O Christmas Ham, O Christmas Ham

One of the casualties of my mom’s car accident on her way to visit me over the Christmas holidays was the Christmas ham she was to prepare while in Virginia to take back to West Virginia on Christmas Day for our family gathering there (don’t ask me to explain the travels of a Christmas ham – I can’t).

My mother’s ham is legend in our family: no one else’s even comes close.  So it was no surprise that when I first saw my mom in the hospital, one of the first things she said to me was to ask about the ham.

Knowing her as I do, I had already asked Jeanne Lou if she could go to where the car was towed and recover whatever she could from the car, but particularly the Christmas ham.  Thus when mom asked, I was able to reassure her that the ham was rescued.  I should have known what would come next (Jeanne Lou did, because she’d already given me the answer): but what about the shrimp?  

Jeanne Lou and her daughters ventured over the snow-laced mountain roads into West Virginia, where they found the car, took pictures, and retrieved what they could from the car, including the ham.

I had told them to be sure to have the ham for their own Christmas so it wouldn’t go to waste, so was glad to learn yesterday when I finally got to see Jeanne Lou that they had the ham for their Christmas dinner.

In addition to the ham rescue, they took pictures of the car, retrieved what presents they could, and tried (unsuccessfully) to get the shrimp too.

Alas, the shrimp had to be left: they could see it, but couldn’t get to it.  So some by-now well-frozen shrimp rest just out of reach in what remains of my mother’s car.

But the ham, oh, that ham.

***

Harriett’s Christmas (or any other occasion) ham

1 whole ham
whole cloves
1 large can pineapple rings
Marichino cherries
1 can 7-Up (of late, Mom has taken to using cherry 7-Up instead – you decide)
brown sugar

Place the ham fat side up in a pan.  Score the entire exposed ham in criss-cross fashion.  Spread  brown sugar lightly over the ham.  Push points of whole clove into each x from your criss-crossing.  Secure pineapple rings (save the juice in the can) all over the ham with toothpicks.  Put a cherry in the middle of each ring.  Mix pineapple juice and 7-Up and pour over the ham.  Cover with foil and bake according to instructions (I forget how many minutes to allow per pound).  About ½ hour before the ham is done, remove the foil and return for final baking and browning.  Remove ham from oven and allow it to set for 15 minutes or so.  Slice, serve and enjoy.  And yes, you can use the drippings for ham gravy.

Where I Live - Redux

My mom was recently in a pretty serious car accident.  She’s doing better, but still has a long way to go, so your prayers for her continued recovery have been and are most definitely welcome.

Coming back home to Virginia on Monday after having been at her bedside virtually uninterrupted since December 22, I drove past where the accident happened and contemplated the vagaries of time and place.

In this time and this place, words of care are expressed in ways direct and indirect.

I learned of my mother’s accident as I was preparing to walk out the door to officiate an evening worship service.  The voice on the other end of the phone was the wife of another pastor.  It turns out that a lay pastor over in West Virginia, where the accident happened, had heard a paramedic say the woman in the accident’s daughter was a minister in McDowell.  David called Darlene to ask if she thought that was me.  Sure it was, Darlene called me to give me the bad news.

The next day, desperate to get to the hospital, I plotted a course the long way round the snow-covered roads made largely impassable and contemplated what to do about upcoming services – particularly Christmas Eve.  Someone suggested we cancel as there are a number of services on Christmas Eve in the area and our folks could attend another service easily.  That’s what we did.  Turned out virtually no one had services as the snow continued unabated the next days, leaving the community together in their apart-ness.

Calling the radio station to ask them to announce our cancellation, the congregant calling was asked if it was okay to say the reason why and to ask for prayers for my mom.  And so it was that the whole county has been praying for my mom.

There have been many other acts of kindness in these days, but for now, I am grateful that I live in a time when and a place where the radio station issues prayer concerns for a fallen one and folks go out of their way to get you the news you need to know, where the degrees of separation are small and largely irrelevant when it comes to crisis.

Epiphany Me

Today is the day of celebration of God’s revealing in Jesus the Christ, as made manifest to the magi, the wise men from the east, who came bearing gifts fit for Christ’s true identity as Lord of All.

Epiphany:  a bursting forth suddenness of revealing.  The groundwork having been laid, it is the magician’s ta-da pull-back-the-curtain moment.  Greatly anticipated, now we see what before was only imagined.

Epiphany: the God-reveal revealing us to ourselves – the who-we-were-made-to-be of things.  Child of God . . . that is who we are called to be . . . that is who we are.

From Flickr

Epiphany: the prodigal son at the moment of the father-running embrace.  Son tried to run away from who he was, to turn his back on the father who loved him.  Ultimately he came back, but even when he was the farthest away from home, he was always the beloved son.  So was I right that his epiphany moment was at the hug, the fatherly embrace?  Or was his epiphany sooner, felt only in his feet, finding themselves willing to turn homeward?

I think the feet knew best.  After all, the son’s identity did not change because he rejected it.  And that, that is grace abounding.  Claiming to be someone, something, else, God still and yet loves.

Does it matter that we know?  That we’re aware that the curtain’s been pulled back?  No and yes.  No – we are who we are, whether we know it or not.  Yes – for to know the identity not of self, but of God, is to be forever changed . . . to know the identity of God is to come into the presence of God . . . in ways quiet and ways fantastical . . . in ways earth-shattering and in ways barely earth-registering, we all are invited into the presence of God . . . to sit a spell . . . and just be . . . be the ones we were made to be . . .

In such a space everything else falls away . . . And we know who we are . . . for the first time . . . Who am I?  Is another way of asking Why am I?  And in the asking as much as in the answering . . . is . . . God . . .

In meeting God, we come to the end of ourselves as we see and the beginning of ourselves as God sees . . .

So today, perhaps our prayer might be . . .

Lord God, epiphany me.

2012: A Very Bad Year

Hurricane Sandy . . . Newtown . . . Aurora . . . Israel bombs Gaza . . . car bombs kill and kill and kill in Iraq . . . Syria . . . Gaza bombs Israel . . . no Pullitzer awarded for fiction . . . Mexican drug wars result in horrific killings . . . Benghazi . . . Israel bombs Gaza . . . bus and train crashes, floods and earthquakes, kill thousands . . . cholera and yellow fever and ebola strike the poor . . . drought spreads . . . one gang rape in India and one Pakistani girl shot stand as exemplars for the horror of our violence . . . History Orb

Turning the page on a calendar will not change anything . . . will not lead to a new chapter of existence . . .

But it does give pause . . . a time, a space, for reflection.

Is this who we are?

In the microcosm, how easily I can name the violence done me; 2012 is no exception.  But can I chronicle nearly so well the violence I do others?  Or does that violence disappear into the fog of self-justification?

We search for reasons as if that changes the thing.  But perspective is just another name for forgetting.  If we can ‘understand’, then we can differentiate – that could not happen to me, to mine.

But it could.  It does.

So to 2012, I bid good-bye.  To all the reasons proffered, I say never mind.  To all the justifications, I say no go.

You did it.  I did it.  We did it.  Now we live with it.

For you see, when it comes to the whys, well, that’s easy: because we could.

The real question is how to avoid the doing. . . the hurting . . . the wounding . . . the tearing of the fabric of all that is good and holy and just and right and true and worthy . . .

We didn’t call names because we were wounded; we called names because we could.

We didn’t kill because it was necessary; we killed because we could.

We didn’t fail to protect because of anything other than because we didn’t want to.

What good is a will if it is only bent to the self?

What good is a will that leans only towards destruction?

So here goes for my own personal 2013 resolution:

This year, I resolve to do no harm.  Period.

Likely I will fail.  But in the resolving there is good to be found, progress to be made.  And fewer bloody carcasses left behind.

Torpor

tor·por noun:  a state of lowered physiological activity typically characterized by reduced metabolism, heart rate, respiration, and body temperature that occurs in varying degrees especially in hibernating and estivating animals Merriam-Webster

Humans are not considered hibernating animals.  I wonder why.

I get the science part, but when it comes to winter time, at least where I’m from, people tend to hunker down in place, doing only that which is essential and leaving the rest for the warm time.

So yes, farmers work hard in the winter.  But they too hustle to be done and get back into the warmth, plunking down by the fire to just sit and stare and wait – for warmth to return.

Spending the last 11 days largely at my mother’s hospital bedside, I have fallen in to my own torpor, evidenced by lowered activity.  Most of the day, I simply sit.  It’s kind of like being a fireman, this bedside duty – rushing to help when needed and otherwise simply sitting and waiting for the next call.

Mom is now transitioning to a place where she will require less of my presence and attention and I will (presumably) return to my previous state of activity – that thing I call my life.

But this, too, is my life, this serving by waiting.

Thresholds

threshold n.  1: the plank, stone, or piece of timber that lies under a door : sill.  2a : gate, door.  b (1) : end, boundary; specifically : the end of a runway (2) : the place or point of entering or beginning : outset Merriam Webster

The beginning of a new year, any new year, is really quite arbitrary as measures go: this is a new year simply because we’ve agreed it is.

That said, there is, nevertheless, a sense of pondering, of considering, of weighing, that happens as one year ends and a new year begins.  Maybe it’s a simple by-product of sentience, this taking stock process.

Whenever I consider thresholds, my mind travels back to when I learned that a grandchild can be a kindred spirit.  It was a discovery moment.

Just old enough to walk on his own confidence, so maybe 18-20 months or so, I had grandson Rowen in tow one day ducking into the church for some work-related thing or another.

Entering from a back hallway into the sanctuary, Rowen experienced one of the joys of this particular worship space: perfect acoustics.

Babbling along in those softly indistinguishable sounds babies make before going verbal on us, he walked behind me, carrying his sing-song along with him.

Two steps into the sanctuary, he came to a sudden stop.

He raised his voice, babbled and listened intently.

He did that baby side-canter wobble/walk back out into the hallway, babbled a bit; came back in – babbled a bit; and repeated the process a few times, with utter delight on his face.

Baptistry in Pisa, Italy, where the acoustics
make a tenor sound like a cherubic choir

Rowen had crossed the threshold from the ordinary to the extraordinary in a few baby steps, and because of the gifts of sound and hearing and recognition, was able to know it in an instant.

Watching his discovery that day was a joy-filled thrill for me as well, as child and gran jumped back and forth over the threshold, hearing the noise of our happiness magnified by the near-perfect engineering surrounding us.

Thresholds can be drug places, as one figuratively or literally drags or is drug across.  They can be the place where pain begins.  They can be the boundary place.  And they can be the place where song unfurls, first as discovered sound, moving into its own symphony of filled space.

May this moment be a threshold to your song unfurled, 

echoing into perfect harmony in the ears of all you love.

Blessed Are . . .

Blessed are those who sing our blessings
          that we might know something of Divine’s joy

Blessed are those who midwife their own birth
          that they might know the power of existence

Blessed are those who survive
          receiving not virtue but strength

Blessed are those who write the stories
          that we might know who we are

Blessed are the angry
          for they shall keep us honest

Blessed are the kind
          for we in much need of kindness

Blessed is the laughter
          for the laughter will see us through much

Blessed are those who stand at the margins
          slapping the torpor out of the rest – how I hate to own it – of us

Blessed are those who dance
          oh, so, so blessed are those who dance