Come to Be

What I want to write about is the day after Christmas. I feel like the day after Christmas has always plagued me with a sense of disappointment and disillusionment that fairly boots all the joy of the Christmas season clear out the door. As a kid (and, let’s face it, as an adult too) I can remember constantly feeling, on that most dread day, that Christmas had not been enough. There weren’t enough presents, not enough merriment, there was just not enough time for all the cookie-baking, carol singing, present wrapping, and everything else that was supposed to make this “the most wonderful time of the year.” Every year, it is easy to feel like I didn’t get enough Christmas.

I guess this is not a surprising state of affairs for a culture in which every experience is touted as a pinnacle, a higher peak than the last. But I think what is surprising to me is that I often get the same sense spiritually. I think this has been the first year that I have plunged into the church year and found what a leap into darkness this first season is. Advent, after all, is proclaimed as a coming light to people currently walking in darkness. But this season which begins in darkness is supposed to grow ever brighter until suddenly, blindingly, Christ, the self-proclaimed light of the world, enters the picture in the form of a vulnerable God, a weak baby that puts to shame all my high-minded expectations of myself.

This is how it was preached to me this Christmas Eve at a large, Texan, Methodist church. The preacher was telling a story about how he and his brother used to go every year to visit his Grandmother’s house, and, most particularly his Grandmother’s swimming pool. It was just a cement hole in the backyard that had filled, over the years, with rain water and leaves and branches and all manner of scummy, slimy things that lurked in murky waters. The point of the games was to play near the water, without actually falling in, which would obviously result in death. So, as you might expect from a story like this, one day this boy had fallen into the pool and was thrashing around, expecting doom any moment when the college kid who lived next door saw what was happening and jumped the intervening fence to come and rescue him, pull him out, clap him on the back a couple times and absently ask, are you okay? before striding back over the fence.

You know the metaphor, if you’ve grown up around churches. I can’t tell you how many times I heard variations on the same story. I was in peril and Jesus dragged me out by the scruff of my neck and slapped me on the shore to dry off. Hooray. The light has come into the darkness and blinded all those whose pupils did not dilate quickly enough and left them dazed, seeing fuzzy patterns on the undersides of their eyelids. No wonder the day after Christmas looks so bleak. We expected a downdraft of glitter on the breeze, the strumming of harps that would indicate that the Great Miracle where Everything becomes Different had finally, finally come. But no, this year is just as bleak as the last.

But what I assert is that Christmas is not like the sudden appearance of someone coming to pull you out of a swimming pool. I much prefer Dante’s immortal lines:

“In the middle of the road of my life
I awoke in the dark wood
where the true way was wholly lost”

I acknowledge the darkness of the woods, and the lostness of my condition. I acknowledge the fragility and weakness that comes with my humanity, the ease with which the very essence of my life can be undone, and the wickedness within me that I have come to know through the terrifying intimacy of a long acquaintance. It is very dark, in this wood, in this world, but my experience has taught me, at least as far as my own story is concerned, that God’s way of salvation is not to pluck us out of the darkness, out of the confusion, and set us on a high hilltop from which we can never be moved. It seems to me more like when Christmas happens (and never forget, Christmas can happen at any time of the year) suddenly—zap!—someone is there in the darkness with you.

I also acknowledge mystery, my dears, and so this may be all I can say. I do not know the ways of God, the shapes he makes as he moves through the darkness of a dark wood. Is she there to comfort, to shield? Is he there to guide? Will she take you down an ever darker road, the road of perils, for reasons unknown? Will he travel close at your side or on a distant but parallel path so that you can just barely follow his adjacent movements through the trees? I don’t know how to answer these questions and at this point I am not ever all that sure of the validity of the question. When does the one being led really understand the leadership of the one showing the way? If I knew the terrain, I would not have come to find myself so lost.

Well, then. The one thing I know, the one truth that is very large if we allow it to be, is the truth of presence. God, who was once only very far away has come very close; God has come to be. With us. So perhaps on the day after Christmas it seems as if nothing has changed because on the first brush, this change seems like such a small one. But my hope is that it is a small change like changing the angle of trajectory is a small change. It’s only in traveling the course that any real difference can be discerned.

I could not believe in a God who pulls me out of all my problems, dusts me off, and sends me on my way, because I’ve never seen that happen. But perhaps I could place my hope in a God who zaps himself into my darkness, who leads me in the way mysterious, destination unknown, but who is, at the end of the day, there.

I could, perhaps, believe in the God who has come to be.

Peace for the New Year,
S.

Sugar Rush

Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear! Yes, I know, I know. It's been since November (early November) since I last posted. Ouch. You have no idea, you will never know how many times during the week I think to myself, especially in this Advent season. You have no idea of the lofty goals I sent for beautiful, meditative reflections for each(!) week(!) of the Advent season. Unfortunately, as you can see, that has not been the case. I don't really know what to say. Although there have been no recent catastrophes (in my life at least) things, on the whole, have been fairly stressful. Work, family stuff, and a busy social life all keep me far away from the inner quiet that I try to return to each Advent season. This year, I have been working on being more self-reflective, more present to myself and my internal state of being. Unfortunately, that has not been terribly conducive to posting lengthy monologues for all the web-net to see. And again, alas, today will not be the day that this gets accomplished. But I have two other offerings for you, besides stating that I am determined to get at least one quality post up before Christmas.

Although the limitations of technology prevent me from being able to let everyone taste my recent creations, I can at least offer these lovely pictures of some of the things that have been consuming my time:







May I introduce Cranberry Pecan Bars, Hazelnut Tea Cookies, and Cashew Toffee? Nice to make your acquaintance! These little gems have been my joy and crown this holiday season. I am a rabid traditionalist at Christmastime in particular, so when I get home with the fam it's going to be nothing but the classics: sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies topped with a Hershey's kiss, and maybe a batch of chocolate cheesecake bars. But because I have an opportunity to be traditional once I go home, while I'm here in Buffalo I have the freedom to be wildly experimental, particularly because here I can feed people so many more cookies than my constantly dieting family would ever have permitted. And, voila! Batches of beautiful, terrifying boiling sugar start appearing on every burner of the stove.

Terrifying, you say? But why terrifying? That seems like something of an overstatement, but those of you who have ever done any sort of candymaking know where I'm coming from. I myself was permanently scarred by a batch of...something I was trying to make in middle school with my best friend Traci when something went terribly wrong. I'll spare you the gory details, but somehow all that was left when the dust settled was a sheet of wax paper covered in crystallized, non-carmelized sugar blobs which somebody was going to have to eat. We're Irish dammit, which means we will never waste food, no matter how wretched or cavity inducing.

But even in the sensible, adult world of well-equipped candy production, the field is rife with danger, there's the worry about burning or about undercooking, flame control, rate of water loss, and hello! can we imagine what even a drop of 300 degree melted sugar would do if you got it on your skin. It's what my great love and mentor Alton Brown refers to as "culinary napalm." Needless to say, there is much to fear in this brave new world of candy making.

But, feeling adventurous, I decided to jump in with both feet, trying not one, but two different sugar melting recipes for the consumption of my dearest friends and colleagues. These were both made on the same night, and let me tell you, tension in the kitchen was high. First gasp! there was not, as I had assumed, any light corn syrup in the house! Then, the panic of substitution--will honey change the flavor? Adding the cranberries, which immediately clumped in the middle of the pan as they cooled the sugar in the immediate surroundings before everything melted again.

And the toffee, oh toffee should only be attempted by those with nerves of steel! After a brief stir, you actually remove your spoon from the pan and keep an eagle eye on the thermometer as the the temperature climbs higher and higher, agonizingly slowly while the color of your mixture goes from buttery gold to taupe, to pale brown, to a rich caramelly color but by this point you've bit your fingernails down to stubs, knowing that only a few measly degrees stand between you and burnt sugar madness while the climb of the temperature slows to a crawl, 296, 297 and you're ready to rip the whole thing of the burner, sure that you smell charring in the air but you force your hand away from the dial as beads of sweat run down your forehead, 298, 299 and time seems to stand still as every ounce of your willpower is poured into waiting for that last degree, trusting that sweet, grandmotherly Paula Deen is not leading you into rack and ruin, willing yourself to holding on as the caramel darkens that one last shade...300! You kill the flame but now it's the clock your racing as you add salt, vanilla, and thick meaty cashews you've been toasting in the oven and stir frantically to get everything combined before the sticky mess is forever welded to your sauce pan--but no, it's out now, it's on the cookie sheet and cooling innocuously, the residual heat slowly melting the pieces of fine Belgian chocolate you casually scattered over the top as though to say, "What, this old thing? Why it's the easiest thing in the world to make!"

Phew, I get tired just reliving the whole experience. But it helped me to understand the whole Bungee-jumping, jumping out of airplanes phenomena. What a rush! Of course, next time the stakes won't be so high, now that I'm a seasoned veteran, which means I've got to find something new, something even more terrifyingly risky to stick my chefly neck out on...oh, and everything did turn out deliciously, thanks for asking.

But, of course, I understand if victuals are not what you came here looking for. After all, this is, by and large, not written to be a food blog, even if those are what I spend all my time reading. Okay, well if you came here looking for food for the soul, the best I can offer is some warmed up leftovers like this, or maybe this if you're in the mood for some Marian devotion (and, let's face it, who isn't?).

And soon. That's all I can say now is soon. I hope that the beautiful, nourishing words are given to me soon, that space to reflect and be refreshed is soon given to me. And if that is the case then, I promise, I will pass some along to you!