John Bell at the Island Forum

I didn’t know much about John Bell but he turned out to be a very engaging and sometimes funny speaker on what he called the “Bayble.” That’s Scottish for Bible. Bell lives in Scotland and is well known in Europe and North America for his music. I only knew that at our church we have sung some music that he wrote. The conference that I attended for several days was about music by example but not by topic. More than two hundred clergy and lay people were there for the annual Island Forum at Washington Island.

John Bell’s fashion statement was colorful, not color matched very well, and barefoot. He definitely was not dressed as a conventional speaker. That was okay, although I didn’t expect our speaker to appear in rolled up green jeans.

Bell said that his job is lay education and he is scripture centered. His topics for each day were (1) the Bible and stories; (2) what to tell the children and retelling the story; (3) imagination; (4) women and the bible.

Tuesday.

Memorable things that Bell said included reminding all the pastors of some church history, that the Bible is full of diversity of stories covering spiritual nourishment, story, poetry, biography, parable and more. It wasn’t written in a day; some writers of scripture didn’t know about other writers. God’s people speak in different ways, not apart from each other. He pointed out that apartheid in South Africa has its origin in a narrow reading of scripture that endorsed it. Bell had good things to say about Nelson Mandela, who brought people together. Differences and diversity are part of God’s invention, he said.

Wednesday.

The second day was about stories and children. What we tell the children will stay with them all their lives. He used the song, “Jesus Loves Me This I know,” which the group sang slowly in four parts, as probably only a hall full of clergy would do. His point was that this song is the experience of faith and that God is love. It’s about relationship and affection of the person who teaches the song. Childhood hymns show childhood faith. He also had other examples.

Bell talked about today’s people being spiritual but not religious, a buzzword for people who are not in one faith tradition. He said it is about people being disappointed in conventional faith. The notion of God has moved from everywhere present to God being little engaged but slightly helping in the world, like a moralistic therapeutic session. These people have little connection with the God of the Bible, Torah and Koran. However, Bell points out that the best revelations should enlarge us as the voice of God who has spoken; today’s children with no faith traditions don’t know what God sounds like.

There are true stories and truth stories. True stories are facts that can be verified. Truth stories are what is meant to convey, like parables, which convey the nature of God and God’s kingdom. Bell talked about the story of Adam and Eve and the Fall as a truth story. We are guests in the garden; someone else owns it so it should be used according to the rules. The garden is a place of wonder. The role of humanity is to be moved by this wonder. The fruit that the people should not eat is a restriction, not a test; some knowledge is too much for us to bear, beyond our comprehension. The story is not about the temptress Eve persuading Adam to eat the fruit. Adam is passive in the story, but they eat it together and receive the knowledge.

Bell talked about (1) Abraham and Sarah, our ancestors. Sarah names her child Isaac, which means laughter. The old people now enable God to do his thing and renew the church, as Abraham and Sarah did as old people. He mentioned (2) the Ten Commandments, which are seen as divine restrictions, but what is common in them is that they are meant to liberate, not limit people. The commandment about the Sabbath has meaning for everyone. God took a rest; he wants people to see rest as necessary for human life. It’s a sabbath from ensnaring routines and includes land, servants and work animals. Bell spoke about the Heroes in Judges and the miracles of Jesus. Love demands that we treat people differently.

Thursday.

Imagination came on the third day. We extol it in children but are suspicious of it in adolescents. The story of David slaying Goliath was an example. Bell said that the adult in the group set young David up in armor that made it impossible for him to move effectively, so David got rid of the adult suggestion and took out his sling, with which he was proficient in killing animals that menaced his flock of sheep, and killed the giant.  Then Bell said he once asked some teenagers about how Jesus managed to feed a crowd with five loaves and two fishes, and they gave the imaginative answer that when the basket came around, the people added to the food supply and put something into it so everyone got fed. That is Godly imagination. Bell said that imagination is a gift that can be used for good and that is what the Incarnation is about.

He said that God uses intellectual, emotional, imaginative accents in scripture. The lion lying down with the lamb gives a picture of God’s intention. Imagination is a picture of the “not yet.” Imagination might release some parts of scripture. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is often seen only as twenty years old, when imagination can tell more. Other stories about Mary and other women can be enlarged by use of imagination. We unlock and see deeper with imagination. The voice of prophecy in the Church is what is ahead.

Friday.

Women were the subject of the final day. Bell said that men and women read Bible texts in different ways. For example, it was said that in the Fall in Genesis, woman was made from the man’s rib and therefore dependent on man, which isn’t something that I as a woman would endorse. Rather, Bell said that Adam and Eve were meant for partnership. The snake speaks to Eve while Adam is quiet and accepts the apple, and then he accuses God for giving him a dumb partner.

Another example is in Exodus, where the midwives were commanded to kill the Jewish boy babies and they went against cruel male authority and Moses was born. Baby Moses in the basket gets adopted by Pharoah’s daughter, and he grows up to midwife the Hebrews into the promised land. Bell gave other examples of women whose stories are little known because, Bell said, our church lectionaries were put together by men. He said that the women stood up to cruel male authority because God called them to do it. Their stories don’t get told today.

Bell said that Jesus treated women as not inferior, that their faith, generosity and hospitality were recognized by Jesus while in the background the men resented Jesus talking to women and interacting with them. Female witness is indispensable. The Song of Mary, the Magnificat, shows us that when Mary magnifies or praises God, it makes God bigger for us. Then He who is mighty magnifies us. A small God means limited discipleship, and a big God does not.

Altogether it was a worthwhile conference.

Date Bread

My maternal grandmother was legendary for two things, date bread and chocolate chip cookies. We called her Sweetie Pie because she was uncomfortable with people knowing she was a grandma. She was glamorous most of her life, with a petite figure and plenty of curly artificially colored red hair. She was one of the rare divorcees of her time, and she had plenty of dates but no second marriage. When Sweetie Pie was at our home or we were at hers in Chicago, we ate her delicious home-made cookies and date bread. Later she moved to Sturgeon Bay to be near us as we grew up.

Her date bread recipe was in her head and not on paper. At one time my mother tried to get it in written form. Mother said that Sweetie Pie wasn’t specific about how much she used of most ingredients, so Mother patiently asked her, “How much flour, a teaspoon or ten cups? How many eggs?” and so on. Here is the result for my family and everyone else.

Date Bread

1 cup dates                                                        1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda                                    1 heaping teaspoon butter

1 cup boiling water                                          2 eggs

1 cup nuts                                                          2 cups flour

Cut up the dates.  Add soda and water. Cool. Cream butter and sugar. Beat eggs and add. Pour date mixture on this and blend. Add nuts and flour. Pour into buttered loaf pan with wax paper on bottom. Bake at 300 degrees about one hour or until done. Remove from pan immediately.

What About Eve?

Did Eve really cause it? This is holy week. Tomorrow is Good Friday, when Christians remember the death of Jesus. Jesus came to make right a world that had gone wrong, allegedly because Eve listened to a serpent in the Garden of Eden, and she and her husband Adam chose to disobey God by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, a forbidden tree. Then God reportedly evicted Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden and gave them a lecture and some punishment. Adam was to toil by his hands and Eve was to have pain in childbirth. This was the notorious Fall of Man, when sin entered the world and it was all downhill until Jesus arrived to save everyone. It’s all in the Bible and in Christian interpretations.

It appears to me that Eve is a minor player in the overall story of Adam and Eve. In one of the Genesis stories God created her from a rib of Adam, who was already present, and he was very happy to have her as a companion. They and God seemed to have a close relationship until the serpent appeared and told them that knowledge is a good thing and they would be like God if they ate the fruit of the tree. So they found it good and they ate. This was an act they did together. It wasn’t just Eve. Good-bye paradise; hello sin. Adam and Eve represented the entire human race (population 2). They were infected.

After a long time of much more sin-infected disobedience to God’s commands, about which we can read in the Old Testament, we are told that God came back into the world as Jesus Christ. I see a theological connection here that starts with Eve and continues with the new Eve, who is Mary the mother of Jesus, and continues again with Jesus and Good Friday and Easter, the day of Resurrection.

Eve is barely mentioned in Genesis, but she has received plenty of blame for listening to a snake. St. Augustine formalized the doctrine of Original Sin in the fifth century, which is about the human race being infected with consequences of the Fall. Christians are baptized to remove it. And sin still exists, individual, social, corporate.

I say don’t blame Eve. The chosen people entered into the arrangement with God over many years. It’s their fault too, and ours, while evil exists all around the world. God gave everyone the capability of choosing. Being the first (Eve) isn’t being the only one.

Living Alone

I didn’t just say, “Wow! Is this what it’s like?” It has turned out to be good, at least for the last six years. Being the queen of my castle is good.  It is good because of a variety of favorable circumstances for which I can thank God, my family, and a long list of positive circumstances. A younger person is likely to see life alone differently, as my single daughters might attest, but these views are mine.

I never lived alone until I was about fifty years old. I went from cradle to wedding in the company of other room-mates, first at home and then at the university. In 1990, after my older kids had left the nest and I had become a librarian, six months at a new job in a new city were wonderful, but I knew the experience was temporary. The family arrived as soon as daughter Elizabeth finished high school in Green Bay as valedictorian. Rick and daughter Sarah then came and I wasn’t living alone any more. Going solo again about twenty-five years later as a widow is a different experience.

I sat down and in fifteen minutes had an impressive non-sociological list of things that make living alone in retirement enjoyable or abominable. Then I classified the items on the list as favorable, unfavorable, or neither. I landed clearly on the favorable side. Some people I know are not as fortunate.

I had a lady friend, who was blind and lived alone, whose daily prayer was, “Thank you, God, for this day, and I hope you’ll give me another one.” It’s a beautiful thought. (Her days finally ran out.) Another friend’s daily prayer was, “Here it is, God. Do something with it.” That became my daily prayer. It’s good to go through life with hints from others.

My list of circumstances and activities that make living alone in retirement favorable includes (not in order of importance): family nearby; social connections; enough income to cover modest expenses until catastrophe arrives; faith and church; good health; volunteer obligations in the community; interests and activities, including computer, social media, games, friends at places like the senior center; convenient transportation such as a car, cooking my own food, painting, reading, blogging, thinking, meditating, watching the news (staying involved with current events), and having a cat. It works for me.

My maternal grandmother, whom we called Sweetie Pie, lived alone most of her life without the husband who had left her when my mother was little. When I was growing up, I never thought she was doing anything unusual or unfulfilling. It seemed to me that she lived a good life as an attractive woman whose life seemed to me to be about her job in the music store and the men she dated but didn’t marry. When she became old, my parents moved her to Sturgeon Bay to be near us. I think she was lonely in a new city with few friends. She had family nearby but was alone a lot. She never learned to drive a car. Then she got dementia and her life narrowed more. The local police occasionally drove her home when she forgot where she was. Life changes with age.

My list of unfavorable things in some ways is the other side of the good things. Life can become unpleasant. Here is the list of things that I think are the downsides of living alone at any age: poverty; no social or family connections; isolation; illness, disease or depression; grieving about a lost loved one; disabilities; poor transportation; few interests; need for personal care; no faith community.

A few days ago I saw a program about Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of the sixteenth President, and she had a difficult time after her husband was assassinated. She was unhappy in her loneliness. She had endured the death of her husband and all her children except her son Robert, and was alone. Not everyone today must deal with as much death as she did, but unhappiness can make living alone a miserable experience.

The third category on my list includes things like the lifetime influence of one’s family;  marriage that might or might not have been good; the government safety net including medical insurance and food stamps; poor transportation opportunities; the personality of the person; gender differences (I don’t speak for men who are alone); and life events.

I spend time at the Madison Senior Center, where I interact with women and men who are lively and connected. Some of them volunteer in the community. Others come for programs. A number come in for daily lunch, some of whom are fragile and need the service. Some live alone, but they don’t wear labels to announce it.  I spend time in activities at my church, where people are engaged or in need, and many are my age. We have our share of widows who live alone.

I don’t spend a lot of time doing the things that young people who live alone do. That’s a story for them to tell.

Cheese Souffle for One or Two

The only way you’ll get this is to make it at home. Hardly anyone hears about souffles in the media or restaurants. If Martha Stewart has shown how to make one, I haven’t seen it. A soufflé lives in a cookbook.

I hadn’t made a soufflé for many years but suddenly I had a reason. After the dentist extracted a front tooth, she told me to eat soft foods for a while. I ate some tomato soup, yogurt and bread pudding, and then decided that I could use some imagination in my new eating regimen. Cheese soufflé seemed to be a good idea. I went to my big fat worn out 1953 Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook and found the recipe, which I adapted by reducing the ingredients and rewriting some words.

Once again I thanked my seventh and eighth grade home economics teacher, Mrs. Robertson, whom I haven’t seen for about sixty years and who probably is in the great kitchen in the sky, for teaching me the procedures that this recipe requires. Actually, it’s easy to make a soufflé. This is a small one. It’s supposed to be puffy when it comes out of the oven, and it will fall from its glorious volume almost immediately, so it must be eaten right away.

Cheese Souffle

2 tablespoons butter               ¼ pound cheddar cheese, shredded or in small pieces

2 tablespoons flour                 2 well beaten egg yolks

¼ teaspoon salt                       2 stiff beaten egg whites

1/2 cup milk

Preheat the oven to 300 or 315 degrees. Melt the butter. Add flour and salt and blend. Add milk gradually and cook over medium heat, stirring, until the sauce is thick and smooth. Add the cheese and cook until the cheese is melted. Gradually stir the hot sauce into the beaten egg yolks. With electric mixer, beat the egg whites until they are stiff but not dry. Carefully fold the cheese sauce into the egg whites with a wide spoon.  Pour the soufflé into an ungreased one-quart baking dish. To make a crown, trace a circle through the top of the mixture one inch from the edge.   Bake about one hour and fifteen minutes until it is firm and brown on top. Serve immediately.

A Stable Birth -- Book Review

I am pleased to review a book written by a friend of mine, June Paul.

A Stable Birth: A Story About the Birth of Jesus Christ is a short book that retells the birth of Jesus in story form. Author June Paul engages the reader with dialog and imagery as she has the characters of Joseph, Mary and the Innkeeper and his wife talk with one another as Paul imagined they might have done in the birth and aftermath of the birth of Jesus in a stable. The book’s title suggests the image of the stable birthplace and the stability of the character of Joseph, who responds to the awkward situation of being Jesus’ earthly but not biological father.

The book is organized in six chapters, each defining one aspect of the holy family’s visit to Bethlehem to take part in a census. The action is based on the birth stories told in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, and it reminds one of scenes in a drama, each building on the preceding chapter.  The characters discuss the birth of the holy child, whom angels have told them will be the Savior of the world, with animation and some repetition as they ponder what it means for them.

Author Paul brings the biblical story to life in a good page turner. She also includes questions for discussion for readers to use for education and formation purposes. This is a book for people who might have wondered what it was like to be Mary and Joseph during and after Jesus’ birth. It is for people with curiosity about the shepherds who came to see Jesus, and even for those who might have thought about an innkeeper who does not appear in the Gospel but is important to the telling of Paul’s story. 

The book is available at Amazon.com in paperback. This review is of the revised edition.

Year of No Breakfast

I am near the end of a year of skipping breakfast…sort of. Yes, it has been a year. No, it hasn’t been perfect; there were some skips (skipping skipping breakfast). Did it change much for me? Not really. Most people I know eat breakfast and many say it is the most important meal of the day. On the other hand, some doctors advocate skipping it. I became interested in it as a way to lose weight and be healthy. Is this crazy or ill advised?

One day more than a year ago I read about something called intermittent fasting in an online column by Dr. Joseph Mercola, who sends his messages to about a hundred thousand Americans, among them me. His online existence is at www.mercola.com. He wrote about benefits of intermittent fasting, which include good health and longevity. Then I found books: The Mini-Fast Diet: Burn Fat Faster than Ever, by Dr. Julian Whitaker and Peggy Dace, and The Fast Diet: Stay Healthy and Live Longer with the Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting, by Dr. Michael Mosley.  It sounded like the great panacea. Well, maybe.

These doctors presented stories about people whose lives were greatly changed by intermittent fasting. Intermittent fasting is not starving oneself. It is timing one’s meals to allow for regular periods of fasting a couple of days a week, or daily shorter periods. There are various ways to do it. They also recommended exercise during the fasts. As I understood it, during the fast the body goes into a state called ketosis, which burns fat. The other recommendation was to eat a low glycemic, or low carb, diet.  The people quoted in the books lost many pounds and reversed chronic diseases. They were more overweight and obese than I have ever been. Maybe that’s why the program worked for them so dramatically.

I opted for Dr. Mercola’s version, which was to abstain from all food daily for sixteen to eighteen hours but drink plenty of water. I chose to fast from evening supper until late morning or noon the following day. It’s easier to fast while one is sleeping, so it looked like the best way to me. (I hesitate to say it looked like a piece of cake.) I am rarely hungry in the morning, so that was a plus. The doctors spent a lot of pages telling people that this diet would eliminate their hunger and cravings; I wasn’t experiencing hunger and cravings most of the time. So I said this would be easy.

Most days it was easy after the daily arguments with myself about whether my interest in food was coming from my stomach or my brain. I wouldn’t call this craving, and it never was hunger. Partly it was a habit of eating in the morning, and partly it was my brain telling me that just eating a little bit would be a good idea. That little gremlin in my brain never stopped talking to me for the eleven-plus months of skipping breakfast. Sometimes it won; sometimes I won. Mostly I didn’t eat in the morning. But often I changed my supper time to occur early in the evening so my sixteen hour fast would end by about ten o’clock in the morning, when I could eat again. I never was a big breakfast eater. Dr. Whitaker said to eat breakfast at noon if one thinks breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Exceptions to this plan occurred when it was time to eat breakfast with other people such as my family when I was with them, when I had a later dinner with friends, and when I was on vacation. These occasions were infrequent. I caved in and ate.

Well, did it work? As I said earlier, sort of. I lost ten pounds from January through April. Then came the plateau that lasted the rest of the year. Possibly Dr. Whitaker was mistaken when he said that his diet would result in calorie reduction of about four hundred calories per day. I think that works only for people who spend their lives eating big high carb breakfasts. I am not one of them even when I eat in the morning.

Dr. Whitaker’s book has a chapter about obstacles to weight loss related to intermittent fasting. Mine is thyroid related. He didn’t say that hypothyroid people would have an easy time. He said, backed up by many testimonials, that this works for many people. Dr. Whitaker runs a weight loss clinic.

Dr. Whitaker’s book offers a summary of why intermittent fasting, which he calls the mini-fast with exercise, works:

·         Cuts daily caloric intake by skipping a meal;

·         Reduces the need for calorie counting and making difficult food decisions throughout the day;

·         Switches you into the fat-burning mode and keeps you there for hours;

·         Curbs appetite by triggering ketosis and eliminating blood sugar swings;

·         Allows you to eat what you want—within reason—for the rest of the day;

·         Improves underlying risk factors such as insulin resistance inflammation, and oxidative stress, and “turns on” antiaging genes. (p.66)

I expect to continue with intermittent fasting for a while, even without dramatic results.