of cancer and 3x the rate of diabetes as any other group that Wellmark covers. Insanity.

Now, I’m a young woman, relatively healthy, but I admit to myself that I have room for improvement on this front. It would be great if I could look back on this time of my life and say that I was in the best physical and mental and spiritual shape that I could have been.

To try to coax pastors in our conference to be more F.I.T. (remember that challenge from a few posts ago), we are signed up with this program through Virgin Healthmiles. Virgin as in the company… not Mary…

We can get a pedometer and set up an account, and depending on how many miles we walk in a year’s time, we can actually earn money! The thought is that if we are encouraging people to be healthy and rewarding them for their work, they will actually save money in the long run by decreasing health care costs.

So, I got my pedometer in the mail. And I’ve been using it pretty faithfully for a week now – although I forgot to wear it over the weekend. My goal is 10,000 steps a day… and I’ve only hit that goal twice (well, three times if I had worn it yesterday). It is a reminder that I really do need to get out there and exercise, and this morning, I made the extra effort and went for a run.

It had been such a long time and my lungs screamed at me, but I did it. And I’m going to keep doing it. Because the extra cash would be nice to have… and if I keep on track I’ll need it to buy some new clothes… but most of all, because I deserve to be healthy and fit.

So – first step is actually getting off my hiney and getting out there and moving.

Step two is following that up with some healthy eating. I started off today with a fruit smoothie – inspired by Alton Brown. He measures his fruit and juice in oz’s and then dumps it all in… I guess I’m following technique more than anything else. Mine this morning included blueberries (which I bought on super sale and then froze myself), frozen peaches, fresh strawberries (the remainder or which were frozen for the future), blueberry/pomegranate juice, and 1/2 a scoop of whey protein.

Step three is trying to gracefully avoid and limit what I eat at the church. There are homemade cakes and casseroles and snacks everywhere. And you feel bad if you say no, because people are being gracious hosts. But you know what… that’s probably the number one reason pastor’s are so unhealthy. We Methodists have too many good cooks!!!!

it causes me to tremble…

Posted on June 6, 2010Leave a comment

Day two of our annual conference has completed. We have voted on exactly 7 items of legislation. And we have celebrated and praised and prayed and remembered and sung and danced and ate and hugged and sat and walked and listened.

Some brief highlights for me so far:

“Hi, I’m Fred.” Our “priest” for the conference introduced himself and welcomed us into a spirit of worshipful work and I truly have felt this particular time of conference has felt different because of it.
advocating for young adults at our legislative section and dreaming up possibilities for community college ministries
Rev. Doug Ruffle’s challenges to be a sign, a foretaste, and an instrument of the Kingdom of God…
crazy fast and delicious dinner at A Dong
even though clergy session was inhumanely long – it had a wonderful spirit to it as we gathered to worship (thanks clergy band!) and celebrate the ministry we share… and have good conversation about itinerancy
ordination!!!!!! being surrounded by family and church members and friends, the weight of all of those hands upon me, the feeling of the bible underneath my fingers, singing with joy
the reminders throughout the day of the gift of the scriptures: Bishop Kulah talking about Jesus expounding the scriptures; Barbara Lundblad’s take on radical love enfleshed in John’s gospel (love that bends down, that reaches beyond, that puts people before rules, that is here in this moment, that renews itself as soon as you think it has ended); Bishop Job sharing what a day, a year, a decade’s worth of living in the word can do for our lives; a friend’s amazing rendition of a song from the musical Philemon during prayer;
the Rethink Rock video
the voices of young adults who stood to speak out of love for what they care about on the floor.
sharing deeply with one another truths about things that have hurt us… so that we might give them over to God.
our conference artist’s work… and the poetic description of what God is sharing with us through it. The idea of being baptised into the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ being symbolized by a font filled with shards of glass… of chairs of hospitality inviting us to take our seat… the challenge that being radically hospitible brings… of the chair on the cross being an invocation – asking for God to enter our lives.

cooking with mom

Posted on May 18, 2010Leave a comment

Alright, so these pictures are from ages ago. And I wanted to post the recipes also, but it’s really late and I should be in bed and I’m going to post the pictures before I forget about them. This was our pre-late-family-christmas bake fest.

Already/Not Yet

Posted on May 16, 2010Leave a comment

Every Friday night we have dinner with the family – as we all set the table and prepare for everyone to come to the table and sit, and especially as all of the food is there and we are just waiting for the time to pray, my niece and nephew like to sneak bites from the food being set at the table.

The table is one of my favorite images of the kingdom of God… a great big huge table where are all welcome, all are loved.

And the amazing thing about the Christian community that is born out of the ministry of Jesus is that we today are like those little kids at the dinner table – and here and there we catch a foretaste of the glorious banquet.

In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke’s entire goal is to write down what happens to the disciples after Jesus leaves them. His goal is to document those early days of ministry, the birth of the church, the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God.

And if you went home and spent some time just reading straight through the book – you would find that it reads a lot like a journal. While the beginning chapters recall the story of what happened before Luke joined up with the band of disciples, the rest of Acts is Luke’s personal account of what happens in each leg of their journey. It is his personal witness to the Kingdom of God that has already taken root in the world. And, it is his testimony that the Kingdom of God was not yet fully in this world.

Now, the Kingdom of God is a phrase that we hear quite often.

John the Baptist preached that the Kingdom of God was at hand… just as he was preaching that Jesus was about to enter their midst.

When Jesus healed the sick, he said that the Kingdom of God has come near you. (Mt. 10:7)

But also on the gospels we hear all sorts of stories and parables that tell us funny things like the kingdom of God is like a tiny seed, or like yeast, or a priceless pearl. (Mt 13)

We hear things like the kingdom is hard for the rich to enter, but that it already belongs to little children.

We hear that the kingdom is something we are supposed to seek out, but that it’s not necessarily outside of us, but within and among us (Luke 17).

But I think the most confusing thing is that the kingdom has already come among us… and that each week, we pray for it to come in the Lord’s prayer.

The Kingdom of God is already here, but not yet fully here. This morning, I want to help us to see three ways that the Kingdom of God is already… but not yet.

Our first already/not yet has to do with the one we worship.

Already… Christ, the bearer of the Kingdom has been among us.

As the Acts of the Apostles begins, Luke reminds his reader that there is a whole other book that was written about the ministry of Christ from the beginning until the day when Christ ascended into heaven. But just in case they forgot the last bit of that story, Luke tells it again.

Jesus suffered for us and died for us and then by God’s power he showed up again – alive as ever and for forty days he stayed with the apostles. And he taught them about his Kingdom.

It was a kingdom that they had witnessed when the hungry were fed and the blind were healed and the oppressed were set free. It was a kingdom whose power was Jesus. The kingdom was where Jesus was.

And after forty days, Jesus takes his disciples out of the city and they begin to think that this is the moment they had all been waiting for. One of them cries out – Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom?!

Not yet…. The response Jesus gives is that it is not for us to know the times for these things. Not yet is the Kingdom fully come. And as a sign of that fact, Christ is lifted up before their very eyes – not to initiate the Kingdom of God… but he is taken away from their sight. Not yet, is the Kingdom of Christ fully present among us.

What we are left with are promises… the promise from Christ that he will be with us always. The promise of the Holy Spirit – the comforter and advocate who bears within us the seeds of the Kingdom. And the prophetic witness we have in the pages of Revelation that remind us that just as Christ came to be with us once… In the new creation, God will come and be with us again. “See,” the prophet John writes, “the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with him.” (Rev. 21:3)

As the church, we are sandwiched between these experiences of God. We carry with us the memories of Christ’s life and teaching and death and resurrection and we witness to these things. We share the story. Just like kids at the dinner table who sneak a piece of broccoli out of the bowl and quickly pass it to one another – we are eager and excited about this glimpse. But at the same time, we wait. We long for the time when all things will be ready – when all will be present at the table, and when God Godself will be with us.

Our second already/not yet has to do with life and death in the Kingdom of God.

Already, the disciples have witnessed how Christ brought back to life children who were dead and his own friend Lazarus. Already, the power to heal in Jesus’ name has been transferred to the disciples. Miracles have been seen everywhere – including the most amazing miracle of all… Christ died for our sins and then was raised from the tomb. Sin, death, and evil have been defeated for ever more! As we follow the apostles through Luke’s account in Acts – we see signs and wonders of more healings and resurrections, of life and life abundant!

But not yet… Lazarus would eventually die once again. Each of those apostles would all be killed proclaiming the new life of the Kingdom of God. In our own lives today, we experience suffering and pain, death and loss. We grieve, we weep, we mourn.

Brandon’s great-grandma passed away on Thursday at the age of 99 years. She lived a long full life, but we have all been acutely aware for some time now that at some point, her body would fail and she would no longer be with us. Death is the reality of human life. And when it comes, it is not always a sad thing.

Not yet have the promises of the Kingdom of God been fulfilled. For we hear in Revelation that the time will come when the new heaven and new earth are among us. And in that time and in that place, Death will be no more. Reality as we know it, with its cycles of life and death and life again will be no more. There will only be life. Life abundant.

As the church, our foretaste of that life comes when we baptize little children and we place them in God’s hands. Our foretaste of that Kingdom life comes at the altar table when we eat the bread of life and the cup of salvation. Our foretaste of that Kingdom comes at every single Christian funeral… when we carry our fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters and friends across the threshold of death and place them into God’s hands. As the church, we proclaim the reality that death has been defeated, even as we are standing beside the grave. Like little children who stand on their tiptoes and peer over the edge of the counter, we see the dessert that awaits us. We know the truth of the end of our stories. This morning at our graduation breakfast, Wilda shared the story of a woman who wanted to be buried with her fork because she knew, that the best was yet to come.

Our final already/not yet has to do with the joy of the Kingdom of God

Already, we know that when we abide with Christ, when we join in the fellowship of other Christians that we experience joy. As Christ gathered with his disciples in the upper room before he was betrayed he breathed into them the spirit of peace. And we hear stories from the first books of Acts about the joy and the community, the singing and the fellowship that the early Christians experience.

Whenever two or more are gathered, there Christ is among them. We support one another in our walk of faith and together we know the good news of the Kingdom of God.

But not yet fully. There are difficult days. There are times when our church brothers and sisters drive us batty. We argue and fight. We have our ups and downs. We join together as the Christian community around the dinner table, but before we eat, we must confess all of the ways that we have hurt and neglected one another since we met last. Our lives are not yet perfect, and our joy is not yet complete.

And to be sure, there is much that takes away joy from our lives. There is sickness and pain. There is oppression and want in our world. We turn on the television sets at night and the last thing that we find there is good news. To put on a smile and pretend that everything is okay and that we are happy in the face of all of that trouble is dishonest and hypocritical.

In the inbetween time between the already and the not yet, the church has the blessed opportunity to find joy among one another. We share what we have and experience true fellowship. But at the same time, united by our faith and the joy of what God intends for us, we can confront the pain and suffering and injustice of the world with a rightous anger. We can speak out against those places where God’s joy and peace has not been made complete, we can weep with those who suffer, and we can hold forth a vision of the day that is spoken of in Revelation – the day when weeping and crying and pain will be no more.

We gather today as children before the dinner table. Gradually, pieces of the meal are being set for us. And here and there we catch a wiff of the banquet, we sneak a taste of the bounty, we eagerly await with one another the glorious feast that awaits us. But we wait… until what we see already becomes the glorious feast that is yet to come.

Because they didn’t let me give up…

Posted on March 23, 2010Leave a comment

While I was on vacation with my family these past few weeks, we had quite a few trials and tribulations to undertake.

First of all, there was the struggles with health that might have prevented some of us from even going. But with a lot of prayer and new ideas from doctors and a perseverence to keep going, almost all of the Pickens clan made it to Hawaii. Continued prayers are needed for my cousin Steven and his family as now they return back to reality and try to find a solution that will help him to get back to a new normal with his platelet levels.

A more humorous adventure was when my husband and brother decided to tackle the biggest omelet I have ever seen: the Moose Omelete at Moose McGillicudy’s. This thing has 12 eggs, bacon, sausage, onions, red peppers, potatoes, mushrooms and, I swear, a whole block of cheese. I was there to document the whole thing and to act as a cheerleader. If they ate the whole thing, they would get their names on the wall and a free t-shirt. If they didn’t – they had breakfast to take home for the next three days!

The boys each got about half way through their respective omelets. All of my encouragement couldn’t have got them through it. They’ll just have to train their stomach’s for next time!

A day later, we had a completely different kind of endurance test. We decided to hike Koko Head Crater.

Now, we had hiked Diamond Head Crater before this. That hike is about 30 minutes to the top and is a pretty long path that winds around on the inside of the crater. The hard part is a series of 99 steps into a bunker and then a spiral staircase that takes you up two stories. But that, pshaw, that was a piece of cake compared to Koko Head.

On Koko Head, you climb the outside of the crater. We followed an old railroad line that was probably used to haul carts of supplies to the top where a bunker was and back down again. But now – now it is a long, steep, straight climb.

I kind of thought I was in shape… or at least not out of shape. But I got to the first of maybe 15 electric poles running up the side of the trail and I was winded. I set my pace and shot for two more poles, and I was beat.

I literally gave up twice on the hike up. I thought I was going to puke or faint or some combination of the two and I just couldn’t go any farther. But my brother and husband kept me going. They didn’t let me give up and instead put me in front so that they could keep encouraging me from behind. And I made it – all the way to the top – which was one of the most amazing things I have done in my life.

Butternut Squash Ravioli

Posted on December 12, 2009Leave a comment

This recipe is kind of thrown together out of various things that I found online…

First, roast your butternut squash

1) preheat oven to 400 degrees

2) cut squash into wedges and spoon away the seeds and pulp

3) sprinkle wedges with cinnamon and cumin – light dusting of each. I normally do the cinnamon or nutmeg when I roast squash, and I got the cumin idea from a mexican restaurant in Des Moines that had cumin sweet potatoes as a side dish. I about died and went to heaven, and ever since then I’ve been adding the cumin to my squashes.

4) mix together 1/8 cup of orange juice and 1/8 cup maple syrup (I used our regular pancake syrup) and drizzle over the top (other recipes I saw called for things like all spice, sage, brown sugar and apple juice.. whatever floats your boat)

5) cover with tinfoil and bake for 45-55 minutes until tender.

While the squash is cooling – prepare your sauce:

1) melt 1/2 tablespoon of butter and sautee very gently 1 tablespoon of minced garlic
2) if I had thought about doing this anytime before… oh, 5:30 pm tonight, I might have purchased some onion or shallots to sautee also.

Throw into a blender:

1) about three cups of your roasted squash (I didn’t exactly measure… it was about a wedge and a half. I’m saving the rest to eat later in the week, possibly with risotto)

2) add 1/2 cup of half and half, salt and pepper to taste.

3) puree… and 1/8-1/4 cup of water to get it to the right texture

Mix all of the above:

1) I added the pureed mixture into my saucepan with the garlic and butter on low and added some nutmeg and additional salt and pepper to taste.

Serve!

1) the rest was really really easy. I took frozen beef ravioli from the fridge, threw them into a pot of boiling water for about 3 minutes and all i had to do was top them with my delicious homemade sauce. My husband of course got regular old spaghetti sauce on his because he’s boring. =)

2) I also topped it with a bit more nutmeg. Just for some pizzaz.

kitchen sitting

Posted on December 5, 2009Leave a comment

One of my favorite holiday activities is sitting in the kitchen and hearing stories. I’m at my grandpas right now – our christmas house – and already the warm and familiar smells of coffee and bacon are filling the air.

Slowly people will start to emerge from all of the various places they crashed. The grandkids from the basement floor, the adults from the bedrooms. Slowly the decibel level will begin to rise and there will be laughter and teasing and guffawing. But for now its fairly quiet. Just the coffee pot percolating and the bacon sizzling and two little ones desperately trying to keep quiet with a deck of cards

FF: Give Thanks

Posted on November 20, 2009Leave a comment

The Cure

Lying around all day

with some strange new deep blue

weekend funk, I’m not really asleep

when my sister calls

to say she’s just hung up

from talking with Aunt Bertha

who is 89 and ill but managing

to take care of Uncle Frank

who is completely bed ridden.

Aunt Bert says

it’s snowing there in Arkansas,

on Catfish Lane, and she hasn’t been

able to walk out to their mailbox.

She’s been suffering

from a bad case of the mulleygrubs.

The cure for the mulleygrubs,

she tells my sister,

is to get up and bake a cake.

If that doesn’t do it, put on a red dress.

–Ginger Andrews (from Hurricane Sisters)

–What is your cure for the “mulleygrubs”?–

My first instinct was to respond how I wallow when I have the “mulleygrubs.” I put on pj’s and light some candles and curl up in a blanket in front of the television. Then I wait for them to go away. But the cure… probably putting some upbeat piano and vocals (like the Gabe Dixon Band) or some funky beats (like Black Eyed Peas) and getting my groove on while I clean. There is nothing like getting my house in order to shake me out of the mulleygrubs.

–Where will you be for Thanksgiving?–

Thanksgiving Eve: out to dinner and a friends house. Thanksgiving: hosting hubby’s mom’s side at our house (I don’t even have to do anything in the kitchen!). Thanksgiving Friday: my brother’s house with my side of the family. Thanksgiving Saturday: my father-in-law’s for that side of the family.

–What foods will be served? Which are traditional for your family?–

We do pretty simple traditional things. Turkey, canned cranberry jelly =), stuffing (my mom always makes Rachel Ray’s stuffin’ muffins), mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes with marshmellows, green bean casserole, sweet corn (that was frozen at the end of summer), pumpkin pie. But there are also some not so traditional things: sauerkraut and a wild rice/mushroom dish.

–How do you feel about Thanksgiving as a holiday?–

I think its a terrific holiday. It’s a great chance to get together with your family and celebrate one another and the blessings of another year. My church doesn’t really do a thanksgiving service – although we did move Laity Sunday to last week and our theme was creation and abundance and thanskgiving… we sang lots of great old hymns and it was a nice way to kind of bring Thanksgiving in. I don’t like that all of our secular holidays make it into the church year. So we are sticking with Reign of Christ this Sunday.

–In this season of Thanksgiving, what are you grateful for?–

I’m grateful for my church which has always given me the opportunity to try new things, even if we fail miserably at them. I’m grateful for people across the world who are living out their faith in creative and authentic ways. I’m grateful for my close family and that we are finding new ways to support one another. I’m grateful for my husband and the ways that we keep muddling through this crazy thing called marriage.

–Bonus: What is Aunt Bertha’s Thanksgiving like?–

I’m not entirely sure, but I found that picture of a cake up above and I think that’s the kind of cake pan she would have and the kind of cake she would make. Nothing fancy – just sweet and warm and delicious. I picture her red dress being a little worn and faded, because it’s her favorite and she wears it over and over again. I picture a table heaping full of food from the garden, things that were canned and saved away over the summer and fall. I picture a turkey perfectly cooked – maybe a little overdone – that is far to big for her and Uncle Frank to eat. And I hope that someone shows up at their house to eat with them.