Summer Fun in Photos

I've been doing research at work about how the Olive Tree blog could be more effective . The nice thing is that the research will benefit this blog, too. I hope you still have some faith in me as a blogger and are looking forward to the good things to come. :)

My friend Heidi had a blog post with pictures from her various summer adventures. They say imitation is the highest form of flattery, right? So here's my post of Fun Summer Photos.

Over Memorial Day weekend, my family and several friends of the family enjoyed time at my uncle's beach house in Lincoln City, Oregon. My dad, friend Rachel, and I went on a hike that unfortunately ended in a broken arm for my dad. I just realized that my dad's looking off to the side in the top picture. Hmm...not sure what he's looking at! :)

Two weeks later, I drove back home to see Julie graduate from high school. I'm so proud of her; she's a compassionate, smart, and fun young woman. At the end of August, my family will pile into our Mazda van and drive her down to Azusa Pacific University in the Los Angeles area. Fun! Pray that we can all fit in the car along with Julie's stuff.

My housemates Rachel and Taylor biked 38 miles from Spokane to Coeur d'Alene in June. Super intense, right? What did I do? Read Harry Potter at a coffee shop where my friend works, drank strawberry lemonade, ate this peanut butter brownie, and picked them up in downtown Coeur d'Alene. Super intense? Not really, but I sure had fun!

My parents came to Spokane from July 6-14. We had a wonderful week together. I planned to bless them when they were here, but instead I found myself super-abundantly blessed by them. We made this Cherry Clafouti for dessert one night. Delicious!

Some dear friends from Partners International and I biked a portion of the Centenniel Trail in Spokane Valley on Saturday, July 21. Afterward we enjoyed a picnic, cherry pit spitting contest, and the turtles around this waterfall. Ya gotta love summer!

Last Sunday, my small group from church enjoyed a day on the Pend Oreille River about an hour north of Spokane. It was beautiful. We even saw two eagles flying when we were on the boat...amazing!

Unfortunately, my two lovely housemates, Taylor and Rachel, are moving out in the coming week. We had a wonderful day yesterday at Green Bluff, eating lunch together, visiting the Petit Chat bakery and spending an hour in Jim and Janie Edwards' garden. Here's a couple photos from our day together:

Acedia and Me

It's high time for a new post, don't you think?

First, I want to say a big THANK YOU to those who donated to my Team Running Water web page: Katie Gilsdorf, the Brummer family, Sam and Judy Palpant, Lorry Jackson, Brad and Kathy Beal, and my dear sister, Julie Brink. I met my goal of $250!!! If you don't know, Team Running Water is an effort through Partners International to raise money for clean water projects in Africa and Indonesia through Bloomsday, Spokane's annual 10k race. The really cool part, though, is the fact that clean water becomes a means for sharing the Gospel because Christian ministries provide the clean water. If you think about it, pray that God brings Living Water to these communities, not just clean, drinkable water. 

Since I haven't written in a while, I'll just give some highs and lows for the past couple weeks. I swear the weeks alternate in that one week, I'll have something after work every day and the next week, I'll be home every night of the week. I can't decide if this is a good or bad thing. I suppose, in the end, it doesn't really matter. I like to be active, hanging out with people, making meals, etc., but I also like to be home and have the chance to cook and bake and read and walk. It seems to work out.

I'll start with the low. This week I've been hovering on the verge of sick. My throat's been sore at times, but mostly, I've just been really tired. Really tired. Not sure what's going on with my body, but I'm trying to do all the right things: sleep a lot, drink lots of water, gargle with salt water, exercise, etc. But sometimes, maybe, our bodies just need to slooow dooowwwnnnnn.

The other low is that life has been speeding by with such rapidity that I can't reflect and process things in the manner in which I'd like. It's not just having time at home that restores my soul, but also solitude. Solitude is hard to come by in a house with four other girls. I've recently felt like I'm not doing anything well. In other words, mediocrity's been the name of the game. Bleh.

I've been reading this awesome book by Kathleen Norris called "Dakota: A Spiritual Geography." It's a work of creative nonfiction, which is one of my favorite genres of literature. This book is soaked in scriptural language that makes me think long and hard about the state of my mind and my heart. Because I like it so much, I looked on Amazon.com to check out Norris' other books, one of which is called "Acedia and Me." Acedia (ah-k-dee-ah) is an old monastic word (Greek? Latin?) that means a kind of slothfulness or carelessness, the "noonday demon" for monks who become restless with monastic life. Reading the book's description made me wonder if some of my tiredness isn't actually acedia. Why I else would I let the vacuum sit on the floor of my room for three days before vacuuming my 10x10 square-foot room? 

One reviewer summed up the book in this way: "In the end, her remedies for acedia are simple: Go for a walk. Memorize Scripture. Sing Psalms. Seek community. Worship. Shovel manure. Dust a bookshelf. Wash dishes. Study. Read. Write. And be kind to one another."

I love this quote because it made me realize that acedia attacks us physically and spiritually, which Norris must also realize. Her remedies call for hard work: physical labor and intentional community with God and people, but also the hard work of noticing the particulars--walking, reading, writing, and dusting. It's the paying attention that's hard. Acedia would have me slide through life with nary a hard look at the state of my soul or the state of the world around me.

Oh brother. I'm writing myself into obligation. This tends to happen. Perhaps that's why Norris lists writing as an antidote to acedia. You have permission to hold me accountable to looking hard at my soul and the world. And if you share your struggles of acedia with me, I'll do the same.

In "Dakota," Norris has a great quote about hanging up wet laundry on a line. I think it ties into this post rather well: "Hanging up wet clothes gives me time alone under the sky to think, to grieve, and gathering the clean clothes in, smelling the sunlight on them, is victory." I'm praying that our hard work to combat acedia is like smelling the sunlight on dry clothes, a victory.

Well, that would be the natural stopping place, but I promised you a high, too. I think my high would be last Tuesday. My Bible Study leader, Janie, and I took a meal to a hurting family we know. She made Split Pea Soup with the Easter ham bone, and I made fresh French bread. It was victory to see the dough billow in its bowl as it rose and bake to a burnished brown. I wrapped three halves of bread in plastic wrap, put them in a colorful woven basket and walked with the basket up the Back 40 hill, across Whitworth's campus, and down the street to Janie's house.

For some reason, I was agitated as I started the walk, but a couple minutes in, I felt peace and was able to pray and enjoy the outside, the sun, the view of Mt. Spokane, the first wave of spring in the forsythia and flowering trees. The Lord restored my soul and all was peace.

Thanks for reading my thoughts. I love being able to write such meditations. But I think even more what I want to say is this: thanks for listening. God bless you.

Holy Saturday Reflections on Fasting

I decided sometime back in Lent that I wanted to try fasting again. Real fasting. Like not eating for an extended period of time. (ACK!) At first I had decided to fast from after the Good Friday service at my church to Easter morning. But then, my friend Heidi called and wanted me to go to a Jon Foreman concert with her at the Service Station, a local coffee shop and concert venue. I definitely wanted to go, as Jon Foreman is a phenomenal solo artist (after leading the band Switchfoot for many years), but fasting didn't seem very compatible with a concert. Least of all, my stomach rumblings might seriously distract the other concert-goers. So, instead, I've been fasting from about 10 a.m. on Friday until now-ish, 3 p.m. on Saturday. Whenever I finish writing this post, I'll eat my fast-breaking meal of spinach salad with sliced radishes, golden raisins, and a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. Yum!

Fasting has made me realize a number of things. I hope you don't mind another list. :o)

1. I use cooking/baking as a means to avoid doing the things that I should do and want to do, but also don't take as much time to do as I should, such as reading, journaling, praying, cleaning, blogging, e-mailing, etc. When I came home from the grocery store at 10:30 this morning, I sat myself in my favorite living room chair and almost haven't moved since then because I've been reading, blogging and e-mailing. It's been great! When I'm cooking and baking, there's always something else to do...more dishes to wash, more baking time on that casserole, more sorting through my chest freezer to find the ingredient I want. But I've lately felt a driving need to just be...to plow through the growing stack of books in my room, to journal and self-reflect, to take the time to pray for others. To attend to, I guess you could say, the things of life that are like oil and gas to a car. The things that keep us running.

2. Food is as food does. Several times in the past two weeks, I've been so hungry before a meal that I get snappish and mean. I've also gotten into a habit of eating too much and thinking about food/cooking too much. It's definitely my main-stay hobby. There's no doubt in my mind that food is gift from God. But it has its place in the hierarchy of importance. If my eating and cooking causes me to neglect time with God or with others, then it's become a disordered love (as St. Augustine might put it).

3. Ironically, fasting has made me realize how much joy cooking, baking, and eating bring me. I really do use food as a means of loving, encouraging, communicating with, and caring for others. Serving people home-cooked meals, both impromptu and planned, delivering baked goods to work, eating my own creations, trying to be a good steward of my resources (both money and food), etc. are life giving to me. On Sunday, I made a whole wheat pizza with pesto that I had frozen from last summer, the last of my Monterey Jack cheese, asparagus (which is now in season and which I am trying to eat a TON of), broccoli, and wilted spinach. It was delicious! It gave me great joy to cook and eat the pizza that evening and enjoy it through the rest of the week.

4. Fasting makes me realize my frailty, how dependent I am on others and on God. As I was walking down the stairs in my house today, my legs were quivery. My hands are not quite steady. After missing the first meal, my thoughts weren't entirely clear. It's an infinitely good thing that God has made us so dependent on things and people outside ourselves or else we might be tempted to pride and independence more than we already are. Tomorrow, I'll enjoy a lavish Easter dinner with my mentor and her husband and seven others. I will provide the potato casserole. Dottie will provide the ham, asparagus, yams, and rolls. Stacey will provide the dessert. This meal in which we sit down to celebrate the amazing LIFE that we receive in the Resurrection will also be a testimony to our interdependence.

5. Fasting has made me thankful. In light of the super-abundance of Easter in which Christ lavishes forgiveness, new life, and freedom on us, I realize that my life is a continuous witness to the grace of God.

A blessed Holy Saturday to you as we live in the tenuous in-between of Christ crucified and Christ risen. Easter is on its way!    

15 Things I'm Thankful For Today

It’s been a while since I last wrote, mostly because I took a five-day trip home over the first weekend in March to help my sister, Julie, celebrate her 18^th birthday. We had a great time!

I’m going to do something unique with this post. In the Lenten schedule that I shared back in February, one of the challenges was to write down 15 things you’re thankful for on a piece of paper. I may still write them down on paper, but I’m first going to pencil these things out here. There’s no particular order to the list. They’re reflections of things that I’m grateful for today, on Friday, March 16, 2012. I don’t want to delve too much into the past because I want to be attentive to today. Here goes nothing!

I’m thankful for…

1.       My parents. Their wisdom, laughter, lives of maturity, and faith has been the second most influential and shaping force in my life, and I cannot express my thanksgiving adequately. The first force, of course, is Jesus Christ, the one to whom all these thanks go and the source of every good and perfect gift.

2.       My sister. I have a fantastic sister. Who else would eat a piece out of the very center of the cake for her birthday? (She claims it tastes best.)

3.       The ability to sing praises to God and the rhythm to dance. (This includes spontaneous Friday night dance parties with my housemates. Can you really dance to the mellow music of Enya? We found a way.)

4.       God has given me a renewed hunger for reading. I had a dry spell of months and months after college where I could read barely anything except cookbooks and Laura Ingalls Wilder. I recently read Girl Meets God by Lauren Winner and LOVED it. I just finished Mudhouse Sabbath by Lauren Winner, too. I’m now in the middle of The Secret Garden, and my stack of books from the library grows daily.

5.       Throw backs to childhood. I found the weighty book The Roald Dahl Treasury at the library on Friday. I simply loved Roald Dahl growing up and re-reading anything by him is a delight.

6.       Helping kids learn. Last Sunday, my co-teacher and I started teaching our 5^th and 6^th graders the Presbyterian Beginner’s Catechism in Sunday School. It is such a privilege to help these kids make God’s redemptive story the foundation of their lives. I want the words of Scripture and liturgy and hymns and the catechism to be so ingrained in their hearts and minds that these words become like bedrock, popping to mind in good times and bad and sanctifying their ordinary and extraordinary humanity.

7.       Playing with kids. I played basketball outside this week with the two kids I baby-sit and the neighbor girl. It was really cold out, but we got warm from the inside by playing Pig and Bump. The kiddos kept laughing at me because my basketball would ricochet off the curb, and I’d have to run wildly after it. There’s something so basic and fun in playing.

8.       God’s winnowing. I have realized many things in me in the past couple weeks that are chaff and keep the good grain from reaching its full potential. In several circumstances, particularly at work, God has blown away the chaff and taught me some good lessons in loving others.

9.       Pain. I was privy to a particularly painful situation last week and visiting the person in the throes of that pain was good for my soul. It reminded me of the capacity God gives pain to strip away human folly and remind us that we’re bound together in community. In the Body of Christ, her pain is my pain. I felt her pain physically, and God continues to bring her to mind. But it’s also a reminder that this road we’re on to Easter is the dark road to Calvary. There is no pain in this world which the incarnated Son of God has not already borne. Surely that is worthy of thanksgiving.

10.   The time to savor good food. Mind you, good food is often simple. Here’s a taste of what I mean: banana bread with peanut butter; sautéed sweet onions, cheese, and scrambled egg in a tortilla; Funfetti cake with Funfetti frosting; homemade pizza with big rounds of cooked tomato; black bean and sweet potato burritos (I am seriously addicted to these!); celery, peanut butter, and raisins; chips and guacamole; juicy oranges. I could keep going, but I think you get the idea! (I’m tempted to put peanut butter on its own line that’s how much I love the darn stuff.)

11.   A clean house. There’s something about cleaning your house and getting things in order (doing laundry, sweeping, scrubbing counters, etc.) that is good for the soul. I’m trying to put my finger on what it is…I think it has to do with stewardship, with taking pride in caring for that which has been entrusted to me.

12.   My co-workers. It’s a delight to get to know my co-workers a little more every day. This happens in random ways—throwing coffee grounds on the floor in an attempt to fix the coffee machine, waiting in line for the two bathrooms, playing ping pong games, and trying to make the microwave clock reflect Daylight Savings Time.

13.   The big rack of primroses I pass every time I go into Fred Meyer. I am also thankful for the one I have on my dining room table, given to me by a dear friend. Its sunshine-yellow petals fade into a stunning rim of deep pink. Praise God for new life! This little flower is a harbinger of spring.

14.   My church. I love my church, the people who attend, the liturgy, the worship, the Word of God preached. I’m thankful for church in general, too. I’m thankful for the time each week to sit and be silent with a room full of fellow believers, praise God with a room full, listen to the Word with a room full, and come into God’s presence with a room full of humans, broken and sinful, but also beautiful and purposeful.    

15.   God’s promises which are new every morning.    

Did you know you can celebrate Mardi Gras with a Pancake Feast?

I wanted to take the opportunity to think about Lent here. I wrote an article on my work’s blog entitled Why Lenten Discipline is a Good Thing, and it got me thinking about Lent.

I really had to live up Fat Tuesday (Mardi Gras) this year because I’m giving up sugar for Lent. I went to a church dessert potluck on Sunday night and came home with the leftovers of four people’s desserts! I took them all to work today and wished people a Happy Fat Tuesday. Farewell apple pie, chocolate cake, chocolate, and cookies (all of which I had today). We’ll not meet for 40 days. (The exception is, admittedly, the re-opening of Didiers on Feb. 28. If you have doubts about my choice to break my Lenten fast on this particular day, we can talk.)

As I was doing my research for my work blog article, I came across a BBC web page about English Lenten traditions that I’d never heard of before. Apparently, the English call Mardi Gras Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Day. Shrive (shrove) is the process of showing penitence for one’s sins, particularly before the start of the Lenten season. Pancake Day came about because some churches would encourage their parishioners to give up fatty ingredients for Lent. To use up the butter, eggs, and milk in church-goers’ pantries, they would make huge batches of pancakes on Shrove Tuesday before the start of Lent, a version of a Mardi Gras celebration.

Believe it or not, the English even inaugurated a Pancake Race in the late 1400s that is still a tradition today. (If you don’t believe me, check out River Cottage Family Cookbook from your local library.) Tradition goes that in 1445, a woman lost track of time while cooking pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. She was taken by surprise when the church bells chimed to announce confession time, so she raced to the church with the skillet in her hand and apron around her middle. Pancake races in England were (and maybe still are) often followed by a church service. How crazy is that?! I knew I loved the English.

Enough history. Now to the practicalities of Lent. I was researching Spokane-area churches at work today and came across an awesome Lenten schedule that one church is offering its congregants. Take a look at it. I’m not going to do everything on the calendar, but I will certainly enjoy doing some of it. Even if you don’t choose to participate in any of it, I found the suggestions telling of what many in today’s churches feel is lacking in their own lives: silence, intentionality in relationships, rhythm. I have been lacking these qualities in my own life recently, so I look forward to following many of the suggestions.

As great as all the things on that calendar are, I’m hoping Lent will also be an intentional time of spending time with God in prayer, Bible study, service, and just plain ol’ silence. It’s hard to take time to slow down, but I want to slow down during Lent. And I’m hoping that abstinence from sugar will expose the human weakness in me so that I cling all the more to Christ and his sufficiency. “You are dust, and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).

I’d love to hear your thoughts about Lent in general or your own plan for Lenten discipline. Leave a comment or send me an e-mail.

Blessings to each of you this week!

Happy Valentine's Day!

A couple funny things happened at work today that I wanted to share with you. I had the grand idea to have treats in the office for Valentine’s Day. I was making cupcakes on Monday night for something else and had extra, so I packaged 11 frosting-less chocolate cupcakes for work. After baby-sitting in the morning, I stopped by Safeway with the intention of getting more cupcakes and the ingredients for raspberry Italian sodas (thanks for the idea, Lorry!).

Pathetic, I know, but I had no idea where anything was in Safeway! I always shop at Costco, Winco, or Fred Meyer. After wandering around and looking confused, I finally found the club soda, which I set in my basket. Then I picked out a tray of 12 vanilla cupcakes with towering pink frosting and a container of chocolate cookies with mint frosting. I put these in my basket, too, along with canned whip cream. Here’s where things started to break down.

They didn’t have any raspberry syrup. Reluctantly, I put back the club soda and whip cream in favor of three bottles of Martinelli’s apple cider, but then thought that we might not have anything to open the bottles with, so back on the shelf they went. I realized then that my arm was about to fall off from the weight of the club sodas, so I decided to buy two containers of raspberry lemonade out of desperation. As I was making a beeline for the lemonade, an employee asked “Are you finding everything?” I wasn’t about to tell him how I really felt, so I said politely, “Yes, thank you,” and grumbled to myself about why I couldn’t have just used a shopping cart. I’m sure this would have been the solution to my problem. By this time, the cupcakes were quite jumbled.

Praise God, I made it to work and got everything onto the counter in the kitchen. I pulled the cupcakes out of the bag and some of the frosting tops had come clean off! Two guys in the kitchen stared at the cupcakes. Frankly, I don’t blame them.

“Umm…what happened to the cupcakes?” One of them, David, asked.

I told the whole story, and David suggested that I just separate the frostings from the cupcakes.

“After all, some people really like the frosting but not the cake, and vice versa,” he reasoned.

So I did just that. I set out the rest of the spread, chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting, raspberry lemonade and ice, chocolate mint cookies, severed cupcakes and frosting on separate plates, and some vanilla cupcakes that still had frosting. Needless to say, the treats got rave reviews and everything had vanished by 4 p.m. except three blobs of pink frosting.

Around 3 p.m., I was working steadily at my computer, and David said, “Elizabeth! Look!”

He had placed a pink frosting top on a chocolate cupcake. I burst out laughing. Somehow that made all the trouble of the morning’s shopping trip worthwhile.

On a serious note, I wrote out a hymn about God’s love for both Partners and Olive Tree this morning. I’ve committed it to memory because I like it so much, so I’m going to share it with you. Here it is:

Could we with ink the ocean fill

and were the sky of parchment made;

If every stalk on earth a quill

and every man a scribe by trade,

To write the love of God above

would drain the ocean dry.

Nor could the scroll contain the whole

tho’ stretched from sky to sky.

O Love of God, how rich and pure!

How measureless and strong!

It shall forevermore endure

the saints’ and angels’ song.

I hope your Valentine’s Day has been full of the love of God, family and friends!

Valentine's Day is A-Coming

I’m making peanut butter cookies right now. I have no good reason to make them, nor was I planning on making cookies at all today. But I couldn’t help myself. I haven’t made plain-Jane peanut butter cookies in ages, and they’re so good right out of the oven and, conveniently, right out of the freezer. I asked my events planning committee at work if we should do anything to celebrate Valentine’s Day on Tuesday. Surprisingly, I got an enthusiastic response from even the two men. So in the spirit of V-Day, my mind’s been full of sugar and red and pink and hearts. I’m not planning to share these cookies at work, but I’m trying to think of what would be a good store-bought treat. Any ideas? Anything besides the ubiquitous Safeway sugar cookie with too-thick red frosting is fair game.  

I'm in the process of writing a far longer post, but it's taking me some time. Thanks for your patience!