Forty years and flowers

My first blogpost looked forward to spring, and our fortieth anniversary, and the voice of the turtledove being heard in the land.

Reasonable expectations for the end of March, unless you live in the Midwest. I must have forgotten that. And this year, winter in Chicagoland has been exceptionally long and bleak. A sales associate at an Eddie Bauer store said to me, "We're having a hard time selling spring clothes. People are just too cold to think about them."

The dogs stand at the window by the front door, mournfully remembering when they used to go for walks.

Friends say, "I don't know why I feel so tired all the time."

We were going to celebrate our anniversary locally, but how is that possible when winter refuses to leave?

So, ever optimistic, we headed for a part of the country known for its gray skies and heavy rainfall. The state my mother escaped from sixty years ago, moving to Southern California in search of sunshine. "You came here to get away from Chicago?" said a bookstore employee yesterday, disbelieving. "Why?"

The pictures show why. It's nippy here, and it rains part of every day. But spring has arrived.

The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of the singing of birds is come,
and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;

The fig tree putteth forth her green figs,
and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell.
Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away.

Song of Songs 2.12-13

Far away from Chicago.

"You shall delight in rich fare"

Tonight for the Easter Vigil at St. Mike’s, I’ll be reading from Isaiah 55, a stirring proclamation of God’s generosity and bounty, a fitting end to dreary Lent, and a call to the Easter feast! Here are excerpts:

Thus says the Lord:
All you who are thirsty,
come to the water!
You who have no money,
come, receive grain and eat;
come, without paying and without cost,
drink wine and milk!
Why spend your money for what is not bread,
your wages for what fails to satisfy?
Heed me, and you shall eat well,
you shall delight in rich fare. . . .

For just as from the heavens
the rain and snow come down
and do not return there
till they have watered the earth,
making it fertile and fruitful,
giving seed to the one who sows
and bread to the one who eats,
so shall my word be
that goes forth from my mouth;
my word shall not return to me void,
but shall do my will,
achieving the end for which I sent it.

—Isaiah 55:1–2, 10–11

Therefore let us celebrate the feast!

—1 Corinthians 5:8

Resurrection

The most dismal Easter service I ever experienced was in an Episcopal church we visited twenty-some years ago. The priest (a good man, but a recent seminary grad) basically said in his homily, “Christ wasn’t really raised from the dead, but it doesn’t matter because . . .”

That's the kind of sermon that makes me say with Mary Magdalene, “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they have laid him.” I far prefer novelist John Updike's poem "Seven Stanzas at Easter," which begins:

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

So I appreciated Rachel Zoll's article in this morning's Washington Post, "Resurrection Misunderstood by Many, Scholars Say." Three of the scholars she cites are Jon Levenson, author of Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel, Kevin Madigan, co-author with Levenson of Resurrection: The Power of God for Christians and Jews (to be published April 28), and N.T. Wright, author of The Resurrection of the Son of God and the recently published Surprised by Hope.

What do these three theologians--an American Jew, an Irish-American Catholic, and a bishop of the Church of England--have in common? All three, according to Zoll, "have been challenging the idea, part of Greek philosophy and popular now, that resurrection for Jews and the followers of Jesus is simply the survival of an individual's soul in the hereafter. The scholars say resurrection occurs for the whole person -- body and soul."

Get ready to say it tonight or tomorrow morning:

Christ is risen!
He is risen indeed!
Alleluia!

Beyond Smells and Bells

My sainted father--and I call him that without a trace of irony--once told me that there were two kinds of worship he simply couldn't identify with: charismatic and liturgical. This from a man who studied history and theology, taught worship in a seminary, and wrote a book called And Worship Him. Dad's favorite definition of worship was from Ilion T. Jones: "what a thinking man does as he approaches another thinking being called God."

"We must not seek a brand of worship that is purely aesthetic," my father wrote in 1967. "Worship must be orderly and beautiful, but . . . it should have the functional beauty of a jet airplane rather than the embellishment of a nineteenth-century railway coach." My father liked old-school Protestant services with stately hymns, long sermons, and immobile congregations.

I do not.

My frequent attempts to change my father's views were unsuccessful, however. I should never have taken him to St. Barnabas Episcopal Church; its jet-airplane decor did not sufficiently atone for its Anglo-Catholic liturgy. And if Dad were still living, I probably shouldn't give him Mark Galli's new book either--though I'm quite sure I would anyway. Hope springs eternal.

Beyond Smells and Bells: The Wonder and Power of Christian Liturgy (Paraclete, 2008) is a short, easy-to-read introduction that explains and defends liturgical worship "for those who find themselves attracted to liturgy but don't quite know why." Galli, an Anglican, draws mostly from the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer (with occasional quotations from Methodist, Lutheran, or Catholic liturgies) as he sings the praises of liturgy: how it can draw us closer to God and to one another; how it can affect our sense of time and place; how it can transform our faith, our imagination, our entire being.

"In a culture that assumes that truth is a product of the mind, the liturgy helps us experience truth in both mind and body."

--Mark Galli, Beyond Smells and Bells, 11

Galli belongs to a church teeming with Wheaton College students, many with little previous experience of ancient liturgies. His book is tailor-made for them. It is also ideal for their often baffled parents.

Mark is clearly in love with liturgy, but he is not triumphalist about it: he recognizes that liturgy is no guarantee of spiritual life, and he does not denigrate other forms of Christian worship. Readers from non-liturgical traditions may be challenged by his assertions, but they will not feel threatened.

I wish I could test the book on my father. Clearly not attracted to liturgy, he would not be part of the readership Galli had in mind. Nevertheless, I like to think Dad--and others like him--would find Galli's apologia illuminating.

The Fat Pack

How do food writers avoid obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and other medical hazards of their chosen profession? Many don't, says Kim Severson in her article in today's New York Times, "The Fat Pack Wonders If the Party's Over":

The journalists, bloggers, chefs and others who make up the Fat Pack combine an epicure’s appreciation for skillful cooking with a glutton’s bottomless-pit approach. Cramming more than three meals into a day, once the last resort of a food critic on deadline, has become a way of life. If the meals center on meat, so much the better.

Severson quotes several writers who are defensive about their lifestyle, but others are trying a new approach. Those

who want to lose weight find themselves trying to forge a new kind of diet, one that rejects the conventional strategy of denial and avoidance and embraces the pleasure of really, really good food.

One who is working on reshaping his body while continuing to enjoy eating is Ed Levine. Check out his website, Serious Eats, where on Thursdays he blogs about "his attempts to find food that is delicious and healthy."

Raspberry sauce for chocolate cake

Last month I posted a recipe for flourless chocolate cakelets. I served it to friends Friday night, and when they asked for the recipe I realized I had not posted any serving instructions.

It is arguably impossible to put too much chocolate in a cake, but these cakelets would overwhelm were they not accompanied by berries (rasp- or black-) and served over (or under) a not-too-sweet fruity sauce. The first time I served them, I took about a cup of Hardy's "Whiskers Blake" tawny (an Australian port), tossed in a cup or so of cherries and raspberries, and reduced it by half or two thirds. It made a great sauce.

This time I took 2 C frozen raspberries, 1 C water, and 1/2 C sugar and brought them to a boil.

I added 1/2 C cognac and let the mixture simmer for a very long time, until it was reduced to about a third of the original volume. I then pressed it all through a strainer to remove the seeds and chilled it until time to serve.

I put a good dollop of the sauce on each of four dessert plates, planted a cakelet in the middle of each dollop, and put eight fat blackberries alongside. Marvelous. Almost too much (though people did clean their plates...).

King Corn

If you enjoyed Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, or if you're feeling mildly guilty about not having read it yet, here's a way to get a quick [p]review.

Inspired by Pollan, a couple of young New Yorkers decide to study the American way of farming by going to Iowa, buying an acre, and growing their own corn crop. King Corn is their illuminating 90-minute documentary about what they learned. Read more about it at their website, or rent the CD from Blockbuster (Netflix isn't yet aware that it's been released).

My friend Linda, who is an Iowa farmer, liked this film so much that she sent me a copy. If you live nearby, I'll lend it to you.