"Called to Serve" (sermon)

Sunday October 17, 2021

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Scripture:  Mark 10:35-45

 

 

This past summer when I was visiting my family, one of my nephews came up to me and asked, “Aunt Kate, will you do something for me?”  I replied, “Maybe.  What do you want me to do?”  He came back, “First, promise me that you are going to do it.”  You can probably guess where this was going – I was very reluctant to promise to do something without knowing what it was that I was promising to do!

 

When I read today’s bible story, this is where my mind went immediately.  Two of Jesus’s disciples, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, the Sons of Thunder as they are named elsewhere – they come up to Jesus and say to him, “Hey man, could you do us a favour?”  And Jesus, just like Aunt Kate, replies, “Well, that depends.  What do you want me to do for you?”

 

It turns out that James and John wanted prime seats when Jesus came into his glory.  They trusted that Jesus was going to be glorified and they wanted to be right in the centre of it all, one of them on his right side and the other on his left side.  They wanted to be able to bask in the reflection of Jesus’s glory, and probably hoped that some of his power would rub off on them.

 

And Jesus, well, I can just see Jesus shaking his head at them.  “Don’t you get it yet?  Weren’t all of you just arguing a while back there on the road about who was the greatest?  Didn’t I tell you that greatness isn’t what you think it is?  Didn’t I already tell you that the people who are rejected by society, they are the ones who are the greatest in the kingdom of the One whom I call Father?”

 

Jesus ducks the question that James and John have asked him – it’s not within his power to decide who will be on his right and on his left.  But he turns to teach all of his disciples again, just what it means to be great.  Greatness isn’t about lording over other people.  Greatness isn’t about favouring people who happen to be on our side and oppressing or punishing those who aren’t.  Instead, true greatness is about serving other people – Jesus himself didn’t come so that other people could worship him and serve him and treat him like an Emperor; instead Jesus came so that he could serve the world.

 

I think that maybe Jesus’s disciples were looking for some sort of superhero leader that they could follow – someone like Superman, Wonder Woman, Black Panther, Iron Man, or Captain Marvel.  I think that maybe James and John, by asking to be on Jesus’s left and right side, might have been hoping to take their place in history as the superhero’s sidekicks.

 

But God didn’t choose to become human as a superhero.

 

Instead, God chose to be born as a red-faced baby who cried and who wet his diaper and who needed to be rocked to sleep.  God chose to befriend ordinary people, and wept when his friend died.  And spoiler alert – God eventually ended up nailed to a cross, naked and vulnerable and abandoned.  There on the cross, he did have two others with him, one at his right side and one at his left, but it wasn’t James and John.  There, at the end of his life, Jesus was flanked on either side by two bandits who joined the crowds in mocking Jesus.

 

God didn’t become a superhero like Superman, who could have smashed the cross to pieces.  Instead, God chose to become mortal.  Vulnerable.  Human.

 

And Jesus says that to be human is a good thing.  To be gloriously, vulnerably human, with all of the messiness of joys and sorrows – this is who God created us to be.

 

We aren’t called to strive for greatness as the world defines greatness.  We aren’t called to become superhuman.  Instead, we are called to serve one another.  We are called to seek to put other people’s lives ahead of our own comfort.  We are called to walk each other home in our messy humanity, helping each other along the road.

 

When we claim to be followers of Jesus, then we are claiming to follow this nobody from Galilee who hung around with people on the margins and who ended up nailed to the cross.  When we choose to follow Jesus, then we are choosing to hang out with the same people whom Jesus hung out with, and we are choosing to embrace a life of service.  When we choose to follow Jesus, then we are choosing to follow him all of the way to the cross; we are choosing to embrace vulnerability rather than power; we are choosing to reject the things that the world values and embrace the love that Jesus lived.

 

I know that we’ve talked about embracing the cross this fall – our autumn readings really seem to be pointing us more towards Holy Week and Easter than Christmas!  But when we take up our cross, we are choosing not to turn our backs on suffering, we are choosing to turn our back on worldly power instead.  In some ways, maybe it does come full circle, because in taking up the cross, in embracing vulnerability and loving service, maybe we are preparing our hearts just a little bit more to receive the wonder of God being born as a baby at Christmas.

 

James and John, when they spring their question on Jesus, they assume that sitting at Jesus’s left and right mean that they will have more honour and power than they could ever imagine.  Even though Jesus has told his disciples several times that he is going to suffer and die, they still assume that Jesus is headed for earthly greatness.  They don’t realize that Jesus isn’t just going to shuffle the deck so that a different group, a different party ends up in charge – instead Jesus is totally flipping the world structures on their head so that service and greatness are the same thing.  It’s not that you are to serve now so that you can be great and powerful and important later on – true greatness is to be found right there in the middle of service.

 

I think that there have been so many lessons that the world has learned and continues to learn in this pandemic.  We have learned that the truly essential workers are the ones who previously weren’t valued by the world.  We have learned that our lives are more interconnected than we ever imagined, and our actions impact everyone around us.  We have learned that sometimes we need to embrace a little bit of discomfort – a mask over our mouth and nose, or a vaccine in the arm – in order to keep everyone around us safe – people we know and love, and people we may never meet.  When we do this, we are embracing the cross, we are embracing the life of service that Jesus calls us to, and we are living lives that are great in God’s kingdom.

 

And may the love that Jesus lived and taught grow and grow and grow, so that the whole world might live this love.  Amen.

 

 

Embracing the Cross, Embracing Service

Westfield United Church

"Don't Worry; Be Happy" (Thanksgiving Sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday October 10, 2021 – Thanksgiving Weekend

Scripture:  Matthew 6:25-33

 

 

Time for a Covid check-in.  How are you feeling these days?  How are you really feeling?  This is our second Covid Thanksgiving.  I can’t know how you are feeling unless you tell me, but as I scan through Facebook posts, I’ve noticed a couple of trends.

 

I’ve noticed a lot of anger – anger at the virus, anger at the government, anger at people who haven’t been vaccinated.  I’ve noticed a lot of grief – grief over plans that have had to be cancelled, grief over divisions within families, grief over celebrations and commemorations that have been delayed.  I’ve noticed a lot of anxiety – anxiety over not being able to make plans, anxiety over keeping self and loved ones healthy, generalized anxiety around trying to be human in the world today.

 

So I ask again – if you look deep into your heart, how are you feeling in this moment in time?

 

The reading that we heard this morning is part of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount – the sermon that begins with the beatitudes – “Blessed are the poor in spirit” etcetera.  This is his first public sermon in the gospel of Matthew – his first opportunity to have his message heard by more than his closest followers.

 

And even though the crowds he was speaking to weren’t dealing with the Covid-19 virus, they were living with stress in their lives too.  Most of the people in the crowd were living a subsistence life – trying to catch enough fish or grow enough grain to feed their family, and hopefully have enough left over to pay their rent to the landlord who owned the fields or who owned the boats.  One bad fishing season, or a drought or a flood would be literally life-threatening.

 

They were also living under the oppression of the Roman Empire – a foreign nation who ruled through fear.  Don’t you dare rock the boat or you could end up nailed to a cross.

 

And to all of this, add the usual concerns of a world without access to modern medicine – a high infant mortality rate, a high childbirth mortality rate, and a high risk from communicable diseases like leprosy or polio or the ’flu.

 

And what does Jesus say to this crowd who is living with chronic stress?  He paraphrases the great poet, Bobby McFerrin and says, “Don’t worry; be happy.”

 

Jesus points to the birds flying overhead, and says, “Look at them!  They don’t worry about where their food is going to come from, and yet God always makes sure that they are fed.”

 

And Jesus points to the flowers growing in the field and says, “Look at them!  They don’t worry about what they are going to wear, but did you ever see anyone with clothing as gorgeous as God gives to them?”

 

It is challenging to hear this, because it sounds as though Jesus is brushing off their concerns.  After all, hunger was a very real risk to his congregation if their crops failed.

 

But there in the middle of all of that, I also think that Jesus offers a very profound bit of wisdom.  “Can any of you, by worrying, add a single hour to your span of life?”  Which cuts to the heart of things.  Worrying about the future doesn’t do anything to change the future – it just makes us uncomfortable in the present.  Worrying about whether or not I will be able to see my family at Christmas isn’t going to change whether or not I’m going to be able to see them, but it will keep me from enjoying Thanksgiving.  Worrying about what today’s Covid numbers are going to be isn’t going to do anything to change those numbers – all that it is going to do is raise my cortisol levels – raise my stress hormone levels – which, in the long run, isn’t good for my health.

 

I had this whole sermon written before I learned that today, October 10, is World Mental Health Day, so I want to pause here and say that mental health challenges are a real thing.  If your anxiety or your depression is something that isn’t going away; if you can’t control the worries that are running through your mind; if your anxiety and depression are interfering with your every-day life and what you are able to do, then it is good to get help.  Remember that Jesus was not only a teacher, he was also a healer.  Jesus wants all of us to be whole and well, and that includes our mental health.  You can love Jesus and see a counsellor at the same time.  You can love Jesus and take medication for your mental health at the same time.  It isn’t either-or.  God loves you and wants you to be healthy.

 

But getting back to today’s reading – we aren’t talking here about clinical anxiety – here we are talking about the niggling whatifs that can sometimes haunt our brains.  Because worrying about the future not only can’t change the future, but it also stops us from enjoying the present moment.

 

Which brings us to this present moment.  Thanksgiving weekend.  In the midst of all of the anger and grief and anxiety in the world, Thanksgiving weekend is a call for us to pause and to give thanks.  It is a call for us to look around us and give thanks for everything that we have, rather than lamenting the things that we don’t have.

 

As a group, let’s take a moment to name those things that we are grateful for – let’s take a moment to give thanks for them.  I’ll begin, but feel free to shout out your thank yous:

Thank you for this church.

Thank you for the fall colours.

Thank you for my family.

Thank you for music.

Thank you for sunshine and blue skies.

Thank you for good books to read.

…

 

Looking around and noticing all of the things that we have to be thankful for grounds us in the present moment.  When we are giving thanks for the things that we have, for the things that we have been given, we aren’t able to be anxious for the future.

 

Jesus reminds us that just as God is present with the birds flying overhead, and just as God is present with the flowers growing in the field, God is present with you and with me and with all people.  God is closer to you than your very breath.  You are embraced by God’s loving presence, within and around you.  There is nowhere that you can go where God is not, and nothing that you can do that can separate you from God’s love.

 

God doesn’t want you to worry about the future – God wants to you be fully present to the present moment, resting in the love that is all around you.  And once you find yourself in that love, the only possible response is to give thanks.  Amen.

 

“Trumpet Lily Golden Splendour”

(Used with permission.)

 

"It is not good for the Human to be alone" (Sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday October 3 – World Communion Sunday

Reading:  Genesis 2:18-24

 

 

The bible story that we just heard – you may be most familiar with it as a wedding reading.  And I’m not surprised by that.  After all, the narrator of the book of Genesis has structured the story that way, telling us about how the original human was alone, so God created all of the other animals, but none of them was a suitable partner for the human, so eventually when the first human was sleeping, God divided the human in half and created partners.  Then the narrator ends with, “And that is why a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.”

 

I can almost picture this story being told around a campfire, with a grandparent saying to their grandchildren, “Oh, so you want to know why people leave their homes when they get married.  Let me tell you a story about the first human, and how God created an equal partner for them.  Well, it happened like this.  The Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the human should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.’”

 

Which might work very well in some partnerships, in some marriages, but it is less appropriate in others.  We know today that not all marriages, not all life partnerships are between a man and a woman; and if this story is interpreted as saying that “the bible says that only a man and a woman are allowed to find their life partner in each other,” then we can cause great harm to a great many people.

 

Even our understanding of gender is different today than it was in the past – we know that “male” and “female” aren’t the only genders – we know that gender is a beautiful spectrum rather than only two options.  If we interpret this story as teaching us that there are only two genders and they are perfect opposites of one another, or that only a cis-gender man and a cis-gender woman can complete each other, again, we can cause much harm to many people.

 

And a third challenge with interpreting this passage as a perfect description of marriage comes if you continue to read your way through the book of Genesis.  Almost every family that you encounter in the book of Genesis involves polygamy.  You don’t have one man and one woman completing each other – instead you have many people coming together to form a family unit.  So the interpretation of this passage as a description of the only way to do marriage isn’t even consistent with the book that it’s found in.

 

So… what can we do with this story that we find in the bible?  It is a troublesome story if we take it to mean the one and only way to describe marriage, and the thing that we all should aim for.  So what can we do with this story instead?

 

I would suggest that we go back to the beginning.  This is a story that begins with one human, and by the end of the story there are two humans.  The human is no longer alone.

 

Most translations struggle to capture the nuances of the original Hebrew.  The nouns naming these humans shift throughout the story.  The original human is not a man, in terms of being a male human being.  His name, adam, is related to adamah, the dust that he was created out of.  Maybe instead of Adam, we might better name this human Dusty.  My Old Testament professor at AST liked to name this human as the Earthling, a human created out of humus or earth.  This was not a gendered being, but rather this first Earthling contained all genders.

 

It is only when the Earthling is divided in half that genders begin to appear, and the Hebrew names for them begin to change.  The adam has become ish and ishshah.  Two genders at first, but I can imagine other genders emerging in subsequent generations from this first human who contained all genders within themself.

 

And God said, “it is not good for the human to be alone.”  We are created for community.  We are created for one another.  If we are hermits, we can’t flourish, we can’t fully be who God created us to be.

 

And whether we find our community in marriage or life partnership, whether we find our community in families of different sizes and structures, whether we find our community in a found or chosen family, whether we find our community in our church family, whether we find our community in community groups – when we find our people, when we are no longer alone, then we can be who God created us to be, and flourish with one another even as we support others in their flourishing.

 

One of the biggest challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic has been community.  How can we be in community with one another when we can’t be in the same place as each other?  We have had to find so many creative ways to build and strengthen community in the past year – and I do believe that creativity is one of the gifts that the Holy Spirit gives to us.  We have been empowered to build community through outdoor gatherings, through virtual gatherings, through the comments section in Facebook live videos, through phone calls, through physically distanced gatherings and social bubbles.

 

Along with all of the outpouring of creativity though, the past year and a half has taught us, maybe more than we ever knew before, that we need community.  We need each other.

 

And today, on World Communion Sunday, we have an opportunity to remember that our church community stretches far beyond the walls of this church, far beyond the borders of this community, far beyond the United Church of Canada, far beyond even the limits of our worship livestream.  Today we remember that we are in community with followers of Jesus in every corner of the world.  When we gather at the communion table today, we remember that the table stretches to every corner of the world.  We remember that we are sharing the bread and the cup with people of every language and culture. We remember that God’s beloved community includes people of all times and all places.  We remember that we are in community with, in communion with so many more people than we could ever meet in a lifetime.

 

It is not good for us to be alone, so God has given us the gift of community.  And for that, let us thank God with our whole beings.  Amen.

 

 

Adam and Eve in the Garden – Creation

Songea Cathedral, Tanzania

Used with Permission

"If You're Not With Us, Then What?" (Sermon)

 Sunday September 26, 2021

18^th Sunday After Pentecost

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Scripture:  Mark 9:38-50

 

Have you ever heard someone say: “If you’re not for us, you’re against us!”?  Possibly the most famous example of this was George W. Bush, 20 years ago in the wake of the September 11 attacks, trying to stir up the world to join him in the war on terror. In a speech on September 20, 2001, he said, “"Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists."  In other words, if you aren’t with us, the good guys, you are against us with the bad guys.

 

Jesus’s disciples seem to have a very similar attitude in today’s reading.  They are travelling along, and they see someone casting out demons in Jesus’s name.  The only problem is, they don’t recognize this person.  He isn’t one of the regular crowd hanging out with Jesus, and yet he still seems to be able to cast out demons in Jesus’s name.

 

And so they send John up to tell their teacher.  “Come on now, Jesus.  This guy, he’s not one of us.  If we let him keep doing this, maybe he’ll start drawing the crowds away from us – we’re going to start to lose followers!  Or even worse, maybe he’ll do something wrong, and damage our reputation.  He’s not one of us.  He’s not with us, so he must be against us!”

 

But Jesus just shakes his head.  He says to his followers, “Don’t stop him.  If he is doing powerful things in my name, the Holy Spirit must be with him.  And if the Holy Spirit is with him, then he isn’t going to be able to do anything to harm us.  I know that the world says, ‘if you’re not for us, you’re against us’; but instead I say, ‘whoever is not against us is for us.’”

 

The challenge with both of these statements – with both “whoever’s not for us is against us” and “whoever’s not against us is for us” – is that they are false dichotomies.  When you are in any situation of tension and conflict, there are two defined sides – people who are on my side, and people who are on the other side.  But then there are also a lot of people who are neutral – who are on neither side.  To say “whoever’s not for us must be against us” is to assign a side to those neutral folks.  The person who is saying this is trying to make a clear distinction, whereas in reality there is a lot of fuzziness.

 

George W. Bush and Jesus’s disciples assume that the neutral folks must be with the enemies.  If you haven’t chosen to fight with us – whether we are fighting the so-called terrorists or whether we are fighting demons – if you haven’t chosen to fight with us, then you must be on the side of the demons.

 

But Jesus disagrees with them.  Jesus places the neutral folks, the people who haven’t chosen a side on his side.  “Whoever is not against us is for us.”  He has a much more expansive understanding of who is included in the in-circle.  Anyone who isn’t actively working against Jesus must be for Jesus.  We aren’t singing it this morning, but it all comes down to drawing the circle wide, then wider still.

 

I’m also always curious whenever demons appear in our readings, because even though, in 2021 we may not name them as demons, I do believe that there are demons at work in the world.  Demons are things that work against God’s loving purpose.  Demons are things that can control us and make us act in ways that we wouldn’t otherwise act.  Some of the demons still active in the world today might include racism.  Or homophobia and transphobia.  Or systems of poverty.  Or even, in extreme cases, political ideologies, as we have seen in different parts of the world in recent times.

 

And so the question that this reading forces me to ask is – who are the people outside of the immediate circle of Jesus followers who are casting out demons in the world today?  I think of the black lives matter movement, working to cast out the demon of racism.  I think of Indigenous educators, working to cast out the demon of racism as well.  I think of all of the people working with Romero House and Avenue B and all of the other social organizations working to cast out the demon of poverty.  I think of Affirm United, working to cast out the demons of homophobia and transphobia from churches.

 

And Jesus says to draw the circle wide, to colour outside the lines, so that all people who are on the side of love are included.  For whoever is not against Jesus is for Jesus.

 

I wonder what happened to this person who was casting out demons in Jesus’s name.  We never hear from or of him again – he is only mentioned in passing this one time.

 

He was performing works of great power in Jesus’s name, and must have been filled with a sense of the Holy Spirit’s presence.  I wonder how he learned of Jesus.  Had Jesus passed through his village months before?  Maybe he was someone who had been healed by Jesus – the recipient of one of the many works of power that Jesus was wont to perform while travelling around the countryside.  I wonder if, healed from his own demons by the power of the Holy Spirit, if he was then able to turn around and offer that healing to others.

 

But I also wonder how he responded when the disciples told him to stop.  I wonder if he felt ashamed of what he was doing, and I wonder if that shame caused him to stop what he was doing.

 

Or maybe instead, he was able to turn and cast out the demon of narrow-mindedness from the disciples who were questioning him.  I wonder if he was able to show them a more expansive vision of God’s kingdom of love, where all of God’s beloved children live together, loving and serving one another.

 

I wonder if he was able to tag along with the crowd for a few days, soaking up Jesus’s teachings, and soaking up the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  I wonder if then, strengthened by the Spirit, he was able to continue his healing ministry, bringing a message of God’s love to people desperate to hear that they were loved.  I wonder how many people he was able to reassure of their place in the kin-dom of God, by the healing he offered them.

 

I also wonder who in our world we might try to sideline from their ministry of spreading love and healing.  Who do we consider to not be part of the in-circle, and therefore not worthy of our support?  How can we support and encourage their ministry, rather than trying to shut it down?

 

For whoever is not against Jesus must be for Jesus.  Whoever is not actively working against the power of love must be on the side of love.  And we are called to allow ourselves to be transformed, so that we can catch a glimpse of the amazing, expansiveness of love that is God.  May it be so.  Amen.

Ecumenical Window – The Old Stone Church (Cleveland, Ohio)

Shared With Permission.

"Drawing the Circle Wider" (sermon)

Two Rivers Pastoral Charge

Sunday May 2, 2021 – 5^th Sunday of Easter

Scripture Reading:  Acts 8:26-40

 

 

I love it when a service when we get to celebrate a baptism lines up with a reading that includes a baptism!  In the 3-year cycle of readings that we follow on Sunday mornings, it just happened that the week that T. and T. chose for J.’s baptism – after we had to postpone from January due to the Covid situation – it just happened that the week for J.’s baptism falls on a week where the assigned reading is a baptism story.

 

The book of Acts is filled with great stories, but I think that the story that we read today is one of my favourites.  The full name for the book in the bible is the Acts of the Apostles, but last year as we read this book as a congregation, I joked that a better title for it might be the Acts of the Holy Spirit, Working through the Apostles.  It is a book about the very earliest church in the years and decades after Jesus’s death and resurrection.  It is a book that tells us how the Holy Spirit was working in that early church, spreading the net of God’s love wider and wider.

 

And I think that today’s story is a perfect example of this.  Philip, one of the early church leaders, was doing his thing up north in Samaria, when God sends him south, into the desert wilderness between Jerusalem and Gaza.  And along this deserted desert road, he encounters an unnamed Ethiopian Eunuch driving home in his chariot.

 

Even though he isn’t named, this Ethiopian Eunuch is an interesting person.  He is in a position of power, in charge of the queen’s entire treasury.  He is from northern Africa, so he is a long way from home, but he has been in Jerusalem to worship in the Jewish temple.  He is obviously a devout person, having made such a long pilgrimage for his faith, and he is reading from the prophet Isaiah as he travels.  We are given snippets of information about his background, but there are still so many gaps in his story.  We don’t know how, living so far away from Jerusalem, he came to share in the faith of the God of the Jewish people.  Did he have a Jewish ancestor?  Or maybe he had conversations with Jewish traders and came to faith in that way.  We don’t know how he came to be in such a position of power.  We don’t even know his name.

 

We also don’t know how he came to be a eunuch.  It is possible that he was castrated at some point in time, which is the meaning of eunuch that usually pops to mind first.  But the term “eunuch” had a much more broad meaning in the past.  It is also possible that he is someone who didn’t participate in sexual relationships in the way that his culture named as normal.  It is possible that he was someone who, if he lived in the 21^st Century, might have identified himself as gay or asexual or transgender.

 

And so at the heart of this story is an encounter between someone in a position of authority within the church and someone who is so far on the margins that he is practically on the outside.  And when a spring of water appears in front of them, there in the middle of the desert, the one on the margins asks, “What is to prevent me from being baptized?”  And the one in the centre replies, “Nothing.  There is nothing to prevent you from joining God’s family.  You in your beloved foreignness; you in your beloved Blackness; you in your beloved queerness; you are a beloved member of God’s family.  There is no statement of faith that you need to sign, there are no conditions that you need to agree to.  You don’t need to move into the centre of the circle, instead the circle expands so that you are already in the centre.  God loves you right where you are.”  And there in the middle of the desert Philip and the unnamed Ethiopian went down into the spring, and God’s love was made real and tangible in the water there.

 

The question that I invite you to ponder is, do you identify more with the Ethiopian Eunuch or with Philip in this story?  Do you feel more like someone who was on the outside who has been invited in to experience God’s love?  Or do you feel more like someone who has been called to always draw the circle of God’s love wider and wider?  Or maybe you identify with both of them, both the recipient of God’s limitless love, and called to share this love with others.

 

We don’t know what happens after the end of today’s story.  Well, that’s not quite true, we do get more of Philip’s story in other parts of the bible.  But we don’t know what happens to the Ethiopian Eunuch after he goes on his way, rejoicing.  I wonder what happened to him after he got home to Ethiopia.  I wonder if his friends saw a difference in him when he got home – did they notice a stronger joy or a deeper peace in their friend when he got home?  I wonder if he told his friends about what had happened to him there on the road, how he went under the water and felt the full love of God dripping down his forehead and running over his shoulders.  I wonder if his friends also wanted to experience this newfound joy and peace.  I wonder if this unnamed Ethiopian Eunuch went on to baptize others, calling them to travel the Way of Jesus with him, growing and expanding the circle of faith even wider still.

 

For God’s love is without limits, and reaches to all people and all places and all times.  And ours is the work of making this love known and tangible.  Thanks be to God for this love and for this calling.  Amen.

 

 

“What is to prevent me from being baptized?”

(Photo Credit:  Kate Jones)

English Muffins (recipe)

This isn't a cooking blog, but it is a "whatever I want to write" blog; so when people asked me for my English Muffin recipe, I thought that this would be the easiest way to share it.

When the quarantimes hit (the season of Covidtide?) last March, people took on various baking and cooking projects. While I didn't hop on the sourdough bandwagon (even though sourdough has been on my list of things I want to learn), I did take on a couple of projects that I had been wanting to try and now had the time. Croissants. English Muffins.  (Bagels are next on my list.)

A note about this recipe. My favourite English Muffins are sourdough, but they don't seem to be available in the grocery stores here in eastern Canada. As I mentioned above, I don't have a sourdough starter, but this recipe uses a pre-ferment to try and mimic the flavour and texture that I like. If you are used to English Muffins with a mild flavour and crumbly tender texture, this recipe may not be for you.

They take a bit of time (not active time, but waiting time) - if you scroll down to the bottom, I've included my usual timeline for making these.

Yield:  6

Ingredients

Pre-Ferment:     3/8 cup all-purpose flour
                        1/8 tsp active dry yeast
                        1/4 cup warm water

Muffins:             1/2 cup warm water
                        1/2 teaspoon active dry yeast
                        1 teaspoon salt
                        1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

Directions

1.  Mix the pre-ferment ingredients and beat until smooth. Cover the bowl and let it sit on the counter for ~12 hours. It will be bubbly and you will smell the fermentation at this time.

2.  Begin to make the Muffins.  In a larger bowl, add the water, sprinkle the yeast over it, and let it soften for 5 minutes. Add the salt and the pre-ferment and stir - you won't be able to get it into a smooth mixture, so don't waste your time trying - it will all come together when you add the flour.

3.  Gradually stir in the flour - this is a fairly soft and wet dough. Knead for 5 minutes until it is smooth. You can add up to 2 tbsp of extra flour as you knead, but resist the urge to add more, as you want a very wet dough at the end. I find that the "slap it on the counter" method of kneading works better for wet doughs than the "flatten and fold" method of kneading. With just a couple of minutes of slapping it on the counter, you can feel the gluten bonds forming and the dough becoming smoother and less sticky without adding any extra flour. (If you aren't sure what I mean, here is a video of this technique - with this recipe, you will have less dough than in the video.)

 

4. Place the dough in a greased bowl, cover, and put in the refrigerator to let it rise slowly for a minimum of 12 hours (I usually leave it for 24 hours). It will have doubled in size. (That is a giant air bubble bulging out of mine!)

 

5.  Divide the dough in 6 (popping any large air bubbles as necessary) - I usually use a kitchen scale to make sure that the pieces are equal.

6.  Form the dough into tight balls, flatten them, and cover both sides in cornmeal. Place them on a cookie sheet cover with a tea towel, and let them proof on the counter for 2 hours.

 

7.  Heat a cast iron frying pan over medium-low heat. Place 3 muffins in the pan and cover. Cook for 7 minutes, then flip. They should be lightly browned and a bit puffy - adjust your heat as necessary. Cook for another 7 minutes on the other side.

 

8.  Cool on a rack, and repeat with the other 3 muffins.

 

9.  In order to get the craggy look, make sure that you split them with a fork rather than slicing them with a knife. They toast well, and freeze well too. This last picture is from my lunch today - an English Muffin that I made last weekend, taken from the freezer and toasted.

 

Because these take some time, you need to plan ahead. Here is the schedule I usually follow:
Day 1 (evening) - mix the pre-ferment)
Day 2 (morning) - mix the muffin dough
Day 3 (morning) - shape the muffins
Day 3 (noon) - cook the muffins

Happy baking!

2020 in Books

I don't normally set myself reading goals, but a year ago I set myself two goals (and even created a spreadsheet to track my reading progress).

1)  Read 52 books (ie a book a week)

2)  Read more diversely.

In terms of the first goal - reading a book a week - well, 2020 was a complicated reading year for me.  I started out well, finishing 6 books in January and 4 books in February.  But then the pandemic hit and my ability to read and to focus on what I was reading ground to a halt.  Even my usual "guaranteed" reading time while exercising didn't happen as I found that I couldn't focus on anything more than YouTube videos while on the Elliptical.

I finished 2 books in March (both in the first half of March), one book in April, 2 in May, 1 in June, and 2 in July.  With my vacation in August, my reading started to pick up again, and I finished the year with a grand total of 33 books read (and for the sake of total transparency, one of those books was a DNF, but I exerted more time and energy on that book than I did on many that I did finish).  I also didn't count picture books in that total even though I read a number of those both for work and when visiting my sisters and their kids.  Even though I didn't reach my goal, I'm quite happy with the number, given the events of the year.

With regards to the second goal - I set this goal last December after some of the racism in the publishing industry was made public.  I decided that I wanted to intentionally read diverse authors and diverse experiences.  When I tally up my 2020 book list, 9/33 (27%) were written by Non-White authors, and 14/33 (42%) featured Non-White main characters.  I feel that these numbers are OK but not great.  I don't have my previous stats to know if this represents "more," but what I can do is to try and do better this year.

Some other fun stats:

7/33 (21%) were Non-Fiction; 26/32 (79%) were Fiction of one genre or another.

10/33 (30%) were by Canadian authors.  This number is lower than in other years.

3/33 (9%) were re-reads; 30/33 (91%) were first-time reads.

5/33 (15%) were by male authors; 28/33 (85%) were by female authors.

19/33 (58%) were paper books; 10/33 (30%) were e-books; 4/33 (12%) were audiobooks

The oldest book I read was first published in 1922; the newest books were published in 2020.

 

My favourite reads of the year (listed in the order I finished them):

• Educated (Tara Westover) - a really engaging memoir - an interesting and unique story, well written.
  
• The Flatshare (Beth O'Leary) - escapist fiction read at the peak of the spring lockdown
  
• Glass Houses (Louise Penny) - I've been reading this series over the past few years and enjoying most of them, but this one left me feeling as shattered as the glass in the cafe window
  
• Orange is the New Black (Piper Kerman) - I listened to this as an audiobook on my Ontario road trip, and I looked forward to getting into my car so I could keep listening
  
• Brother (David Chariandy) - we read this as a church book study and I was blown away by the writing, the vividness of the setting, and the engaging story. (I read it straight through in an afternoon as I couldn't put it down.)
  

 

My most memorable read of the year, but not in a good way:

• Second Sleep (Robert Harris) - I need to preface this by saying that I don't do scary.  I was really enjoying this book - the world building, and trying to figure it out - but then the ending of it blindsided me with the terror of it.  Even though I finished it in early January, this book haunted me for a good 6 months or more.  Even now when I think of it, it fills me with a sense of dread.'

 

The one DNF:

•  The Lost Queen (Signe Pike) - I loved the premise of it, but after slogging through a couple hundred pages, I realized that I didn't really like any of the characters, I didn't care about what happened to them, and the anachronisms were really annoying me.

 

For 2021:

• I want to aim for 52 books again this year
• I want to continue to increase the diversity of my reading.  I think that I am going to adjust my spreadsheet columns this year to have a column that tracks Non-White vs. White authors and a column to track LGBTQ+ authors.
• This year I am also going to (try to remember to) include picture books on my spreadsheet - not because I want to bulk out my list with "easy" reads, but because I wish that I could remember all of the picture books I read this year (there were some good ones).

 

 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly!

(In terms of the content - the covers are all quite lovely)