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“I imagine Lent for you and for me as a great departure from the greedy, anxious anti-neighborliness of our economy, a great departure from our exclusionary politics that fears the other, a great departure from self-indulgent consumerism that devours creation. And then an arrival in a new neighborhood, because it is a gift to be simple, it is a gift to be free; it is a gift to come down where we ought to be.” ― Walter Brueggemann, A Way Other Than Our Own: Devotions for Lent February 25, 2020 Beloved: I appreciate my friend and colleague John Vanderzee for posting this perfect introduction to Lent. I especially love the phrase “a great departure” for describing the spiritual intention of the season. Here are some other devotional ideas for spiritual practice this Lenten season. I look forward to your feedback and conversation as we walk and worship together through the coming days.
pastor annette
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February 18, 2020
Beloved: As some remodeling work finishes up at my house, here are some things I’ve learned. In the 1990s, it was apparently a thing to install a giant Jacuzzi bathtub then build the house around it. Uninstalling involves sawing the tub into pieces to carry to the dumpster. If you give a floor guy some Girl Scout cookies he’ll help you catch a mouse. I am more afraid of mousetraps than mice, and I needed to catch one who moved into my Honda Fit. The floor guy was super great about setting the trap, twice. If your husband says he only wants to pick out one thing in the project, don’t be surprised if it turns out to be a high tech toilet he will program to welcome you upon approach. My cat likes to sit in the new bathtub – but only when it’s empty. When he isn’t told the contractor filled the tub to test the stopper, he ends up really angry for the rest of the day. People love to be fed. Snacks, breakfast, something for the road. If you ask them if they want something, they almost always say, “Oh, I’m fine.” But if you take them something you’ve already made, they are glad to have it. My egg sandwiches are big favorites now. Despite internet advice to the contrary, warm water with vinegar and much scrubbing will not remove grout from the face of your tile. Call the tile man to come back and remove it surgically with his tile scalpel. I promise everyone will be happier for it. Like everything else in life, remodeling projects demand patience and flexibility. Some things don’t turn out as you imagined and some things turn out better than you could have. Treating everyone involved as though they are doing their best makes each day and the whole project proceed more efficiently. Having workers in one’s home is another shape hospitality can take. I pray you know the joy of hospitality this week. ~ peace & prayers, pastor annette February 11, 2020
Beloved: In an ongoing discussion with my nurse practitioner about post-menopausal health, we’ve talked a lot about diet and nutrition. Apparently grandmother bodies prefer holding onto weight we once shed more easily. “Protein in the morning,” she emphasized, “every single morning.” Based on a separate conversation, I added two cups of crushed oyster shells to my hens’ feed, and egg production doubled within days. Turns out that, while they are still laying, my girls are not spring chickens either. Their systems also need a dietary boost, calcium in this case. So, as much as I prefer toast or cereal with fruit, protein in the morning it is. I scramble, fry, and boil it, depending on the day. This morning I made egg sliders with ham, cheese, and leftover rolls from the freezer. The recipe works for both my doctor and the SNAP budget experiment I’ve been doing lately.* I recently heard a different doctor say that the healthiest food we can eat either was pulled off a tree, grew in the ground, or had a mother (a description I especially love to use when talking to kids about eating healthy). The problem is, of course, that the healthiest food is also the most expensive. While poor diet is only one factor in health outcomes, poverty has repeatedly been correlated with poor health outcomes such as obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes — all of which are directly connected to diet. Sadly, wealth is definitely better for your health, a reality that as a society we have chosen for ourselves and our poorer neighbors. We’ve done so by supporting the subsidy of one crop pretty much to the exclusion of all others. Do you know it? Indiana is famous for it. 40% of everything sold in a supermarket contains it, including plastic packaging, soaps, and detergents. It’s eaten by most of the meat we eat. It fuels the trucks that drive our groceries to the store. It’s corn. High fructose corn syrup. Hydrogenated Corn Oil. Polylactic acid. Ethanol. And so many other names. I’ve no beef with corn whatsoever, though almost all beef is corn-fed and shot full of antibiotics — to deal with cattle’s digestive intolerance of corn. I was raised on and love the taste of summer corn as much as the next Hoosier. My beef is with a culture prioritizing corporate profit over human health when we could choose otherwise. With our dollars and our votes, we could choose to subsidize a biodiverse food industry, an industry of food pulled off a tree, growing in the ground, having a mother. We could choose healthy people over outrageous profits, not only for ourselves but for all our neighbors too. No doubt it’s a challenge, but certainly not undoable. The very beginning for me has been to eat more thoughtfully, more intentionally. And also to read. Last week I mentioned and here quoted The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Another older text that is important to me is The Journal of John Woolman, an 18th-century Quaker who lived deeply conscious of the economics of his faith and how others were affected by his choices. I am considering it for our Lenten reading group. I pray the day is kind to you in every way. ~peace & prayers with much love, pastor annette *local organic eggs are sometimes available for free at Mother Hubbard’s cupboard but likely too expensive on a SNAP budget. February 4, 2020
Beloved: Twice this week I’ve eaten toast for breakfast because I’m out of cold cereal and don’t want to make oatmeal. I eat so many eggs for supper I don’t want them for breakfast too. But mostly, because I don’t want to figure out a menu and go to the store. Or, more accurately, I don’t want to figure out this $21 menu again. That’s the lesson of this week: a budget like this doesn’t allow the privilege of stopping on the way home from work to pick up something to make (or eat) for supper. I think I have some vegetable soup in the freezer I can eat before deacons’ tonight and hopefully make the store in the morning. A food book I’ve finished and recommend is Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The book both complicates and reinforces my intentions to each cheaply, healthily and ethically. Last week I bought loads of canned food at Walmart and made plentiful meals. Two avocados, a pound of carrots and a bunch of spinach added fresh vegetables. I also had frozen green beans from my garden. A small Aldi’s package of chicken drumsticks was good for three meals, and I ate eggs for protein the rest of the suppers. Save my green beans which were planted in chicken poopy dirt and transported on foot no more than fifty yards from the yard to the kitchen to the garage freezer, nothing else I ate could possibly have qualified as ethically produced. All of it was government-subsidized, industrially-produced, trucked for miles and shelved by minimum wage workers so I could buy it for .69 a can. The system is terrible for the farmers, the animals, and the planet. It’s not great for our bodies given that we eat what our food eats, as Pollan says, so we eat the pesticides in vegetables and the antibiotics in meat produced industrially. Its only beneficiaries, as best I can tell, are the five enormous agriculture companies running the system. Companies are free to make a profit, of course. I just wish people, especially poor people, were equally free to choose their diet. Here and there, things are changing. Local food is becoming more available to more people, though not cheaply. Non-profits like Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard are getting fresh healthy food to our neighbors who need it most. Seems to me mission and ministry opportunities abound for a church that likes food as much as we do. I welcome your ideas. ~ peace and prayers this rainy day, pastor annette |
I write a Tuesday morning devotional to members and friends of UBC. It is also posted here.
Enjoy! Pastor Annette Copyright
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