Banana bread

Posted on February 16, 2013 by harasprice

I baked a loaf of banana bread this afternoon with help from my daughter. I love watching her culinary curiosity grow beyond mere batter tasting and sugar stealing. I have to admit she was my direct inspiration for baking this loaf today. She bought a bunch of bananas last week shopping with her Dad while I was spending the day on a vestry retreat. She isn’t a huge fan of bananas, but she had picked these out because, “we only have to eat a few of them, and then they’ll get all black spotted and be perfect for squishing up and making bread.” Well, at least she’s got the science of it down.

Anyhow, now it’s a week later and our bananas are looking pretty awful. They were headed for a sure demise in the compost heap unless bread making commenced immediately. So, we got out a big bowl, she squished them up with a fork and we added eggs and sugar and then she sifted in a combination of flour and soda and salt and cinnamon from a big aluminum hand sifter into the sloppy liquid base. After some hand mixing with a wooden spoon and adding a couple handfuls of walnuts, we poured it into a well used loaf pan. She said, “wait, I have a secret addition!” to which of course I asked, “what’s the secret?” And she rolled her nine year old eyes and said, “Mom…duh…if I tell you it won’t be a secret!” Of course, what was I thinking…

So, I watched as she took a knife and made very deliberate cross-hatches across the loaf from top to bottom, then sprinkled on cinnamon sugar from the vintage aluminum shaker of it that I keep in the 1950’s Hoosier cabinet in the kitchen. She waved her hand across it and said, “TaDa! Mushy bananas become yummy bread!”

In this small and simple daily moment, I glimpsed a moment of inspired ordinary spirituality. Like water turned to wine, yesterday’s bananas become tomorrow’s delicious breakfast. The recipe (and even the kitchenware) were the same as my mother and grandmother had used generations before and that comfortable familiarity is part of what makes cooking a favorite dish a joy, rather than a chore. There is both a science and, perhaps, magical art to cooking that transforms what ingredients we put in to our recipes into something greater than the sum of its respective parts. The chef knows that, and the guests are delighted to partake. Those that assist in the preparation are simultaneously aware that the “secret” is both obvious and elusive.

I will let any readers build analogies from here.

My point of light today: if we are willing to be a part of transformation, the result can be extraordinary. Just ask my daughter who is polishing off the first delicious slice of what, hours ago, could have been tossed aside and disposed of as rotten fruit. Redemption comes in many flavors.

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The road of no turning back

Posted on February 15, 2013 by harasprice

Inspiration for today’s story came in response to a question posed on the “Saved by Ira Glass” lenten blog series (see http://www.stthomasrichmond.org/blog/sdaughtry/feb-14-2013). The question posed was: When did you decide to go with your heart, your conscience, your sense of love….instead of the rules you ‘knew’ were right?

It was a warm night in late spring on a dark road several miles out from next to nowhere. She wore sweat pants and a long-sleeve t-shirt, tucked in only because she had a cassette walkman strapped onto her waist. Her copper red hair, recently dyed, was long and wild and her thoughts were racing. She was walking as fast as she could, but she was no runner. She wished she could fly. But instead, she kept on. The year was 1990 and she was a few weeks shy of turning 20. The soundtrack was classic U2:

I have climbed the highest mountains, I have run through the fields….Only to be with you…Only to be with you.

I have run, I have crawled, I have scaled these city walls….These city walls….Only to be with you.

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…

The past several weeks were life altering. Just before Easter, the person of her deepest affections had held her hands, looked her in the eye and said “I have AIDS, and I am dying” and within two weeks, her world came crashing apart. There were rumors (aka: a prayer chain) that led to his dismissal from his living space, his job, and the church they attended, there were those who in the name of loving and protecting her had forbidden even social contact, there were her parents who threw out the coffee cup he drank from in their house and made cracks about sending all the filthy people “God was punishing” with HIV to die on an island. There was the disparaging of race and the use of the term “those people” which fell like coffin nails. There was her own relentless questioning of why and how. There were secret letters and clandestine meetings not with some great escape route in mind, but to sob at the stigma and oppression and lack of options.

I believe in the Kingdom Come, then all the colors will bleed into one…bleed into one. But, yes, I’m still running.

You broke the bonds and you loosed the chains, carried the cross of my shame….oh, my shame…you know I believe it

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for

The truth was, she felt beaten. She wished she could be angry, youthful, even resentful. She had been all those things in recent weeks. Shame…well, she was feeling that simply because it was being heaped upon her in droves. Shame for what: loving? trusting? wanting respect for human life and failing? She hadn’t even broken the rules. There hadn’t been sex, and who had the right to presume otherwise, anyhow? They wrote plays together that were performed by the youth group. They shared stories and poetry and read the bible together. He had past drug use, and paid the price for that, and God is supposed to forgive when we repent, isn’t that right? So she had been told. But not now. God, she was told, had obviously dolled out punishment and that meant there was no real forgiveness. Her job was to distance herself from the one judged “sinner” or to risk being pulled down into punishment as well. It was her duty to walk away. It was her duty to keep on running.

But that wasn’t what she was running from. She still hadn’t found what she was looking for.

She stopped. She turned around and surveyed the landscape below. A pristine college town. A perfect setting of churches, pretty and well dressed people. The place she was supposed to be, governed by a doctrine and deity that didn’t care about the state of people’s hearts and their contribution to the world. It was apparently OK in this place ruled by this diety to judge whole groups of people by their race, or their behaviors, or what people assumed their behaviors to be.

As suddenly as day descends to a final moment where it becomes night, she no longer believed.

Even if she still believed the stories she had been raised on, she knew that going to hell for eternity would be better than to align oneself with a loveless, judging diety for eternity. It might actually even be the same thing.

so be it.

She said it out loud. And stopped. And took her place in a different moment, the present state of being. And she never went back.

The air was cleansing, alone miles away from anywhere. She breathed in a new breath. Her cassette tape continued to play. And in the still, small moments of the dark night, although she did not recognize it at the time, the Universe still loved her and accepted her. God would not leave her, and did not leave her. God was present in the quest for social justice that would become her motivation day after day. God was even present in the soundtrack that continued to play on…

Sleep, Sleep tonight

And may your dreams
Be realized
If the thundercloud
Passes rain
So let it rain
Rain down on him
Mmm…mmm…mmm…
So let it be

It just might be a decade or two before she realized the source of the music, the myth, the connection that remained. But in God’s time, all things are the same. Because God is Love.

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Office chimes

Posted on February 14, 2013 by harasprice

I was deep in academic thought today, working on the next grant proposal. Grant writing is an art and a science and generally, it tends to consume my consciousness until a phone rings or there is a knock on my somewhat closed door. Today, it was St. James church bells that caught my attention. Specifically the refrain of “Sing, my tongue the glorious battle.”

I have to admit, I love my office…and the view it offers… and I am going to miss it when we move to a new building in a few months. I have a lovely view of both Temple Beth-Ahaba’s dome and St. James’ Episcopal Church spire. I am including a picture to illustrate this lovely, ecumenical view. It suits me, since my spiritual views do tend to be expansive. But, in the years since I have lived and worked here, I have become officially Episcopalian in the eyes of the church and, more importantly, in my own personal faith and worship community. I still haven’t added it to my Facebook page, but maybe someday soon. So, I recognize with some irony that my office view has come to have meaning and significance for me just in time for me to let it go.

Back to today’s small point of light, though. Today, the chime pulled me in. I must have been tuning out whatever refrain marked ordinary time but the Lenten update was absolutely captivating. I have come to love plainchant for its ordinary simplicity. It allows one to be drawn to the words, to be brought deeply into their meaning without the sentimentality of rousing melody. It allows for a juxtaposition of simplicity and complexity that I find delightful. In this particular hymn, I immediately took into my mind the first lyric:
Sing my tongue the glorious battle
Of the mighty conflict sing
Tell the triumph of the victim,
To his cross your tribute bring.
Jesus Christ, the world’s redeemer
From that cross now reigns as King.

Triumphant victim?
Reigning while being executed?
Singing in conflict?

These are the quandaries of life. Whether we take in these stories as literal or allegorical, we are caught in the juxtaposition that really does mark the human experience. Even my pending office move seems to bring these seeming conflicts into clear focus.

I do need to get back to my grant writing. Its an interesting contrast to write in this manner at the same time. But stopping to acknowledge and embrace the seemingly divergent pulls of life truly does make me at peace with myself, with the elusive work-life balance, with the complexity of being human. I didn’t ask to hear this song today, but the melody found me nonetheless. I will miss my office chimes. But I suspect the melody will still be with me…

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My first ashes

Posted on February 13, 2013 by harasprice

I was born and raised in an evangelical protestant church. The only mentions of “lent” ever made in church were critical (ok, derogatory is probably a more accurate word). I recall lent being connected with people/churches who “still keep Jesus hanging on a cross” while we, the self-proclaimed “Resurrection People” had moved beyond this ancient ritual.

I was always fascinated by ashes, though. People who had them in the grocery store, smudged on their foreheads. My Catholic friends left mid-day to attend mass and came back wondering whether to wash their faces or not. An occasional teacher taught all day with an ashen cross, either oblivious or not projecting care about distracted students like me. Ashes were fascinating, and not open to my familial or religious inquiry.

I am sure I will evolve into other stories of life in college, but for now suffice it to say that I spent my first two years at a college deemed as a “Christian School” where chapel was mandatory, wearing J. Crew was obligatory, and standing out from the fundamentalist mainstream was radical. My Freshman year (before my Great Rebellion) I went to chapel on days I didn’t deliberately schedule myself to work in the cafeteria, bought J. Crew at the Goodwill, and tried to fit into the mainstream. I never really did. But, one late winter Wednesday, I showed up to chapel and a Catholic Monk had been asked to preach. People were aghast. Seriously, a few of my friends even refused to attend. I sat down that day with a smile of delight.

I don’t remember a word he said in the sermon proper. I just remember at the end he said, “In case there are any closet Catholics out there, or people who are simply willing to experience something new, I will host a simple Ash Wednesday service this evening in the basement of East Hall.”

Ashes.

I was a free woman, a Freshman, in college. My parents didn’t know I would be going. I didn’t have to tell anyone. It was taking place in the basement of my dorm. I was going to get my ashes and see what this ritual was all about.

I think of this small point of light from my adolescence on this particular Ash Wednesday of my adulthood, because this moment was transformative in its utter simplicity. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going, I just headed down the dark stairwell to the basement where no one ever went. I peeked into the chapel I didn’t even know existed (it was usually locked). There were four people there. It was quiet, and lit with candles. We prayed.

Remember that you are dust, and unto dust you shall return.

I had my ashes, and I felt those words dig into my spirit. And then, I went back up to my dorm room and washed them off and rejoined the throngs of college girls on my floor. But my spirit had been stirred.

It was several years until I observed Ash Wednesday again. During those years, I would face death on a daily basis in my professional life as a social worker and grief therapist. I would face death with people I personally loved. I would confront my own mortality. I would walk out on the faith of my youth into a dark and unknown world where I would struggle and rebel. It is what happens when we dare to face death. It is what happened when Jesus faced death and struggled through 40 days and nights of temptation, literally or figuratively. We cannot experience the joy of resurrection without acknowledging the path to the cross. And that dust of our humanity stays with us, whether we acknowledge it or not.

I acknowledge it. And on this Ash Wednesday, I wear my ashes as a visceral reminder.

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