Puddings and Preparations

It’s that time of year again for preparing food in advance for Christmas. I’ve got fruit soaking in Earl Grey tea ready for the cake. We’re making Christmas Puddings in the hospice with patients. And I’ve acquired a very good selection of kilner jars for this season’s mincemeat. My cupboards are overflowing with dried fruit!

I love this time of year. It brings back memories of making puddings with my mum, using her handed down recipe from my great great grandmother, which I continue to make with my niece. First we made them for the church’s Christmas Bazaar cake stall. Then we took orders from extended family. Now I’ve shared it at work, using it as a therapeutic activity with patients and a fundraiser with staff.

One reason it’s such a successful recipe is that our family treats it like Trigger’s Broom (for those of you unfamiliar with TV programme Only Fools and Horses, this will explain: Beckham in Peckham – Only Fools and Horses | Comic Relief – YouTube). Guinness, Malibu, dried apricots, dried cranberries, fruit juices, whole almonds, candied peel, milk, and a host of other ingredients have made an appearance or been deliberately excluded according to the cook’s preference or family situation. My current version is vegan and teetotal but this year we’ll be trying out some new non-alcoholic spirits for flavour.

But one tradition never changes – we never make just one. This is always a recipe to be shared and given away.

The original recipe was for 14lbs of pudding – that’s 7 generous family sized puds! So it was designed for sharing. But even if we do the maths and make fewer, it’s always a communal experience.

The memory that stands out is in my mum’s final year, when my husband and I took all the ingredients to her nursing home one evening and made it one last time with her. But everyone in the lounge had a stir and a wish and the extras we made went to the staff who helped, who had never tasted a homemade version before. How wonderful it was for my mum, who lived her life giving out to others, to turn the tables and care for her carers.

Nourishment isn’t just in the physical food though, is it? It’s in the love behind the preparation. It’s in the generosity of giving away the finished product. It’s in the sharing of the experience itself. It’s in the laughter and help and kindness.

I see this often in reverse working in palliative care – how hard it is for family when a loved one’s illness progresses so they can no longer eat normally and turn down meals offered. To the carer it can feel like it’s not just the food being rejected.

Jesus knew this all too well too. No wonder He countered one temptation with:

“Man does not live by bread alone.”

But we mustn’t forget He also added:

“But on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

We all need physical nourishment. But we also need social and spiritual nourishment. Without all three we live at best a monochrome life or at worst we wither away.

And perhaps that’s the value of Advent. Just as we can prepare physical food ahead of the Big Day, so we can take this opportunity to consider how to nourish ourselves spiritually and communally.

Perhaps that means daily Bible readings using an Advent devotional (check out your local Christian bookshop or Lucy Rycroft has some great recommendations here: 20 Best Books to Read During Advent – The Hope-Filled Family (thehopefilledfamily.com)).  Perhaps it means going to church (physically or online) regularly. Perhaps it means doing a Reverse Advent Calendar (plenty of ideas here Reverse advent calendar: what is it and why should you make one? (goodto.com) but do check what they need and by when if you’re doing it for a local foodbank).

What will you do for nourishment this Advent? I’d love to hear in the Comments.

Every week the Five Minute Friday community free write for limited time inspired by a given prompt word. It’s also a fantastically supportive groups for writers. You can find more inspirational writing here: Community – Five Minute Friday

Hidden in Plain Sight

When I was a student, I spent a number of my vacations working in Christian camps for teenagers.  One early and particularly cold Easter, we were based in an old castle in Northumbria, miles from anywhere. Midweek, we travelled to Hexham to play a wide game in the morning and go swimming in the afternoon.

In the wide game, the kids had to search the town centre for leaders in disguise. When they found them, they exchanged an agreed question and answer and the leader signed their sheet. The person who found the most leaders in the agreed time won.

Adrian dressed up as a nun and wandered the grounds of Hexham Abbey. Jane became a fake tour guide complete with raised umbrella and megaphone, Paul a vicar, Jessie a juggling clown. John wore a dress suit and persuaded a local furniture shop to let him become a shop window dummy. Lacking the imagination or funds for such costumes, I simply went jogging in the local park in my track suit.

I was the only leader not to be found.

My pursuers were looking for something different, something more obvious, something that stood out in a weird or unusual way. Not something typical that looked like it belonged in the setting.

I sometimes wonder if our expectations of God can be like that?

We assume Him to be completely out of the ordinary. We presume He acts only by overruling the laws of nature. We hope for Him to speak unequivocally to us; an invisible booming voice and words written in fireworks across the sky. After all, isn’t He God?

It’s an age old attitude. The Athenians in St Pauls’ day had shrines to numerous Greek goods – and if you’ve read the Greek myths, you’ll be familiar with their outrageous antics: turning humans into animals or trees, withering all plant life at the loss of a daughter, driving a man so mad he murders his children, demanding human sacrifice.

But Paul describes to them the god of another of their shrines, a completely different kind of god, The God Nobody Knows:

“He made the entire human race and made the earth hospitable, with plenty of time and space for living so we could seek after God, and not just grope around in the dark but actually find Him. He doesn’t play hide and seek with us. He’s not remote; He’s near. We live and move in Him, can’t get away from Him!” (Acts 17.24-29 The Message)

Maybe that’s why God turned up in Jesus. God wants to be found. Jesus Himself said it:

“Ask and you’ll get; seek and you’ll find; knock and the door will open.”  (Luke 11.9 The Message)

It’s like those Where’s Wally/Waldo pictures – God’s in plain sight.

If only we look.

Every week the Five Minute Friday community free write for limited time inspired by a given prompt word. It’s also a fantastically supportive groups for writers. You can find more inspirational writing here: Community – Five Minute Friday

Our Father

I ought to be praying or writing a blog post, Lord, but instead I’m scrolling through the internet, looking for anti-squirrel bird-feeding tips, my neighbour’s house for sale, and how split wellies can he repaired or recycled.  I slept in this morning after a long drive, indulged in coffee and lunch out, then walked on a beach and luxuriated in peppermint hot chocolate and a pumpkin spiced brownie. Now I’m tired again and the inspiration and ideas that filled my head yesterday have washed away like seaweed in the tide. What I’d really like to do is curl up with a book, with my family around me in quiet companionship, until teatime.

But maybe I’m not so far away from praying after all.

I used to think it was saying set words, preferably in in a set pattern: things I messed up and am sorry for, things I’m thankful for, situations that need divine intervention. Lists basically – prayer was a set of To Do Lists for me and God.

Later I learned about the idea of being quiet to let God get a word in edgeways, even if it was difficult to hear Him at times. I found He spoke loudest through the Bible so I read it like a letter from a loved one as prayer became a more two way conversation. I found His voce in devotional books and experience of other Christians too.

During times of darkness I sat in absolute silence or raged at Him. I found Biblical phrases to throw down to Him in angry challenge to act in my situation or promises to cling to and repeat (to Him? To me?) in desperate hope that He would keep them. Sometimes I sat in the still light of a garden morning, seeing and hearing lessons in His creation around me, imagining Him sitting beside me in equal happy contemplation. Or I curled up in a cosy armchair with no words, burying myself in a sensation of His arms around me.

Prayer has become much more difficult for me to define.

I mean, I do aim to have a daily ‘quiet time’ or ‘devotional’ with God. I still study my Bible, read inspirational books, and try to keep a balance of thankfulness, examen, and petition. But prayer isn’t confined to a habit or a formula anymore.

“How should we pray?” asked Jesus’ disciples.

And He gave them a pattern of prayer in response. But that pattern started with a definition of a relationship: Our Father.

And I think of the relationship I had with my father: the wide ranging conversations on those long university road trips; the nights stargazing together; the afternoons of companionable reading; the achievement I felt from his encouragement to be adventurous; the twinkling humour of his stories and catchphrases.

Is it any wonder that my prayer life, my relationship with God, follows a similar model?

I sometimes wonder at that question from the disciples: how do we do prayer? It’s like asking how do we do family? How do we love someone and recognise they love us? How do we love?

And that’s what prayer comes down to in the end, I think. Not a set formula (although patterns can help us start) but spending time in God’s company. So He’s been right next to me, looking over my shoulder at social media, getting blown about on the beach, and enjoying the skill of great cooking. It’s a matter of remembering He’s there.

Every week the Five Minute Friday community free write for limited time inspired by a given prompt word. It’s also a fantastically supportive groups for writers. You can find more inspirational writing here: Community – Five Minute Friday