The Buffet is Closed

Well friends, let's call it a year. Starts and stops. Changes and maintenance. Good and bad. It all rolled through 2013.

There is a time to move on. There is a time to build on what has been. There is a time to believe the future will be different.

Time to remove the foods from the table that have been over warmed and under eaten. Fresh new items need to appear in your lives. In the bleak midwinter, or the roasting sun of summer depending on your hemisphere, it's time to restart, reset, and reboot. 

Happy New Year and Best Wishes for 2014!
Love,
Deborah

Beginning the Season of Feasting

Here it comes....in America we go from Halloween to Thanksgiving to Christmas to New Years, and in our house finish with Orthodox Christmas. It's a long season of eating!

Every year the news magazines and print media and our own repeated history tell us how to put limits on the celebration so there won't be any damage.

But this is my brief question for today..........
What if I sank deeply into feasting and celebrating and rejoicing and giving thanks and buried myself in creating rich and wonderful memories of celebration?

What if I put no limits on visiting with friends and spreading the love with relatives and just had a blast for ten whole weeks? What's so wrong with feasting? What's so wrong with celebrating?

Would it energize my  New Year? Would the highs and lows of other people's stories that so impact my life be more easily ridden in the middle in the year 2014 if I took the time and made the effort to say, "hey! Life is a grand delight! " at the beginning of winter?

Maybe a way to better my life is to embrace the depths of each season more fully. Maybe I need to surrender to the rhythm of nature and the ways of the sun's rotation and eat fats during winter, vegetables during Spring and Summer and Fruits from June to October.

The lack we feel inside and then fill in ways that seem unfufilling may happen because we do not sink deeply into each season with gusto and limitless participation.

Just for fun, I'm going to try it!
Love,
Deborah

Meal plans

I put together my list of possibilities with what I have. Actually there's an app I discovered called Big Oven that I just love. Enter three items and it sends you a choice of recipes.

How much of life do I plan and how much of life is trying to make the most of three ingredients? Which is the better skill?

The old way, I sat down on a weekend and wrote out long complicated well balanced meals and then got tripped up when somebody had a soccer game rescheduled or a last minute parent meeting at school.

Granted now it's just me, but putting in tuna, rice, and celery can mean add an apple and onion and there's a salad, or carrots and a bay leaf and there's soup.

When I feel like I need to be really on top of my life, I can look at the biggest three items going on in my life at the present moment and focus on combining those. I call it Big Life!
Love,
Deborah

Candy and Baked Goods

Like millions of Americans, I won't be home for Halloween. Like millions of Americans, I bought Halloween candy. Brachs assorted marshmallow candies, which aren't really marshmallows but chewy little pumpkin shaped corns and pumpkins and bats, sit beside me on my desk even as I write.

Losing weight for me has been the wonderful discovering that if I eat the good stuff like veggies and fruits and protein and nuts and grains, it is possible to have some treats.

My favourites? Well...ice cream, of course, and chocolate is a constant. Krispy Kreme glazed filled donuts, French toast, kruellers, and these donuts that are served at The Hardware Store on Vashon Island.

What was important for me to realize was that there are sweets I never eat.  While I beat on myself about not being a purist about food, but blending nutrition and treats, I observed I do not eat things with frosting much. I'm not really a cupcake person. Pies are holiday related. You get my meaning.

The question I extrapolate from my food habits is this: what is the balance between work and play, have to's and want to's , self care and self indulgence?

Asking good reflective questions is the key to growth. Encouraging ourselves to continually observe, grow and change for the better every day is the strongest act of self love we can extend to ourselves.
Happy Halloween!

Love,
Deborah

Snacks

I am aware this week how many days are snacking days, not feasting days; random moments of need or responsibility or someone elses' crisis. How much of my life is just ditsey minutes strung together by nothing more than a common date or time.

Since I'm a big fan of feasting, the snacking days can leave me feeling hngry for some significant accomplishment. Yet, as with wisdom about money, I must be true to the small as it accumulates into the large.

Rather than give into the scattered texture of time that has bits and pieces of non cohesive activities, i must remember how the overall pattern of those moments creates grand forward motion in my goals and God's dream for me.

Write blog entry-- check!
Off to the next thing.
Love,
Deborah

Peanut Butter and Jelly

Treading water in a pool for  an hour while I play audience to a six year old totally smitten with swimming and completely outfitted with flippers and goggles is exhausting

So upon returning home I wanted only a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Two of them in fact.

I use grape jelly or jam and creamy peanut butter. Sometimes I'll put a little real butter under the peanut butter. It's a lovely ooey gooey mess. I make sure it's not too full between the slices. White bread is best because it compresses when squeezed. I eat the sandwich in a circle starting with the crusts and continuing inward. I take teeny tiny mice bites. I wash it down with milk or water or some other neutral flavoured drink.

It is utterly satisfying.
There are lots of opportunities for sophisticated  moments in life, at least in the first and second Worlds.  But there are also those moments that demand simplicity, ritual and comfort.

Such was tonight. I brought a little balance to the adventure in my life right now.    Now, I'm going to bed.

Love,
Deborah

From Whence I've Come

The direction of the Spirit was clear this morning. 'Forget the past. Do not dwell on the things of old.  Behold, I do a new thing.' (Isaiah 43:19)

So what did I do? Jumped in the car and immediately drove a complete loop around every place I had lived in the last twenty years.

My disobedience notwithstanding, God rode with me and showed my heart , simultaneously, what I was leaving and how far I'd come. I sat in the presence of my former unbelief , or rather my believer's mind that had no root in my heart. I remembered when I friend asked me, almost two decades ago, ''Don't you believe God has a plan for your life?'. I searched my memory files and answered, in "'No.' In the next instant, having realized that was not the correct Jeopardy answer in the game of theological assumptions, I let my answer move from response to an item on my 'to do list': find out God' purpose for my life.

As I realized how far I've come, how far God has brought me, I realized leaving the past in the past,
letting the dead bury the dead, is letting go of nothing  more of memories that, if deleted or put in a folder would make more room for living in the present.

I'm taking a deep breath and examining  the possibility that what I'm really afraid of is not letting more God into my life. As I remember God loves me and is completely trustworthy, I can move forward more in tune with my present circumstances and God's purpose for me. The issue becomes not release, but surrender.

Somedays my baby steps embarrass me and somedays my baby steps feel like giant leaps of faith.
Love,
Deborah

Potluck

Summertime, and the All American potluck is in full swing; as sacred a meal as God ever created.
It's the event that taught me the existence of Maifun Chicken Salad and green beens with bacon.

For a meal, it's awesome. A buffet of cultural variety with each cook bringing their best. Yum... Definite happy mouth experience!

In life, not so much. I am a person who can deal with many situations at once; vastly  differing situations. I don't like to, but I'm good at it. I like things tidy and neat on a smaller scale.  Nonetheless God has dished out this life that is akin to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride at Disneyland.

So I've decided that just as I learned not to go through a potluck line scooping up a big spoon of each dish, I need to be circumspect about what I choose to respond to or who I choose to be in relationship with. Call it 'relational or event portion control'.
There. That's better. Much easier to digest and a happier experience.
Love,
Deborah

Wontons and Meatballs

I moved two weekends ago ...long story...and beyond worrying about logistics  I was concerned about not losing any food. The refrigerator wasn't all that full but I didn't want to lose what I had.

After the move I had the opportunity to chill, relax, recoup at a friend's condo. She's in rehab for a terrible injury so I had the place to myself.

Schlepping the groceries into the condo from the original house = that would eventually make their way to my transitional housing situation = I recognized the bag of frozen won tons and the bag of turkey meatballs were definitely thawed. I was, am , pushing my luck with them still being good to eat.

I'm about to get up and cook them up  when I recognize the irony of the combination. East meets west. Gratitude moment for Marco Polo blending wontons and meatballs. Worth the trek, man


We need to celebrate the reality of meatballs and won tons being common fare that millions can pick up together in the frozen food section.

We need to celebrate the original places thousands of miles apart where won tons and meatballs are being freshly made.

We need to think about increasing reconciliation and cross cultural appreciation because it's possible for an Anglo Saxon white woman in America to step to the kitchenette , pull out a fry pan andsear some  meatballs  and won tons. Now we're goin'' in the right direction.
Love Deborah

Eating Pizza

Having won a free pizza this past Wednesday, I'm still noshing on a few slices.

Here's the curious thing about my pizza habit. I eat my slices with a knife and fork until I get about an inch away from the crust. Then I pick it up with my fingers.

The world seems quite defined by who eats with fingers and who eats with utensils. Now it seems to me that is the starting point for practicing conversation and engagement.  I mean if we can begin to accept the differences with how we shovel food into our faces then we can start to find the common ground of digestion and elimination.

Once food is in our mouths, the process of our bodies using it is all the same.

Am I suggesting that an occasional reference to digestion and the ability to accept the differences in how we deliver that food to our teeth = or gums as the case may be= is the beginning of world peace?

Yasureyoubetcha! Next time the food is near your lips remind yourself what happens after it passes into mouths is all the same the whole world over.

Love,
Deborah

Beans 'n Rice

I'm moving this week. It's an odd move. I'm putting everything in storage so I can do a little self imposed sabbatical and get lots of writing done.

Most of the world would welcome my make shift accommodations . And I've loved assessing a n of my things as I pack them away. Each item has a story, a lovely story that has added to the family story. Some of them are stories the family inherited.

Downsizing is making me think about simplifying the decisions I have to make each day. Simplified decisions means more time for the creative.  So I think about making a pot of beans and rice and calling it good for eating off of during the days ahead while I focus my attention on the creation of documents that will , hopefully, be encouraging of either support or courage.

And then I realize that what I consider a simplification in my world is a staple in the rest of the world.

I count my blessings and promise myself I will think of it, consume and savor like a feast.

Love,
Deborah

Mac n' Cheese

I gotta be honest. My daughter was the one who helped me realize I was missing the most obvious draw for you. Meals...food...everyone is about food. You have your organic, your comfort, your haute cuisine, your fast, your nuclear -- is that what they call that new food that is all about chemistry and using dry ice or hot torches?

Anyway...so let me tell you about me and food. I love it. Almost any kind.

From a generation forced to eat liver and onions once a week because we supposedly needed the iron, who grew up thinking Chinese Food was called Chung King and came in a can, taught to cut iceberg lettuce with a knife to get our greens and ...well...also used Aqua Net to keep our hair that had been rinsed in beer in place, food has acquired and developed a deeply meaningful place in my life.

Add to that a lifetime of dieting that began when I was put on my first 800 hundred calorie 'Calories Don't Count' diet in the fifth grade --- they're called boobs Mom, not fat-- and dieted my way up to a goodly poundage, and we're talking complicated relationship...me n' food that is.

But now I have this really healthy attitude towards food and great appreciation for the show 'Chopped'. I've read everything I could about food, come from the geography of the Anti Inflammation Diet and fresh roasted coffee and fair trade chocolate.

As to Mac n' Cheese...well...Five Cheese Wisconsin is my favorite recipe. I discovered it when I was planning Northwest Cooking Camp for some young friends. When you take a bite, the strands of cheese just  sort of float towards you like a good taffy pull and the butter drips off the strands back towards your plate.

I'm here to say there is absolutely nothing wrong with comfort food. It serves it's purpose.

My first comfort food was Sugar Pops; gigantic bowls of Sugar Pops consumed during the few minutes I was home alone after school before my brothers arrived from school and Mom returned from work. They accompanied the watching of a show called Merv Griffin and if I was lucky dribbled, literally, into the afternoon movie.  Or maybe it was the other way around. I was hoping to go into the entertainment industry at the time so I was more invested in the guests Merv had and trying to watch all the Shirley Temple movies in which Arthur Treacher, his side kick , had appeared.

It was only when comfort moved into the category of self medicating that I got into troubled waters. Well..water would have been an improvement.

But I'm here to say, you CAN sort out that which you are using to self medicate and back yourself down to the level of comforting.

Comforting pain is giving yourself a good pep talk everything is going to be OK.  Medicating is saying, "I can't feel this pain because it is unbearable'.

You can bear anything. It takes companionship, a willingness to be human, stamping your foot or whatever it is you do to stay grounded and a look to the future as a bright possibility.

Mac n' cheese, in the right quantities, is not only a lovely indulgence, but can build your calcium level in good ways. Sugar Pops...that's called dessert.  That's a treat, not a way of life.

The ingredients of your life count. Take note. Go for comfort. Keep dessert for special occasions of celebration or infrequent moments of ' Happy Mouth'.

Well...at least that's what's workin' for me.
Love,
Deborah

Before and After Blessings

Like a cloud that has held it's rain so long it can no longer keep the moisture and drenches the earth and the people and the animals in a deluge of drops, so has this last ten days been raining blessings. Showers of blessings have been falling to my delight and awe. One after the other, issues which I had long considered impossible have burst into thoroughly quenched and nourishing possibilities.

How appropriate this should happen in a month when the tag 'April Showers...' is so often used.

I have been so thirsty that my heart towards heavenward the way my mouth would if this were physical parchment. I keep my heart open and chant to myself, "I like to receive, I like to receive!"

That is my chocolate epiphany this year. Each year, but one, in the last decade I have chosen to give up all forms of chocolate for my act of Lenten contemplative practice. It may seem silly, but chocolate really is my drug of choice. Every day I eat some healthy from of it; dark, 76% or more, but nonetheless, chocolate. And each year God has honored my deprivation with an astounding , desert Mother like epiphany. This year, I heard in my heart that I needed to learn to like receiving.

Realizing to me that receiving has always contained a bit of shame and/or guilt that I should have some need or require some act of charity was astounding. For the last two decades I have been so dependent on others and could not figure out why the Lord would make me carry such a burden. But the minute I felt one small twinkle of 'like' in my spirit when someone blessed me, blessings poured forth and he Graced me with so many opportunities for self sufficiency I find myself working at double time to keep up with taking advantage and making the most of all of them. I wake up at 2AM excited for the days work ahead and will myself back into the sleep my body needs. There is an intense look on my face, I'm sure, but my heart has a big ol' smile on it.

Now, when someone blesses me I say thank you with nothing but gratitude. There is no inner dialogue of 'please God don't let me need so much'.

It reminds me of when Catherine Marshall, the wife of Peter Marshall who was the chaplain of the US senate, and was such a spiritual powerhouse herself, was fighting, trying to heal from Tuberculosis. It lingered and lingered and lingered until at last one day she said, "Lord, if I have this forever it's OK" and bingo. Healed almost instantly.

And after we have such a more dimensional understanding of surrender and humility and more so God's enormous benevolence and love for us.
Amen...more, more, more. May it be so for you as well.....
Love,
Deborah

Tuesday News

This Tuesday morning finds me feeling the Peace and Grace of God in ways that allow me to focus on the tasks at hand in the midst of a storm of controversy at the outer perimeters of my life. I have waited a lifetime to learn how to do this.

Growing up in an incredibly dysfunctional home, I was always thoroughly distracted by the sturm und drang of people around me who were just miserable and had no hesitancy to either show it or project it onto me, or share it in violent and demeaning ways.

Yet now, finally, in 2013, I am in the middle of a bunch of people who are having an angry, violent time and I am just smooth sailing. Ah me! I am so happy to have learned this skill.

It is an internal skill. It takes the renewing of your mind of the things of God that are eternal and deep and meaningful in a larger perspective. It is a skill that requires one to carefully stay connected to the external. One must also stay connected to one's emotions and physical state.

I've turned the heat off for Spring and Summer and the little bit of chill to the air helps me stay just a bit more alert. I've made some chicken soup ...homemade...and the matzo meal is in the fridge ready to be made into balls to drop into the delicious liquid that this time will be better because a friend, a very good cook who happens to be a 'y' chromosome ...male...gave me the tip of sauteing my veggies before I add them to the liquid. He also told me tarragon is the spice of choice.

Additionally for the first time I can involve myself in creative and technical aspects of writing all the while knowing there is this tornado of anger in the center of others.

I have done this. I have translated the skills I use everyday with infants, children, tweens and teens ...for adults!   Yea! Hallelujah!! Freedom to 'be' under and in any circumstance!!!

One of my clients asked me what maturity is. It is this, as I have always shared, 'to feel one way and act another'.  But this today I can also pass on. The definition of 'healed' is to keep your peace, maintain it, enjoy it and walk in it, while others are gnashing teeth and filled with heated emotions.

Well... I think that merits a 'Praise God'!  For another time...how I got there :)
Love,
Deborah

Fits and Start

They say that most people quit their blogging sooner rather than later and so it has been a goal of mine since I began these blogs to never quit. I'm not a quitter. A slow bloomer, a slow and steady wins the race, a never say die, certainly that I am. But a quitter? Never.

I  know there is another pace of life. There are those who are driven and push through despite their health needs or  family needs or personal desires for something other, but I cannot keep that pace.

It used to be I would quote this quote that I thought most profound. It goes like this: "There's no such word as the word 'can't'; either you don't know how or you don't want to, and usually it's the latter.

Then in 1991 I got to 'can't'. Full stop. I had so many toxic relationships in my life I couldn't breathe or move or feel any joy or happiness. I'd begun to measure my life in terms of 'doing' instead of 'being'. I needed to be me.

Unfortunately being me wasn't an option because I was serving the needs of so many people who had absolutely empty buckets. No, let me put that another way. Their buckets had holes in them that meant what ever was poured into them quickly leaked out.

I went to this soothsayer in the early eighties when I was taking everyone's advise but my own and she said something about how I was in the middle of a prairie and the wagon was broken and I was completely reconstructing my life.

Now I don't much believe in soothsayers and I only went to that one because this supposedly good Christian pastor friend of mine went to him and said even his mother, who was a Bible Study Fellowship leader, went to her, so I figured it was spiritually safe.

I discarded the past life stuff and re-framed it into her picking up on what was deeper in me I hadn't discovered, but two things stood out. The one I want to share is the one about taking my part a life. I actually just surrendered to God. Following the Holy Spirit, which I was really lousy at when I started to identify the process, I did what I was lead to do.

Last week,  lo and behold, I picked up a book that had seemed revolutionary to me, at one time, about women who please men and the men who take advantage of them and it was like some distant irrelevant foreign language that I was so beyond I couldn't remember what it felt like to be in that place when I first read it.

It's been thirty years since I started that process. I've had moments when I was intensely into the change and moments when, because I was just trying to survive, I was doing it unconsciously . But continue I did.

It doesn't matter what culture or society we live in, we need to keep the internal journey progressing. We need to open ourselves up to that process. Distracted as we may be by the logistics and execution of daily life, we need to keep evolving spiritually and emotionally.
That's all for today, I guess. Make more of the day than presents itself to be made.
Love,
Deborah