Book Review: Praying in the Messiness of Life, by Linda Douty

The title was appealing. Whose life doesn’t seem messy at times? Following a transformative experience at a Walk to Emmaus retreat years ago, I found myself wanting to pray and study more regularly and more effectively than I previously had. I struggled to find ways to do that in the midst of a busy life, and having now discovered Douty’s book, wish it had been available to me then.

I immediately identified with Douty, admiring her honesty in admitting she at first just tried harder, to reach the closeness with God that she sought. She asks, “How can I open myself to growth in this crazy, busy life? What can I actually do, rather than constantly wishing it would change?” Her book explores a variety of approaches to prayer that are extraordinarily accessible, and practical, and really make a difference.

For example, I recently needed to walk a short distance from one building on the campus of my workplace to another. Instead of just walking along, anticipating the upcoming staff meeting, I deliberately prayed a version of Douty’s syncopated steps from the chapter on Praying with the Body. With each step, I prayed, “Fa-ther, Son and Ho-ly Ghost. Fa-ther Son and Holy Ghost.” When I found myself distracted a couple times, I let it go and returned to my prayer. What an invigorating walk that turned out to be! My attitude at the meeting and through the rest of my day was far different than it otherwise would have been. Such a simple approach to prayer, and it fit right in to the busyness of my day.

Douty’s presentation of dozens of simple approaches to prayer will help any believer draw nearer to God, in a relationship that becomes more and more in depth as it becomes more and more a part of every moment of one’s busy life.

I received this book free from Upper Room Books as part of their Book Review program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

Blink and You'll Miss It!

Last evening Paul pointed out the two robins hopping around the neighbor's yard - they seemed a little confused by the patch of lingering snow.  But I was glad to finally see the birds whose song I've been hearing the last week or so.

I intended to get out this week and snap a picture of the snowdrops poking out of the snow - but by the time I actually went out with the camera, the snow was gone, and all that was left were the snowdrops. Nestled up against the house, they often bloom through a bit of snow or ice; the first indicator of spring.  The resiliency of nature.

And then this morning, it had snowed again.  So I could go back out and get another picture.  But I probably won't.

Such is spring in central New York - winter one minute, spring the next, with an occassional blast of summer thrown in just to keep you on your toes. 

Green Tomato Pickles

If you can't give them away, and they don't ripen, and you've eaten all the fried green tomatoes you care to, what else is there to do but pickle the green tomatoes?

So I Googled 'pickled green tomatoes' and made a jar based on the following recipe.  Similar to the refrigerator dill pickles I've made for several years, these were easy and surprisingly tasty.  And they don't have that green tomato taste that I really don't care for!  They just taste like - pickles!

Pickled Green Tomatoes

Ingredients:
2 pounds green tomatoes, about 4 or 5, thinly sliced
1 jalapeno chile, stems removed, cut in half lengthwise
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon peppercorns
1 teaspoon celery seed
1 teaspoon dill seed
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 cup white vinegar
1 cup water
1 Tablespoon canning salt

2 wide-mouth pint jars or 1 wide mouth quart jar, sterilized

Evenly distribute the sliced green tomatoes, sliced jalapenos, cumin seeds, peppercorns, celery seed, dill seed and garlic in jars. In a saucepan, bring to a boil, the vinegar, water and salt. Pour the boiling vinegar mixture into the jars leaving a bit of headspace. Cover with lid and fasten with rings. Allow to cool and refrigerate. They will be ready after 4 hours and will last for 1 month in the refrigerator.

Alternatively, you can place the covered jars in a canning pot or stockpot, cover the jars with water, bring to a boil and then cook on high for 10 minutes. Remove the jars with tongs and then allow to cool. These jars will not require refrigeration until after opening.

After the success of the first jar, I decided to can some for more long term preservation.  A successful venture, except that the half pint jars really only used one small tomato each - not much help in the quest to deal with the bounty.  Many of the others have actually ripened, so I made still another batch of tomato sauce for the freezer last weekend.  A few tomatoes succumbed to decay and were tossed into the compost bucket.  We're down to one tray of green tomatoes. I'm almost finished with the garden for this season - ready to turn to the blessing of indoor domestic pursuits for the cold weather. 

Fried Green Tomatoes

They’re not my favorite vegetable, but when you have three large trays full of green tomatoes, picked in fear of a frost, and it’s the end of the season, and you hate to waste the food you’ve so carefully grown, you consider them a blessing. I posted a note about the green veggies on Facebook and one coworker offered to take some off my hands – once I took some to her, a couple others wanted some too. Then I really went to town on the vines, pulling them down off the fence to discard for the winter, and found another large bowl full. So I pretty much still have three trays of green tomatoes even though I made my brother take some too.

My hope is that many of them will ripen, and that the coworkers might want a few more (bags). The rest will likely end up in the compost pile. It’s been a good year for tomatoes I guess – my six plants grew well over my head – I needed to use a step ladder to tie them up to the fence and then reversed the process when I cleaned things up on Saturday. I wish I could remember what variety they were as they were so productive – somehow in my gardening efforts of spring I failed to either hang onto the tag or record the genus and species!

I have some strong memories of helping Mom can tomatoes grown in the backyard on Standart Avenue. Apparently, there used to be chickens back there, and the garden was quite productive. I was frequently sentenced, or so it seemed at the time, to weed a row or two of green beans. One of my all time favorite vegetables, I remember taking the colander out to pick the beans, or cut Swiss Chard for dinner. At the end of summer, the extra tomatoes lined the glassed in back porch, ripening on the windowsills. We dipped the tomatoes into hot water and then plunged them into cold water to get the skins to loosen – we felt really fortunate to have a garbage disposal, as that made the slippery, messy job of cleaning up so much easier.  There's nothing more satisfying than hearing the jar lids seal after boiling them in the canner.

My Dad read my Facebook posting (I still find it hard to believe he friended me - but he’s always been a somewhat early adopter of all things technological) and responded with the following about green tomatoes:

As a child; Don’t you remember having fried green ‘maters at home?

Dipped in egg, flour, salt and pepper, fried in hot grease until golden brown – favorite of your Grandfather Peck and mine.

On Grant Ave; We had some how gotten a whole bunch of green tomatoes at the end of the season. We wrapped individual tomatoes in newspaper and put them up in the attic and they ripened…. Didn’t taste like fresh but we enjoyed for quite a long time.

I imagine the tomatoes ripening in the attic on Grant Ave. were a great blessing to my folks at the time. We had only recently moved here and they were on a strict enough budget that we didn’t have a telephone, relying on the pay phone down at the corner, or the landlord’s phone for important incoming calls. Our family lived on a policy of “Eat what’s on your plate,” and Dad was known to say, more than a few times, “It’s not what you like in this world that makes you fat, it’s what you get.” A pragmatic approach to food and life.

Guess I’ll go fry some more green tomatoes - yesterday's blessing, and tomorrow's and the next day's!

Free on the Inside

Brother Victor died last Tuesday night, apparently after suffering a seizure. He was a gentle, somewhat quiet man who had been at the Fully Alive Bible Study at the Auburn Correctional Facility as long as I have been attending. The thing I most remember about him was his faithful service as the person who got water in a pitcher and poured it for each guest and man in the chapel. It was a much needed relief in the often hot, humid worship space. The heat in the chapel during the summer has been nearly unbearable at times - and even occasionally in winter, extraordinarily overheated and warm.

What a sad place to end your life – in prison. Yet what a joyous welcome Victor must have had coming into the presence of Jesus our Savior and friend!

I often think of the distribution of water as one of the ways the men can minister to us, rather than always being on the receiving end of our presence for prayer, praise and study. Sometimes we've seen a more mature Christian man directing a newer one in this act of service.

So last night and this evening, when I have another scrapbook project I want to be working on, I'm creating a scrapbooked scripture card to add to my collection that sits beside my prayer chair.  I've used songs and pictures and occassional stories to illustrate the meaning certain scripture has for me.  Interestingly, several have been created in response to experiences worshiping and studying with the men in the prison chapel.  It's holy ground for me, and I've learned so much from these incarcerated men, about how they have found freedom on the inside with Jesus Christ.

The scripture I'm using is Matthew 25:37&40.  There's lots of good stuff in that chapter but these verses speak to me of Victor's service -

"Lord, when did we see you...thirsty and give you something to drink?"  The King will reply, "I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of hte least of these brothers of mine, you did for me."

What do You do With a Bathtub Full of Water?

I feel a little like I imagine the Gulf Coast residents feel after preparations for a hurricane that doesn’t materialize.

The city had a major leak in a 90 year old water pipe that required repair. They issued warnings that water service would be disrupted overnight and if the simple fix didn’t work it would require shutting off the water entirely and then a boil water advisory for a couple of days. “Stock up on bottled water and fill your bathtub with water for toilet flushing.” I used our camping jug to collect 3 gallons of drinking water in the kitchen and filled the tub at lunchtime. When I got home from work, I was surprised to find the tub empty – obviously the drain stopper wasn’t working, so I called Paul who bought a new one on his way home from work and we repeated the ‘fill the tub’ process. We made sure to run the dishwasher, set up the coffee pot, and took showers before we went to bed.

This morning, I checked online (amazing what you can find on the internet!) and learned from a 3:30 am press release the repair was successful – not only could I flush the toilet, I could also safely drink the water. Yesterday at work my coworkers were a mix of half those who hadn’t a clue about the situation, and half who were panicking and freaked out, buying up cases of water and fretting about possibly not taking a shower before work. (I can identify with the shower issue, though I’ll happily do a sponge bath as long as I can wash my hair each morning. I once washed it in a frigid lake – oblivious to the hazards of discharging all that soap into the environment – and have used more than a couple mop sinks in church basements while on weekend retreats.)

One of my earliest blogs was The Blessing of Running Water – October 9, 2009. I’ve cheerfully paid my water bill ever since then, often taking the chance to tell the clerk or the ladies staffing the Help Desk at City Hall about my experience carrying water in the Dominican Republic.

In the wake of the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, for which a lot of New Orleans residents didn’t evacuate but later wished they had, I wonder just how many times you get warned about something like a hurricane or potential water shut off, and then simply ignore it. It didn’t take all that long to prepare for our water situation (an extra trip to the store, and a bit of planning on our part before bedtime.) We are so blessed with basic necessities like plenty of running water and we take it so much for granted until it might not be there.

Now what am I going to do with a tub full of water? Seems a waste to just pull the plug!

Zinnias

Zinnias are a blessing that keep turning up in my life. My most profound memory of them is years ago, the first time I served on a team to lead a three day retreat inside the prison. One of the guys, Ronald, reached over and gently touched the scarlet zinnia in the vase at the table. He looked at me and asked, “Are these real?” I wondered how long it had been since this man, incarcerate within high stone walls, had seen a fresh flower. We just held the retreat again a couple weeks ago, and another man seemed especially appreciative of the flowers. For years, a farmer friend of one of our team members has grown fields of zinnias and offers us all we want for the retreat. A bit of sacrificial love, shown to prisoners he’ll never meet.
Last summer, while helping to build a house in the Dominican Republic for a family, I saw some beautiful tropical flowers, but was most amazed at the zinnias growing near “our” house – along a rusting barbed wire fence. In a haunting way, they were beautiful with the shadow of barbed wire against the stucco house, .

Early this spring when I decided to start some seeds indoors for my garden – something I had never done before – among the seeds I chose were zinnias. Much to my amazement, they sprouted and I transplanted the plants near the fronts of two of the raised beds. They’ve done extraordinarily well – I’ve cut numerous bunches, which only encourages branching and more flowers. I expect to have zinnias until the frost unless the deer eat them.  Some of the plants are protected with a chicken wire cage, but the other bunch, in front of the tomatoes which have grown over my head against the back fence, are not covered.  I guess if I had a choice I'd tell the deer to eat those zinnias and leave my veggies alone!

My mother-in-law (see the “Gordon, Stop the Car!” entry on 6/21/10) has been painting flowers for weeks, in preparation for a sale at church. We made packaged sets of flower notecards, and my brother-in-law matted some of the paintings for sale. Paul helped set up a canopy tent and sat with her during the sale, which was quite successful. Apparently she’s turning in more than $200 to support her church. I bought one of her paintings – of zinnias!